Behind the scenes shooting dark fantasy concepts!

Good day, Steemit! This post is a prelude to a big post I’ll be making next week. Contributing here gives me the opportunity to pull the curtain back on my work and share the stories and production that goes in to making a shoot exceptional. This one in particular, though, was more ambitious than most.

This concept came to me years ago and I've wanted to create it with quite a few models, and make-up artists for that matter. The idea was a beautiful, but clearly distraught princess that has seemingly gone mad with grief after losing her love. She constructs a rough form of her prince in his old uniform with a head woven out of sticks, vines and dead flowers. Attempting to cope with her grief, she resorts to magic and dark arts to bring him to life.

After a couple fumbled attempts at bringing this shoot to life [HA!], I was starting to lose hope it'd ever become a reality. I received a message from Minneapolis make-up artist Kaci Wegleitner asking if I'd be interested in collaborating on a project together. This crazy fantasy shoot has been gnawing at me for so long, I decided to meet with her and discuss it as a possibility. Her SP/FX make-up portfolio was outstanding. I finally felt like someone up to the task of shoot production at this scale.  Once we decided to attempt this shoot, I took a night to draw up concept art on my iPad Pro; something to give Kaci a firm direction to work towards.

We decided on Jordan Beth Hoisington as our princess. I’ve worked with Jordan a few times in the past, which you can see in my previous NSFW Steemit post “Photography w/ one of my favorite Minnesota models *NSFW*”. Jordan has a soft, fairy tale protagonist look, but falls in well with a movement to including tattooed models in fashion.

Kaci went to work on building and sculpting the head. I worked on scouting a location. Jordan, a practicing wiccan, helped us with the specifics of ritual prayer and spell casting. Rarely do I have the chance to work on a project that requires actual research. This shoot required more work than anything I’ve done in the last year, but it was a labor of love to produce such an involved concept.

We were only about to shoot for 90 minutes once the concept was finished, but made remarkable images of our princess kissing the constructed prince while burning sage under his chin; smoke rising through the head and bellowing out of the eyes. I can’t wait to share the final editorial with you all.

Thanks for reading! You can follow my blog @kommienezuspadt if you aren’t already. Lots more photography, illustration and writings to come.