Update on The Motive - Mrs. White

Thank you everyone so far for your support on this project.  We've still got a long way to go but as promised, since we reached the $500 mark, here is the first photo to be released publicly from The Motive.

It took me a long time to find the right model and a hallway that would work for my purposes.  The hallway was probably the hardest part though you wouldn't think that would be difficult.  I did shoot this show on a shoestring budget, though, and didn't want to rent locations if I could get out of it.

That being said, my friend Nicole was kind enough to let us use her upstairs hallway to shoot the photos for Mrs. White.  I wasn't sure if it would work but I'm pretty pleased with the result.  I wanted the photos to have a simplicity about them, so that it was easy to see the important parts of the art without a lot of distracting excess all over the place.  I would have loved to shoot this show in an old Victorian Mansion but didn't have one available.

If we can make the next goal of $1,000 I'll share another character from the shoot.  Whoever is the donor who puts us over the top will get to pick which of the five remaining characters to see!  Thanks again for your support and I am really looking forward to seeing where this goes from here!

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.