Forty Degrees Before Nine

By nine in the morning on the hottest day of the year in Sydney, it was already 40 degrees outside. Photographer David Collier and model Bella Donovan—from northern New South Wales, shooting in the city—made the obvious call: stay inside, take the pictures anyway.

Collier’s ongoing series Sleepyheads is about women unclothed and unhurried, and this shoot for Sticks & Stones fits neatly into that vocabulary. The light has that overripe, suffocating quality that only happens when the air outside is genuinely hostile. Bella looks at the camera like she knows something you don’t, which she probably does. When it’s that hot and you’ve decided the answer is to take your clothes off and stay in bed, you’re likely right about most things.

More of Collier’s work is at davidcollier.com.au. Bella is on Instagram, as well-looking people tend to be.