Dauntlessly Enchanted (#40 & #41)

Pretty sure I might be certifiably insane, but I’m so happy that I can bring you all some cool art from the inner workings of my crazy mind! I honestly have some really deep thoughts to talk about with this one, but for now, I will share with you how some of these shoots- in particularly this one- came to be.

The beginning of this year has been a doozey. Not only for me, but for so many people I know. I've always lived in quite a bubble, always looking towards the light AND creating my own light even when darkness seemed to be surrounding me, but I was feeling that darkness rather strongly. While pondering this one day, I was inspired to create an enchanted character walking through a dark forest surrounded by fog and hands coming up from the ground trying to pull her down. She would maintain a tall, peaceful & brave demeanor while walking towards a bright light. I LOVED this vision. Here’s what happened next…

I've been practicing meditation more than ever before during the past 10 months. One day while meditating, images started flashing through my brain and I began to doze off. Right before falling completely asleep, this one very unique image flashed for a split second behind my eyes and I immediately woke up. Rarely is there something that forces me so quickly out of this deep trance, but I had to get up and write it down.  I saw a blonde women, in very moody lighting surrounded by smoke with a bit of a proud & powerful look on her face. But the thing that stood out to me the most was her necklace. It was made completely of vertebrae! I was like….say what?! As I quickly walked to my room so that I could write this down, my vision from the paragraph above came into my mind and then I “heard” the saying… ”never be spineless, always have a backbone”. More and more thoughts arose from my mind telling me to always have confidence, to stand tall and walk dauntlessly into the future no matter what is lurking behind me, and to never be afraid to show people I have a backbone. It all made sense now.

I was not sure who I would ask to portray this character. Honestly, I needed someone who knew my mind well. Someone who may have similar thoughts and ideas about life as me. I knew the date I wanted to shoot, but nothing beyond that. A short time passed and we got a message from some of our best friends. They were coming into town the next month…the weekend I wanted to shoot. I IMMEDIATELY saw this friend of mine standing as my character. I felt a strong connection to Kiley from the moment I met her. She is the wife of Andrew’s oldest friend Tony.  I even pulled Tony off to the side when I was first introduced to her and said….marry her, Tony! I love her! Her energy is exactly what I needed to tell the story I wanted to tell.

My final words…Don’t fear the dark. As science has taught us, darkness is only defined by the absence of light. Darkness itself is immeasurable, therefore doesn't truly exist. When we feel or see darkness, let it be a sign to us that we need to find ways of allowing light to arise from within us. BE a light shining in the dark and when those around you are struggling, help them find light as well. “A candle never loses any of its light while lighting up another candle.”- Rumi. Stand tall and walk undaunted into the light!

INTRODUCING…..

Dauntlessly Enchanted

{CLOSE UP CROPS}

Behind The Scenes

Dress: 

So in my “vision”, I saw my character wearing a long white dress with a long shoulder train and long medieval sleeves. It almost reminded me of an Elven queen! Kiley, my model said that I could use her dress which is already really beautiful and a little bit of a bohemian style that she said I could use! It was a perfect base for what I wanted! I just added some long white fabric to drape from the shoulders down. Then I use more of the same fabric to sew some long sleeves. They are not perfect or professional by any means, but they got the job done! I used my son to help me measure things out…you can see how entertained he is J

Necklace:

I looked and looked and looked for vertebrae online. There is really nothing like this online. Some Halloween things, but really nothing I could use. At the time of starting to work on this costume, I was also working as a vocal director on a musical at our high school. I asked our incredible student set designer if he knew a way I could scalped vertebrae and just make my own necklace and his answer was….EASY, I’ll take care of it! Oh my goodness I can’t even tell you how excited I was about that! A few weeks later, he had a bag of vertebrae for me (isn’t that a funny sentence)! I struggled to find a way to put them together, but I ended up stringing them together and then ALSO hot gluing them in place! It turned out fabulous!! HUGE thanks to the talented Jordan Dube for sculpting these incredible vertebrae for me!! YOU DA BESTEST!!

Fog: 

Another awesome thing I learned because of the musical I was part of was fog!! Our awesome director Jimmy Carosone told me that if I take a bucket, cut a hole on one side, fill it with warm water, drop dry ice down in it and cover the top….I will get LOTS of low lying fog! I also found a different way online of using a bin, cutting holes on the bottom side, covering the holes with a mesh wire, fill the bin with ice, cut another hole on the other side but at the top, attach the fog machine to it and the ice will help the fog drop to the ground. Here is a link to the youtube tutorial that helped us build that one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku1fBghJF84.  These both would have worked much better in doors because we wouldn’t have been dealing with wind, but there were enough times where it worked good enough to get the shot!

Here we are doing a test run of the light! I love it!

Hair & Makeup: 
As always, my dear friend Brittany of Makeup By Brittany Benko did a fabulous job on hair and makeup! I wanted very natural, glowing, goddess-like makeup with heavy contouring and that is exactly what she did! Kiley looked like a bit like an Elvin Queen!! Seriously stunning!! I wanted her hair to be LONG wavy with half of it up in a bit of a beehive. As you can see, it took A LOT of teasing and some long extensions to make it perfect, but she got there!! I had to go home while she was getting prepped so I don’t have a ton of shots of this, but at least I have a few.

Kiley cracked us up when she told us her doppleganger was Sebastian Bach, hahahaha!! He really is a pretty dude!

Here is a list of products used:

Lorac Pro Pallette

Lorac Bronzer/Illuminating Pallette

NYX Coffee Lip Liner

NYX Fortune Cookie Butter Gloss

Day of:

I’m not gonna lie, things were off the day of the shoot. I didn’t feel great, Andrew didn’t feel great, and my girl Sarah who does all my behind the scenes stuff was feeling lousy and things were just wonky! I was even considering just calling it off, which I NEVER do. All of the sudden, I realized that how I was feeling was right in line with the entire shoot- learning how to push through times and look towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Plus, my friend was only in town that weekend. We decided to make it happen! I picked Kiley up from downtown and headed to Brittany’s. They started makeup as I went home and got the car loaded.

I am so lucky to have so many willing people around to help. Of course my awesome hubby was there, but also his brother Art, Arts daughter Taylor, and our friend Jen. I literally needed their hands for this shoot! We headed to the special spot, got the fog machine hooked up to the power converter and the car, set up the off camera light (my brand new awesome light- a 36 inch, battery powered light box called GLOW by Flashpoint found on Adorama- SO AWESOME), set up the fog, my camera and everything else, put the hand helpers on the ground under a white sheet, and then took out the guest of honor so we could start shooting. The lighting I needed was a very short window of time. It’s the time during dusk, right before dark where you can still see blue in the sky, but most everything is dark. We literally only had 10 minutes of shooting time! YIKES! I’ll be honest, I was nervous that I didn’t get what I wanted, but I ABSOLUTELY did!! I did have to take use some Photoshop skills to cover up bumps of heads & shoulders under the sheets, but we made it work!

Hehe! Taylor Helping me with a creepy hand run through! 

Of course Andrew is here playing with dry ice in his mouth!

I think this is what happens when there is too much dry ice in too much water!

Here we are at Teriyaki Madness. With my short hair and her wedding dress...people were definitely looking at us! Haha, soooo We just went with it!

Thank you all for taking the time to read this! I hope you come back for more and more in the future!

Xoxo

Camera Specs and Settings:

Camera: Canon 5D MarkIII

Off Camera Flash: 36 inch, battery powered light box called GLOW by Flashpoint found on Adorama

Aperture: f/4, f/5

Shutter: 1/50, 1/200

ISO: 2500 on both