Saju – the horse whisperer

Long live long hair. If you are like me, you enjoy seeing beautiful women with long flowing hair. Not just women make use of its power. Look at a male lion’s impressive mane: an especially beautiful sight in the Masai Mara as the lion is perched atop a rock letting the wind ruffle his mane. Much like tentacles of a giant squid entangle their unsuspecting prey, flowing beautiful hair mesmerizes and mentally stuns admirers which at this stage can be easily manipulated.

Not only does it seem like the hair is alive, changing shapes frequently and flowing so nicely over any obstacle, its lovely sheen makes it look even more alive especially when light catches it as it flows in the wind.

Saju has such amazing hair which covers most of her body when it’s extended. She could probably use it as a tent to wait out a storm, or she could fill in for “cousin it” on an Addams family set, but lucky for us she agreed to do a shoot with me at a friends place in Flumserberg, Switzerland. I would have loved to get some shots of her riding a horse with its mane and her hair dancing around wildly in the wind (would look very dynamic with some motion blur/panning), but unfortunately the horses were not used to riders and Saju does not know how to ride. Maybe I’ll get some images like that in the near future (let me know if you know a well-suited model with mad riding skills).

I am not sure exactly what to call the images. She could be the horse whisperer. While she looks like Pocahontas in one, she could very well be Lady Godiva in the other. Feel free to suggest something in the comments, but in the end it doesn’t matter. I like the results. Especially how well her hair blends in with the horse’s.

After shooting with the horses, which proved to be less easy than I had expected, I also took some images of Saju sitting in the lush green grass with the mountains in the background. The soft light and her pose combined with the background make the image below exude serenity. A nice image to finish with as it was the last of the day.