I can’t tell you how excited I am to share this shoot! Normally I’m a very sleek, black, spy chic kind of gal. But part of the fun of being a model is getting to try out different looks, different characters. This particular one was probably the most different look I’ve ever done! Pastels are the antithesis of my usual palette (she says as she washes her almost entirely black laundry load). So when my make up artist and stylist friend, Dustin Sean Lazenby and photographer, Richard Scalzo pulled this get-up together, I was a bit hesitant…
Then they put the wig on me.
I was hooked! So off I went, prancing my buttermint pastel self to the front of the camera, grinning my head off as I went.
Speaking of grinning, I know many of you have mentioned how you’d like to see me smile more in my pictures. While I joke that I only have two modes – model face and derp face. The truth is I’m quite self conscious of my smile (I’ll spare you my wah wah whiny details), and feel it comes out looking really wonky in photos. But you better believe if I get a photo where it looks normal and pretty, I’m going to post it! I feel so spoiled by Richard in this photoshoot because I got not one, but multiple attractive smiling pictures!
When I got these final edits, I was having a sick day in bed, feeling rather rotten and dumpy, having been in the same PJs for days (depression is a jerk), unwashed face, hair, weight gain, etc. Getting these pictures in my inbox turned my whole day around!
I hope you enjoyed this Honeydukes-tastic look!
Over the years I’ve gone on a journey to see the magic of the everyday. I had my head too much in the clouds, lusting after a life of seemingly unattainable class and status. But a geek version! Surely that’s doable, I’d always say to myself. Well….not exactly. But sometimes one has to try their darn hardest to make it happen on their own terms to learn from those mistakes and find something new. So now, I am in transition to something new.
Ah. Hah. Ahahahahahah.
Let’s dissect this shall we?
2) Learn thy angles! Editor Briana is disappointed in Model Briana for this. Model Briana should know better. Model Briana needs to Work. Those. Angles!
3) While I am naturally pear shaped, my lower hips stick out due to both the way my body deposits fat, but also muscle reformation issues from my accident (especially the left side which puckers out weirdly from my scar). It bugs my OCD, so I try to camoflauge it in different ways. This photoshoot was before I learned how to do that. Past Briana, flowy coats are your frieeeeend. They hide said hip weirdness and make you look epic when the wind blows.
So next time I put an outfit like this together, I know some different things to try to create a perfect nautical chic outfit for my odd little body. Voila!
Photographer: 
As Emily Dickinson wrote, “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” Yet I’ve found myself drawn back into the familiar trudge of being a homebody, being slave to depression and poverty, while wistfully sighing over the seemingly endless stream of far-away adventuring Instragrammers with their sunshine filled exotic adventures. As someone who once traveled across the world alone and knows the soul-filling capacity of travel, my heart aches much these days.
Events in our lives happen in a given sequence in time, but their significance to ourselves find their own order through the continuous thread of revelation. The latter part happening more rapidly as of late. College ushered in a new book in my life as I lived on my own for the first time and then leapt across the world to the far reaches of New Zealand with nary a thought to normalcy. Although I returned with my tail between my legs due to being victim to being abroad during the global economic collapse and my own declining health, the lessons I learned from living alone overseas shaped the foundations of the adult I am today.
The chapters of childhood have long closed and the written pages are being crafted of my life as an adult. It was not at all what I was expecting. Now I fully understand many adult’s depressed desires to return to a youthful state. I did not take into account just how much I had taken for granted when I was younger. Naturally I had the childhood bruises and scraped knees, but nothing from the eyes of a child can prepare you for the pain of heartbreak, destitution, of dealing with friends’ suicides, drug addictions, overdoses, and having your own body ripped apart. (Not to mention the fiscal, emotional, mental, and societal responsibilities of being an adult).
Still, I find myself wondering if my time is well spent. Much gets sacrificed to my disabilities or unfortunate mental health that I find myself grabbing for social media as priority over the movement of my own two feet. It’s easy. It’s comfortable. It’s safe.
Though it wouldn’t be me if there wasn’t some aspect of geekery involved. I’m sure the word “travel blogger” brings particular image to mind, especially in regards to Instagram. A solitary figure (usually female) admist a sprawling vast wilderness or exotic landscape, bedecked in a flowing dress and matching hair. While it may be a cliched image these days, I still love it. The images provoke a feeling, a stirring within me (be that wonder, awe, or jealousy). The twist I’d like to bring to the table is to mimic the same style, but instead of it just being yours truly as the figure (because let’s face it, I would be lost in the sea of white female Instagrammers), it would be me as various fandom characters; like Lara Croft, Carmen Sandiego, Daenerys, Belle, Bladerunner, etc.
Alright so I fibbed slightly…it came to my attention recently, that I had actually unknowingly cosplayed from Lord of the Rings (this was way back in 2002 before most of us had even heard of cosplay). Here is teenage Briana in her very first elf cosplay. I decided to get up in front of my school’s talent show in that get up and sing May It Be. That poor audience…if there’s a female equivalent of a guy’s voice cracking at puberty, pretty sure I had it and it made its presence know every few notes. Oops.
Or as I like to joke – otherwise known around here as The Wert Family. Imagine someone looking akin to your favourite grandparents with hobbity dispositions. There you have Jim and Emily Wert (who frequently cosplay as Samwise Gamgee and Rosie Cotton. So adorable) and their just as Tolkien-loving, cosplaying children. They’re known in town for hosting the most EPIC themed parties, helping run the Tolkien track (now General Fantasy. Boo. Hiss.) at Dragoncon, and the local Atlanta Tolkien Fan meetups with the lovely Rebecca Perry (my former roommate! At this point I’ve realized all of my roommates have been LOTR people. We just find each other.) On various Sundays of the month, we take over a local, appropriately British looking pub, to both fan over Tolkien work and then incesssantly rant over one Tolkien topic or another. Our current favourite is the upcoming Amazon TV series. #givethepeoplewhattheywant #wedontknowhatthatisyet #butwewantsit
One of the local geek haunts, 