This self-portrait was taken for a photo challenge entitled Shadows, and this was the image that came to my mind when the challenge was announced so I rolled with it.
Details on how this was made under the cut.
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Defined By Our Shadows
Nowhere To Run When It’s Inside You
February 15, 2011
I belong to a photo community that every month runs a contest where they give you a word that you need to take a photo of that relates to that word. This month’s word was “nowhere”. With a word like that, how could I resist?!? This phrase immediately popped into my mind, and I knew I had finally found a self-portrait opportunity for my Tillandsia plant, a cool little plant that grows not in soil, but resting in the canopy of trees and looks very creepy and Lovecraftian.
The lighting was very simple for this. A simple hot-shoe flash suspended over my head fired through a Lumiquest 3 Softbox with 2 pieces of black tape to flag (or block) the light from falling onto my background. I simply positioned myself under the edge of the beam of light, prefocused my camera, and set the timer for 12 seconds. Wash and repeat several dozen times. Then a bit of toning, contrast, and cleanup in Photoshop and you’re done!
Poseidon
July 21, 2010
I got together again with model Midas I Write (MM#1564051) for another shoot. He wanted to do something with an octopus tentacle coming out of his hair. He also has these cool star tattoos which we wanted to incorporate into the piece, so the name Poseidon just flowed out naturally from this.
Shooting Info
I shot this with a my Pentax K200D and my Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 lens. I wanted a relatively shallow depth of field so I set my aperture to f5.0, and then set up my light, an AB800 through my home-made silver beauty dish just out of the frame to camera right… about 3 o’clock. The power setting was fairly low… less than half-power because I wanted my background to go fairly gray (but not black) and I was using a relatively wide aperture.
And yes, that is a real octopus tentacle (technically it’s a leg, but tentacle sounds so much cooler). There’s a fantastic Asian Market down the road from me in the Seattle area and they sell all sorts of cool things like Octopus legs.
Little Red Riding Hood
December 7, 2009
Model: Cheaynne Clark (MM#733610)
Make-up: Angie Callau
Costume: Vintage Costumers (aka the best costume store ever)
Axe: Colin & Ria Miller
I had a shoot this weekend with the amazing Cheyanne Clark. This was the first time I worked with her… it sure won’t be the last! We’d been planning this shoot for ages, and this was due to be the first in my Twisted Fairy Tales set, but got postponed due to illness. Well, we put it together again and sailed on. I got my good friend and make-up artist, Angie Callau to do hair and make-up for the shoot, and she did a fantastic job on short notice. We ended up doing several different non-fairy tale scenes as well, which will be coming down the pike soon, once I get this giant back-log of work sorted through. I’m slowly but surely making progress though!
More details and larger below the cut.
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Cinderella’s Sin
December 1, 2009
Better Viewed Large For All The Awesome Detail
Cinderella: Rachel So (MM#116807)
Wicked Step-Sister: Dodi Rose-Zooropa
Makeup: heartSHAPEDbullet (MM#732720)
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The Witch: Post-processing Tutorial
July 10, 2009
Hello again! I’ve receive a lot of very positive feedback about my photo The Witch, and a lot of people asking about the post-processing techniques I used, especially for the background, so I thought I’d let ya’all in on the secret 
Lorelei
April 6, 2009
This was one of those shoots where everything just flowed perfectly. I had a self-portrait called Dagon that had received a lot of attention, and Vivian (MM#677783) let me knew how much she loved H. P. Lovecraft, which instantly sparked the idea of doing a female-version of the Dagon shot.