The Pink Blossom
Model: Nadja S. Jensen
Photography/Costume: Sabrina Nielsen
In the Enchanted Garden there lives a sylph who takes the form of a pink blossom. She travels through the air, usually too fast for humans to see her, only the scent of pink blossoms lingers in her wake. I was fortunate enough to snap a few photos of her, before she discovered me and faded into the wind.
In my last entry, I talked about how this day and these shoots were born out of a troublesome lake shoot the week before. We decided to use the blue dress again and I couldn't resist attempting to create another costume for our spontaneous shoot. We'd agreed on going to a location that neither of us had ever been to before, but I'd read about it and figured we'd check it out.
We were driven to a forest quite far away and dropped off in what looked like the middle of nowhere. Full of hopefulness and curiosity, we followed a small path into the forest. Quite early on, I noticed there were a lot of mosquitoes in the air. I have a phobia of insects and an allergy to mosquito bites, so it's like a radar that's on constantly, and when we saw how these were the female mosquitoes and they were settling on us and biting, we kind of panicked. I was having flashbacks to last year when I went on a shoot and we couldn't even get to the location, because we were being swarmed by mosquitoes. Nadja kindly lent my her hoodie that she'd brought along, even though it was really warm that day. I was grateful, even though it didn't stop the mosquitoes.
To make a long story short, we decided to find this location, an old ruin next to a forest lake, just to see it and then flee the scene and take the train to another location. So that's exactly what we did.
It was so hot, speed walking through the forest with all of our getup, so we grabbed a popsicle on the train station to cool us down.
While we'd been planning the shoot, I'd mentioned the idea that we could go to the secret garden in case the first location didn't work out or just if we had time. It would only be a little less than an hour from the forest with the train and a bus. So we knew already how to get there.
After all of that debacle, once we arrived at the garden, it was like stepping into a safe haven. Everything was so tranquil and beautiful. We found a nice spot and set up to do the first look of the day.
It was so inspiring, being around all of these beautiful flowers, and see Nadja as this ethereal creature. I don't think I've seen those yellow flowers before, and there weren't that many of them, just that one rather sparse looking bush.
We only did the two setups with the blue dress, I knew just needed two photos for the series and everything was just coming together so nicely. So we changed Nadja into the pink costume, which I'd thrown together the day before. I had seen a gown in my mind which was in the same genre and the blue one, but in pink and white. So the next day, I got up early and headed into town to the fabric shop to pink up what I needed, and then hurried back home to start creating it. I only had one day to make it, so I comprised with a few things, but overall I'm pleased with how it turned out.
We shot it in such a beautiful spot in the garden. And I was inspired by everything around me and the fact that there was just the perfect light at that time. Well, it's my favourite type of natural light - especially in the third photo.
I'd brought along my new dslr for behind the scenes video and I tried to film a bit. Since the shoot had been so spur of the moment, my faithful assistant wasn't able to join us, so I could only film a bit and not while we were shooting (because I hadn't brought a tripod), but nevertheless, I've put together another video for you:
