The Guardian of the Enchanted Garden
Model: Modeling by Luna Nikita Headpiece: Plussoyance Créations Assistants: Tenna Vinther Olesen & Nadja Stephanie Jensen Photographer/Dress/MUA: Sabrina Nielsen
This costume was born out of an art block. I was so frustrated as the end of summer was approaching, because I'd spent all of my vacation working on something which then didn't come together. I'd been waiting for so long to make the final plans and everything just dragged on and I couldn't start working on something new, because all of my ideas were circling about the other projects. I felt like everything I could imagine was just reruns of what I'd already made.
Finally, after weeks of frustration, I realized what I had to do. I sat down and read in Kirsty Mitchell's book. I found myself carried away into Wonderland once again. And I remembered a part of myself that had been forgotten for a little while. It's no surprise that the costume I ended up making is all about flowers after journeying to Wonderland.
It felt so nice to make a dress like this "again". I've been making so many dresses this year which have loads of lace and beading, it felt great to return to the flowers. Last year I made the costumes for "The Last Queen of Faeries" and they all had a lot of flowers on them, but none quite as many as these. To be honest, I reused the flowers from the final robe of the Faerie Queen and ended up buying loads more for this project. I love how it turned out and I have on display in my (tiny) workroom right now.
As I was making this dress, I talked with Marie from Plussoyance Créations, and we made plans to collaborate again. She had this beautiful headpiece in her collection called "Blue Arya" and I told her I loved it and how it would maybe be suitable for this dress that I was in the process of making. Marie, almost immediately, whipped up a pink version of the headpiece and we used that for the shoot.
Of course the model had to be the lovely Luna <3 Experienced model with a chameleon face that the camera loves :)
As I've mentioned previously, I have been wanting to give videography a shot for some time now. I thought this shoot would be a nice opportunity, so I mentioned the idea to Luna and she was on board.
Of course, a week prior to the shoot, I found myself wandering through the garden location, desperately looking for the perfect spots for each shot. I wanted to be really prepared now that I was also shooting video as my post processing skills in that area are far from advanced. I'd brought along a few of the tracks I was considering using for the video. I needed to come up with a short storyline for the video. It had to be very simple as none of parties involved had participated in a video shoot before.
As I was walking through the garden, listening to the music, looking at how Autumn had already made its mark in some places, it came to me. The character would walk through the garde of which she was the protector, and she would be saddened by how everything was dying and eventually she would go into hibernation for winter. It seemed fairly simple as the majority of the things I had to shoot was "just" Luna walking through the garden.
We did the shoot on a beautiful Autumn day full of sunlight. It was actually a bit earlier than when I normally shoot, so the sun was higher and brighter. But I love how the light brings so much life to the photos.
I think this is one the more "extreme" transformations I've done for a shoot, and it was so amazing watching Luna move through the garden in this costume, completely unrecognizable and very out of this world.
Luna and I were fortunate enough to be joined by Tenna and Nadja, two wonderful assistants. It was kind of fun figuring out how to work with the diffuser screen and reflector while moving around through the garden. Add smoke bombs to that and we had our hands full, haha :D
I think Luna did brilliantly. It seemed to come very naturally to her; Remembering when she had to do what and where, take after take. It made my job much easier ;) While I still have so much to learn in this area, I'm still thrilled with the result of our little outing. I hope you'll enjoy it too <3
