The Enchanted Elements (#27 & #28)

Before today, I began to have glimpses of why my mind came up with this concept, but right now it seems so much clearer. Let me first take a moment to tell a little bit of the back story.

After praying for inspiration back in the beginning of May, I kept having the word “fire” go through my mind (strange), and then after a little while, “elements”. I thought the concept was very interesting. I had thought of doing something with fire before, but never thought about all the elements together within one image. I have about a dozen ideas for the Kandylane Enchanted future so I’m always intrigued when I’m inspired to do something so different than what I had thought up already.

Later on that day, I saw some pictures of people drawing with sparklers (with a camera on a low shutter speed). I’ve always thought this was cool and wanted to learn how to do this better, but then it hit me……wings of fire! I had originally thought of doing this with sparklers, but after trying it out and not liking the small outcome, I decided to use fire torches! The bigger flame brought that look I really wanted! I thought if I could have my model standing in water with the mountains behind her, a flowing & airy dress on, and wings of fire, I could have Earth, Air, Fire & Water within one frame! The vision of this made my heart swell!

I honestly didn’t know what I was going to write when I first thought this up…now I sit here with clarity in the vision. It really makes me wonder where these thought come from in the first place. At first I thought this character had a little bit of a personality disorder. Who is she? What does she want to be? Can’t she just make up her mind? Is she a goddess of wind? Water? Earth? Fire? Then I realized she is everything because WE are everything. We are the breeze on a hot day, but can also turn into a hurricane. We are the lamp that lights a path in the darkness, but we can also be the fire burning through the forest. We are the glass of water given to a dehydrated traveler, but we can also be a rapid flood. We are the beautiful flower covered meadow, or the rolling earthquake tearing a city apart. We create the world we live in. Let us choose to be the breeze, lamp, glass of water and meadow. Let’s choose to bring beauty into our lives in every aspect. Let us fill our world with beauty so that the spirit may dwell with us and let our beauty and love radiate to others. Let us try more to speak of peace and kindness. Let everything we do affect the world for the better.

Introducing....

The Enchanted Elements

#27

#28

Love love love what the wind did to these wings!!!! so cool!!

*Don't forget to check out the time lapse video filmed and processed by Caleb Berry and edited by me! It shows us in the water & the music is by my dads 80's band Paragon!! Check out there music at this link.... www.paragonrocks.net

The Drive

I always love seeing these pictures on the way out to the shoots! Everyone puts awesome faces on!!

The Wings!

As you read above...the idea for the wings came from the technique of "drawing" with sparklers on a low camera shutter speed. I had Andrew my husband standing with his arms and torches out at a safe distance (even though it looks really close), drawing the shape of wings in the air with torches. These were actually fire eating torches that I got from www.trickconcepts.com, a place referred to me by a facebook friend. I will first give my camera settings for both and then explain the rest.....

Aperture: f/5.0

Shutter Speed: 4 sec.

ISO: 100

It took me a little while to figure out what my shutter speed needed to be to allow Andrew enough time to draw the wings behind her. We did a quick test run a few weeks earlier using my cute little son AJ (who looks a little scary in this picture, lol), that way I didn't have to mess around too much on the real shoot (picture of that below). I had my sister in law, Amy standing on a ladder in the water off to the side manually popping the flash at my direction. First I'd hit my shutter, then immediately tell Andrew to start drawing and then about halfway through the wings, I'd tell Amy to pop the flash. This worked really well and reduced the amount of movement seen in the picture. Thankfully Andrew fit behind Lucy without him being seen in the picture. As you can see in the other picture below (and in the time lapse) Andrew had to keep re-lighting the torches! They burn out ever 3 minutes or so, so he had a little candle fire on the shore to come back to, lol.

I originally wanted lighting like you see in the picture above, but when we arrived to the Lake Mead last Thursday for our main shoot, we saw that moon start to rise over the Eastern mountains!! I was so excited and knew the shoot was going to take a dreamier turn! We had to wait a bit for the night to get darker in order to use a slow shutter so the moon was up higher than I would have liked, but it was still amazing!!

Makeup!

Brittany my makeup girl is so patient with me! I rarely know what I want until our model is sitting in the chair! We sometimes collaborate ahead of time, but this time...I just could not decide what I wanted! We finally decided on something clean and structured. Heavy contouring on her cheek bones, crisp clean eye makeup and fiery red and orange lips! She did an incredible job! I will provide a product list in the near future.

Again...don't forget to check out the time lapse video below of her makeup and while we are on the lake!

The Dress

This is one of those times that I originally pinned a bunch of stuff together on my mannequin and then the day of the shoot, I took it off the mannequin and pinned it right back onto Lucy. The main dress was bought at a thrift store and then I just added fabric on until I got the flowy, watery, airy dress look I wanted!

I love all the action happening in this picture! Caleb (time lapse videographer) snapping some pics of me dressing Lucy. And Andrew in the background practicing his fire wings.

Everything in motion!

Yes! I am guilty! I had to be IN the water with my tripod! I was originally going to be on the shore, but when that moon came up in that eastern sky, I had NO choice! I just had to shoot from that direction! The moon refection on the water made it MORE than worth it, but still very scary! We had Lucy standing on one step stool in the water and Andrew on another behind her, giving her the appearance of walking on water! I absolutely LOVED it!! 

I am SO incredibly grateful for this turn out!! Please share, pin, comment right her on the blog!

Until we meet again! xoxo!