My Picture Day Submission #31 ! My PHOTO SHOOT DAY !

Hello Dear Steemian friends,

It's been a while! And as busy as I've been I wanted to share with you a recent project I undertook, in the means of submitting it to the Picture Day Contest by amazing Timsaid.
While the photo shoot and the editing took me only a day (Thursday/Friday), planning a photo shoots is a lengthy process which requires a lot of attention to details, organisational skills and of course creativity.

Being stuck in Wales for the rest of the summer, I took advantage of the beautifully striking Welsh landscapes and decided to organise a photo shoot! Although I take photos daily, I haven't organised a photo shoot in a while- so with the means to get back into it, I started with a simple idea which progressively developed over a coming week.

After getting a solid idea, as previously shown in my blogs before, I sketched out the image I visualised in my head and started collecting props that would grant me to shots I was going for. I knew I wanted a bird... so I went on eBay to purchase a fake crow. I knew I wanted a dress, so I went thrift shopping and bought a dress for a reasonable 6 pounds. I also knew I wanted a creative headpiece to tie the images together.... so I drew one and the designed it from bits and pieces I found around the house. Yes, the headpiece is made from scratch by me... because I try to utilise my resources best I can to avoid over-spending money.

Then it was time to gather a team, ideally most times I only need a model. But since I knew I will need some decent head shots I decided to look for a make-up artist as well. After a few hours research I manged to find both, who were willing to work for me for the trade of images for their portfolios. After planning some finishing touches such as location scouting (the day before a photo shoot.... quite risky but successful!) and also looking for some old unused smoke bombs, the day of the photo shoot finally came!

This specific photo shoot took me one week to plan. Normally planning process can take anything from a few days to a few months depending on the complexity of the project. I got extremely lucky that day, as the day of the photo shoot was cloudy after two weeks of relentless sun. Sun would of ruined the atmosphere I was going for, it is quite hard to plan landscape photo shoots since there's so many risk and planning factors that must be taken into account, in comparison to studio shooting.

The day turned out extremely fun, we got ready at my house, where the make-up artist did her magic, and then me and the model drove to the location to get started. The aim of the photo shoot was to portray my personal feelings of the situation of the location. In other words, the location was a dear forest of mine- located close to my home and a place I would escape to whenever I needed to take my mind off things. Recently about 1/3rd of the forest was completely demolished, cut down... the place became a wasteland of what previously was a magical land.

I incorporated places like the tipped roots of trees for close-up headshots, and also the demolished part of the forest, outlining parts of roots and stomps of trees to add to the ''demolition' theme. The colours I chose were black - colour of strength but also mourning.... and red- colour of love and also blood, in hope to connote all these things to the viewer. I try to show the model in a romanticised way (like the headpiece involving roses), with some elements of edginess and darkness.

I hope I managed to outline all these themes and over-all I think the photo shoot turned out as successful. It was a long day but after all this hard work the result was rewarding and I felt as if I payed homage to the place that used to be my favourite. I used my dear Nikon D5300 for this shoot with my standard 24mm-140mm zoom lens, a Nikon sb900 external flash and a silver reflector to capture these shots!

Let me know what you think, I hope you enjoy all the photos!

Much love and until next time!

Cheers,

Marta x