Abi and her dirty, dirty mouth

Up at the crack of dawn this morning to vacate my room in Scarborough (Where I had been gigging the night before) and on the first train back to London to get straight into a headshot shoot for comedy, cabaret and circus performer Abi Collins. Headshots are tricky - they need to be fairly neutral, but not bland. To show a truthful record of what the person looks like, while hopefully catching a tiny little glimmer of their personality. They can't be too stylish, or too of anything really - because what you're selling is the ability of the performer to be castable in as many roles as possible, so you can't risk being too much of any one thing. There's a definite knack to them.

After a few different set-ups and angles, we found that the best way for Abi to relax her face and look as much like a neutral version of Abi as possible (and if you know Abi, you'll understand the ridiculous idea of a neutral version of her..) was for her to slowly repeat the words "Blow job" over and over. It put her mouth into a relaxed shape, and made her nearly giggle every time, so gave a little sparkle to her eyes. Either that, or she just liked saying it. Possibly both.

The accompaying pic isn't one of the headshots, but rather a moment caught while she was giggling at her own foul-mouth.

Day of errands tomorrow, then off to Australia on Wednesday. I'm there for a long weekend. Crazy, huh? But such is the life of a performer. Now sure how much I'll be able to blog while over there - I'll try, but if I can't, then I feel confident I'll return with pictures and stories to tell.