Glen “Ravo” Ravenscroft was born in the UK in 1945: today he is a commercial and fine-art photographer working from a beach area located about an hour north of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Ravo found an interest in photography in his early teens taking shots of surfers riding waves. He received his photographic education at the University of Technology Sydney, specializing in Visual Arts, and at the Australian Institute of Photography. In 1997 he also studied with Greg Gorman, Joyce Tenneson, and Jay Maisel at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.

Ravo’s Commercial work is diverse, and he has a number of commercial clients whose use his services and talent for catalogue and brochure work, editorial and some advertising. His passion is portraiture and he has a studio that specializes in vogue and glamour type portraiture.

Ravo’s spare time is devoted to creating unusual and surealist type imagery using photography and computer manipulation. He notes that great photographers, such as Horst, Penn, Koppitz and Ray have been important influences in the development of his voice and vision, and that artists such as Dali and Magritte have also given his direction to his work.

The “Flora Femme” series is intended for a book (his fourth book), was begun in 1998: Ravo’s original concept was to shoot everything on infra red film, but as the book progressed the images were changed to full color. Ravo says that, “Being a surrealist at heart, the concept was to take the two most beautiful and sensual creations of God’s Earth … the Flower and the Female … both being the ultimate essence of the reproductive system … and merge them together in a visually sensual way.” His models for this series vary from professional models to acquaintances met over the years. What follows is a sampling of his work in the “Flora Femme” series.