An Autumn Fusion: Blanco by JDT Photo

'If only humans could die like the autumn leaves, with a splash of beauty and the promise of another season.'


One of the reasons many of us love specific seasons is our ability to physically fuse, connect and immerse our bodies with the gifts mother nature lavishes upon us. In winter, our skin feels the cold, our tongues catch the snowflakes and most of us at one time or another used our hands and bodies to make snow men, angels and forts. In the spring, our senses are strummed by the smells and colors of a world in bloom. In the summer, our bodies are literally bathed in both the heat of the sun and waters of the lakes and oceans we immerse ourselves in to cool off.


In Autumn, it's both the sites and the smells that lure us down any path surrounded by elms and maples moving through stages of senescence. Most of us have experienced the sensation of rolling and playing in a cold and damp pile of leaves. Sadly, the desire to physically connect with seasonal changes seems diminish for many adults. The cold becomes less tolerable, the humidity too oppressive and the damp leaves, just an eyesore in need of raking.


One of the themes that I loved exploring on FH is how creative artists and adventurous models can take us back to the sense of freedom and play that life often forces us to forget. Just the experience of being naked outside is something foreign to most adults, even thought our parents have Kodak produced proof, that we once ran around the backyard in our birthday suits.


Jesse from JDT Photo is one of my favorite chroniclers of seasonal changes, but I thought I'd already tapped the well dry with his Autumn images. Last month I featured several models Jesse shot for An Autumn Afternoon. Today, we get a fall bonus, as a few weeks go however, Jesse headed back into the woods, this time with Blanco.


There is a beautiful symmetry in the way Jesse captured Blanco, and the way in which the Atlanta models interacts with his Autumn arena. Blanco creates such beautiful poses with his body, even the design and lines of his arm tattoo flows with his surrounding. Blanco interacts with the forest and leaves as may of us did when we were young, and how many of us long to again.