William Lyons City Musick @ Dartington

I had passed this tree at the top of Dartington drive a thousand times and admired its silhouette especially as the sun sets from behind.
It reminded me of a book of Russian fairy tales I had as a child. The scenes were cut from pieces of black and placed on hand marbled paper, a kind of shadow puppet effect, strangely eerie.
I was commissioned by William Lyons the director of City Musick to take some group portraits after meeting them and seeing their bizarre array of early brass and horns I thought where better to place them but on top of that hill so they also become silhouettes in a surreal scene. It was difficult to direct from the bottom of a hill but luckily they were good at translating my wild gesticulation and came up with some pretty funky shapes of their own!