Hera and the Gazing Pool

This is my friend Nuria.  She was engaged to be married in less than a month when I took this photo.  She suddenly decided one day that she didn't want to marry her fiance' and she didn't want to waste the dress entirely, so she asked if I'd be willing to shoot her in it.  Let's see, beautiful woman, wedding dress, loose ideas of public behavior?...  yes please!

We went exploring down near some locations that I wanted to get her portrait in with the dress.  We went to a fairly nice part of the city and took some photos on the steps of some churches, in front of a couple of huge old houses and generally made a nuisance of ourselves while having a fantastic time.

This location is the courtyard for a church that has been vacant for quite some time.  I saw the pool and simply had to try and take some photographs with it.  She wandered over and we started shooting away.  Eventually, towards the end of the shoot, I asked her to look down into the basin as if it were a divining pool and this is the result of that pose.

After four years I can look at my other work and see how it has transitioned and gotten better.  But this photo still stands out as one of my favorites.  I love the way the colors are all very primary and distinct from one another, as well as all the textures too (the dress, the brick, the inside of the pool, her skin, the veil).  Since I like to think in terms of comic books and larger than life characters, looking at Nuria like this makes me think of Hera, Zeus' wife from Greek mythology.  I like to imagine she is spying on him right now, watching his philandering from a safe distance and plotting her revenge.