Bill’s, there is a bit of a story here in that this is not the first Bills restaurant that Chiara Elisabetta has been naked in. In fact far from it, I believe this is #7
I’ve only seen the one image, which was taken by Simone at a Bill’s in Ealing Broadway, and its absolutely stunning. It was taken under a beautiful chandelier with Chiara naked on the table beneath it. A beautiful mono image that was long one of my favourite images they had taken together. Never in a bajillion years did I think that I might find myself in a Bill’s with Chiara one day, along with a camera.
But find ourselves in a Bill’s we did. Chiara was at mine for a week while she was shooting with various other photographers. We had popped our head inside the door of the restaurant a day or so before to have a look see and we were a bit disappointed it wasn’t as nice looking inside as some of the other Bill’s restaurants. She booked it anyway for a few days later, and it was made clear that I would be needing my camera with me!
Then the day before we went someone at work had mentioned to me that they had an upstairs too (which we hadn’t seen) so when we went back in and saw it was pretty full I asked the manager if we could sit upstairs. To our delight there was a great big Chesterfield type sofa and a huge chandelier behind it that was hanging directly over the bar below. Also, while the restaurant below was busy, upstairs was empty apart from us. Bingo!
We had some (really lovely) food, and discussed how we might get away with grabbing a few images without getting into too much trouble. Chiara was adamant that we ask permission to shoot so I plucked up the courage and asked the manager.
All was good until I said, ‘she’s going to be naked, is that ok?’ and then it went a bit quiet, Sensing we might be losing our opportunity I told him that we would be super quick, Chiara would run into the ladies, and come back ready to shoot but with a coat on, I would then look over the balcony down the staircase, make sure nobody was coming, she would lose the coat and then rattle off a few shots. We would be done in a couple of minutes maximum (honest!), nobody would see and therefore nobody could be offended. I watched the grin spread over his face as he laughed and gave us his permission and he wandered off back downstairs.
We did as we had said, only interrupted once by a lady who wandered upstairs looking for the loo. We thought she had cottoned on to what we were doing until on the way back through the room towards the stairs she walked into the wall and we realised she was (as they say in the ‘Nam) ‘proper mortalled’. We had a giggle, and got back on with it.
And so, that was that, we got some gorgeous images, said our thank you's, left a nice tip and ran off into the night giggling like a couple of naughty kids who just got away with doing outrageous things behind the bike sheds at school.
So thank you Bills, Cheltenham. Awesome food, awesome staff, awesome photographs!
We hope you like our photies!
