Shades Of Sleep: Invisible Illness Day

Sometimes I get a little daunted when May 12th rolls around each year, wondering what new I can say about the subject.  If you didn’t know, May 12th is Invisible Illness Day; a day to bring attention and awareness to illnesses and diseases which don’t manifest obvious outward symptoms for the world to see.  If someone has the measles or is in a wheelchair, you can hopefully tell that just by looking at them.  Diseases like fibromyalgia*, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome*, Crohn’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, mental health problems, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome7, Celiac Disease, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme disease and the one I have, myalgic encephalomyelitis* (ME for short) are considered invisible illnesses.  This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a few examples.

According to Wikipedia and the 2002 US Census Bureau, 96% of chronic illnesses are invisible.  This adds in an enormous extra challenge in obtaining proper medical care and treatment as well as being misunderstood by the population in general.  If people don’t know that there are quiet, private, hellish wars being fought every day by millions of people all over the world, how can we ever expect our treatment to improve, let alone find cures?

That’s why May 12th is so important.  We, the sick, need people to understand, to care, to help us advocate when our treacherous bodies won’t allow us to.  Awareness is the critical first step in any change happening.

Why is it so important that we treat ME?  What makes our disease so special?

It can be fatal.  People die from this.  If not from the disease ravaging our bodies for years and decades, then it often comes by our own hands as we can no longer endure the daily torment.

No one should have to live like this.  As someone who has what’s considered only a “moderate” case of ME, I can tell you it’s a living hell.  Pain is nearly constant, sometimes to the point where I’m in tears and desperately wishing to die.  It takes away the plans you had for a normal, fulfilling life.  Careers, hobbies and passions are taken from you.  You either simply cannot expend the energy on anything non-essential, you lack the basic funds to sustain most pursuits because most of us can’t work, or your brain is compromised by what we call “brain fog” and you’re unable to focus on and accomplish anything.  (More on brain fog later.)

We deserve to live happy, fulfilling lives, just like everyone else.  When you’re constantly in pain, always exhausted and unable to think clearly, this doesn’t leave much room for whatever kind of life you wanted for yourself.  And when I say exhausted, I don’t mean that we’re tired because we didn’t sleep well the night before.  On a good day for me, it’s like how other people when they have the flu.  A constant, crushing weight that makes the slightest exertion a Herculean effort.  On bad days all I can do is lay in bed and drag myself to the bathroom periodically.  Sometimes even feeding myself is a challenge.  I might have to choose between feeding my animals or myself, because I don’t have the energy for both.  And of course the animals always win; they’re my responsibility.

I am mostly house-bound and I require help with the sort of tasks I used to take for granted.  Forgot something at the store?  No problem, just go back tomorrow!  Nope, not with ME.  Any time I take a trip outside my home, I have to plan at least one full day of recovering at home from it.  If it’s something late at night, very noisy and extra stimulating, plan on 2-3 days at least.  (But frankly, late night, noisy, stimulating activities happen EXTREMELY rarely because of the damage they cause later.)  When I do gather my strength to photograph models, that is my exertion for the entire week at least.

ME is extremely isolating.  You can’t just go hang out with friends.  You can rarely make it to family functions.  Last year, I had to miss a surprise party thrown for my own mother, something which still upsets me today.  I was just too exhausted to go, and I knew that if I REALLY pushed myself and forced myself to go, I would pay for it for a very long time.

ME is vengeful god.  If you violate any of its insane decrees, you WILL be punished.  Probably for a long time; sometimes forever.  There have been cases where someone with ME did just a little too much one day, they spent the next day in bed… and then they were never able to leave it.  At the same time though, if you try and do as little as possible, your energy supply will shrink and you’ll be worse off too.  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Right now ME received approximately 5 million dollars a year in funding from the US government.  To put that in perspective, that’s about the same amount given to researching hayfever.  Male pattern baldness gets at least four times as much.  HIV/AIDS, which is comparable in both frequency in the population and severity of illness, gets about 600 times that amount.  I’m not saying that HIV/AIDS patients shouldn’t receive that much; I think they should!  What I’m saying is that ME needs to be recognized at all levels of society and government as the deadly, hellish disease that it is and get proper funding as well.

This year I decided to do something that was a big stretch for me physically.  I planned a set of self portraits (all shot at the same time) with a rather complicated makeup look for my Enchanted Sleep series on living with ME.  Doing that much makeup on myself normally would have been enough exertion for one day for me, but that plus shooting the images, even with Geoff’s generous help, put me in bed for days afterward with migraines pounding my head.  But I’m not sorry.  It was worth it.

Oh yes, brain fog.  (Which I’ve got a bit of as I’m writing this.)  It’s like when you have a fever and can’t concentrate or think clearly.  Sometimes it reaches new heights where people suddenly can’t spell, remember their names or understand their native language.  Most days it’s more like mentally wading through a bog, at least for me.  I decided I wanted to portray this visually in the images I created since it’s such an annoyance at best and terrifying at its worst.  I think it will be obvious how I incorporated that element into the images.

