What Inspires My Photos
Part 5
Last week, I discussed my first Three-Picture story assignment. To recap, I have 4 three-picture story assignments and I have decided the elements. Three-picture #1 covered Earth, so the next element I decided to tackle was Fire.
With my Earth assignment, I took only environmental photos. I thought that I would continue taking environmental photos. I anticipated maybe having some portraits, or signs of human life, but my plans quickly changed. I couldn’t quite figure out my vision for this shoot. I was thinking I could take photos of a bonfire, candles, matches, or utilize red lighting in some way. However, fire is a little hard to come by. I also didn’t think that those photos truly conveyed the narrative I was going for.
Fire is passionate and sensual. Masculine and powerful. It creates and it destroys. As I stated above, my photo ideas included a silhouetted couple or person, a bonfire, matches, candles, and possibly red wax dripping onto the body or a pair of hands. My inspiration is in the gallery below.
The inspiration photos are quite different from my final project. I found that most of the photos on Pinterest, my preferred way to make mood boards, had very occult imagery. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the occult. I am a practicing witch and I have always wanted to take photos that showed that part of myself. However, I didn’t want my original narrative to be overshadowed by that imagery. I also found that creating photos with fire is much harder than any other element. Fire is dangerous and creating a safe environment for a fire takes a bit of planning. I didn’t have time to execute that vision, so I had to think a bit outside of the box.
I decided that I would love to show off the more masculine side of fire. My idea was to take photos of my roommate in red lighting. I also dressed and posed her in a more masculine manner. I also utilized taper candles in my shoot. The concept is fairly simple, and I feel that this served me well. I used a sunset lamp and two light panels with red gels to get that super red color while also making sure I had enough light.
I am pretty happy with the final photos and they were received pretty well. I have my final photos below.
Check out my portfolio page to see the rest of the gallery. Thank you for reading. I will be discussing three-picture story #3 in my next post.