The Golden Wings of Dawn/The Promise of Sunrise
I have begun dreaming about my next image. I am not sure how many photographs I will be making for this series, but at the moment, I’m enjoying not placing any constraints on myself.
I was so happy with how my first images in the series turned out. I am so impatient to shoot again, but I am learning the skill of restraint, learning to let my ideas grow in their own time, slowing the process down, because if there’s one thing that we have in abundance right now, it’s time.
From the Midnight Mist is set in the dark of the night and I feel compelled to continue that narrative with my next image. In the last couple of days, the government has begun to announce more easing of restrictions and so in some ways, it feels as though we are slowly awakening. My next image will be set at dawn.
I had the vision of huge bunches of hydrangeas covered in tiny golden moths.
I spent hours trawling the internet for silk hydrangeas, of course, being the middle of winter, there is not a fresh hydrangea in sight. My budget is zero, and I discovered that to buy the artificial hydrangeas that I needed was way beyond my means. I stumbled across a tutorial to make paper hydrangeas…perfect! I designed the petals in photoshop, printed them at Officeworks and began folding, cutting and hot gluing.
25 Jul
Making paper hydrangeas and paper mache is my life now. (interspersed with cutting out and painting golden moths).
The flowers are absolutely beautiful, but so ridiculously labor intensive. One bunch takes about four solid hours of work from start to finish. Its been school holidays here and cold and rainy so I’ve been doing hours and hours of work on them each day. The bunch is growing slowly.
Each morning I wake before dawn and put a layer of paper mache on the bustiere I’ve decided is essential for the shoot. The final thing I do each night is add another layer of paper mache to it. I will spray it shiny metallic gold when it’s complete.
The hours I spend sitting on my couch under my blanket, cutting out, folding and gluing is time when I think deeply about my series. I have so many ideas sparking each day! I am absolutely obsessed and never been happier. I’m trying not to race ahead with my next shoot ideas, to slow down and see this one through before I begin obsessing about the next one. It’s a wonderful lesson in patience for me - being content that the ideas won’t slip away and that they’ll still be just as good when I get to them.
I put out a casting call a couple of days ago for a model and have had an enormous response. I have decided on a beautiful girl named Sophie who has exactly the look I’m after. Alice the amazing make up artist is also coming. We’ve locked in next Saturday - I’m beyond excited!
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6 Aug
It’s Thursday night, we shoot on Saturday. It’s been an enormous week at work and for the last two weeks, I’ve been up at 5am each morning making flowers until 7 and then each evening until at least 10:30pm. Last night I finished my last bunch and I am staring at them now feeling deflated. For the hundreds of hour’s work, the pile is unsatisfyingly small. I’m trying not to let it cloud my vision and dampen my excitement.
I have a knot in my stomach, nerves that I have never felt before shoots in the past. There is so much time and effort. I’ve spent money on it I don’t have and have beautiful Alice, the hair and make up artist leaving her little boys at home early on a Saturday morning because she believes in my vision. I have such a fear of stuffing it up - not getting the image. It’s not like my portraits - where a model turns up and I take pretty photos with flowers and tiaras. I have invested so much in this bringing this series to life. I believe in it so whole heartedly. I suppose the stress is part of it.
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8 Aug
Shoot day! It’s 6am and the sun is rising on a cold wintery morning. I was up until midnight arranging the flowers, building the set and sticking golden moths on. I am so happy with how things look and I can’t wait until the girls arrive at 8:30. Everything is ready after a last minute (four day) dash making flowers after I decided I didn’t have enough.
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The shoot went just as I planned and I’m sitting on my couch feeling awful. Sophie, my new model arrived right on time, and Alice knew exactly what I was envisioning. I explained to Sophie that this wouldn’t be like the other shoots she’d done… that we were transforming her into a mysterious forest creature, not a fashion model and she smiled and nodded understandingly as Alice smeared white makeup over her face and anchored the long pink lashes in place.
I tied on the golden paper mache bustier and ushered Sophie into the elaborate little scene I’d created with the air conditioner blasting hot air into the room to warm the freezing winter chill. She instantly became the character of Dawn -tiny and fragile. The character I had been nurturing in my mind as I crafted each of the hundreds of flowers. I shot a heap of images with her against the background in front of the flowers and the lay her on the artificial grass and placed the flowers around her. As she lay there, I felt emotional… seeing my vision realised in all its glory. Alice threw moths over her as the shutter clicked - we had done it!
As soon as the girls left, I sat on the couch and felt a wave of absolute exhaustion wash over me. The culmination of more than a month of early mornings, late nights and obsessive thinking. I had the next step of editing the images ahead of me, but was unable to move.