I have the video I took of me applying the makeup as well as the finished photos to show you, but I want to issue a challenge as well!  I want you: you, who are reading this right now, to #GoBlue4ME!  Why blue?  Because that’s our disease’s awareness ribbon color.  What does “going blue” mean?  There are any number of things you could do to go blue.  I created a couple images that you could use as your profile photos for May 12th, or even this whole week (or more!).  You are more than welcome to download them and use them however you’d like!  You could dress all in blue and post a photo of yourself with the #GoBlue4ME hashtag on any of your social media accounts.  You could get a bunch of blue balloons, take a photo of them and use the hashtag on them too; anything blue works!

For makeup artists, I’m issuing a special challenge.  As you’ll see in my video applying my makeup, I used ONLY blue shades for this entire look.  Foundation, concealer, eyeshadows, blush, mascara, EVERYTHING.  I challenge you all to do the same and post your looks using the #GoBlue4ME hashtag!  If you’re on YouTube and create makeup tutorial videos, this would be perfect for you.  There are so many fun makeup challenges going around YouTube, Instagram and other social media sites; let’s make this the next big trend!  You’ll not only be stretching yourself, you’ll be contributing to a wonderful cause and helping us raise awareness for the whole world!

I did allow myself to use shades of teal, green and purple in my look because they’re offshoots of blue and I really thought it would make for a better overall look, so feel free to do the same.  And you don’t have to make the blue tie into your foundation color as well, but bonus points to you if you do. 🙂  Let’s have some fun, create gorgeous looks and help a community in need of a lot of support by coming together!

Ready to see the video and my images?  Here you go!  I’ll be releasing the images individually over the course of the week leading up to May 12th, but you can always find them all here.

And please, pass these around!  Share the links, video and images with anyone and everyone!  We have to make a lot of noise to get the change we so desperately need.  You have my full permission to share far and wide!

And please, if you take up the #GoBlue4ME challenge, let me know!  Of course, I can search the hashtag and see what you guys have been up to, but I’m very excited to see what you come up with!

One last note, your going blue does NOT need to happen on or before May 12th.  Keep doing it as long as you’d like to!  The longer we can keep the word spreading, the better.

Thank you to absolutely everyone who has and will participate in this!  You are helping so many more people than you know.  I thank you from the deepest wells of my heart.

Download these images and make them your profile photos for a day!

Shades of Sleep, © Sarah Allegra.  A self portrait about brain fog and living with myalgic encephalomyelitis.

Shades of Dreams, © Sarah Allegra.  A self portrait about brain fog and living with myalgic encephalomyelitis.

Shades of Blur, © Sarah Allegra.  A self portrait about brain fog and living with myalgic encephalomyelitis.

*[There are various theories and arguments about weather ME, CFS and fibromyalgia are all the same disease or separate.  You’ll find as many different opinions as there are sufferers.  It is my personal belief that they’re probably all the same thing, or at least all very closely related.  Some people are extremely militant about using the “correct” name; I find it more important to help people understand by using the name they’re most familiar with.  I tend to use them all interchangeably depending on the situation and who I’m talking to, but if I had my druthers, I’d simply call it ME and be done with it.]

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Angels, Unicorns and Faeries… In DreamWorld And Not

I have new images for you as well as some updates about my personal life!  Since most of my personal life ends up coloring my images in some way or another, I suppose that makes everything relevant, right?  🙂

Mountain Dweller series teaser – © Sarah Allegra

I recently had a shoot with a model who was new to me, the lovely Teri Wyble!  Sadly for me, she does not live in Los Angeles, but she does travel here now and then and we’ve already made plans to do more shooting next time she’s in town.  She was such a joy to work with; she’s not in modeling just to look pretty or puff up her ego, she’s interested in telling compelling stories.  She has a natural grace and beauty which lend themselves perfectly to my kind of photography.  On top of that, Teri is also just a really wonderful soul, full of love and kindness, and we share many of the same interests.  It was a perfect collaboration!

I’m also going to be sharing a bit of my spiritual journey with you guys here.  For anyone who’s curious, I am a lightworker, but I don’t define my spirituality much beyond that.  Organized religion does not work for me, but I know many people who love their branch of it.  If it’s a good fit for you, stick with it!  If not, you’re still ok and you can still be a spiritual person.

Mountain Dweller 1 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

I believe in an unconditionally-loving higher power, which I like to refer to as Source.  “God” brings to mind all sorts of connotations which I personally find hindering.  I believe that everyone and everything is made up of energy, as physics teaches us, and since energy cannot be destroyed, it’s most logical to me that life continues beyond death.  I have no doubts about this.  I have spoken to and had contact with those who have passed over… which would have been enough on its own to convince me of our eternal life, but I do feel science supports this idea as well.

Toward the beginning of the year, I experienced an EXTREMELY powerful guided meditation with a lovely woman named Mojo.  If you’re interested in her services, you can find her page on Fiverr here!  She currently doesn’t advertise her guided meditations, which she does live over the phone with you, but if you contact her, she can arrange it for you.

Mountain Dweller 2 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

During this guided meditation, I actually got to meet and speak with my two main guardian angels.  Prior to this, I had believed in angels in a vague sort of way, but despite how much I would have liked it, I never felt that I could successfully connect with any of them.  I have also done other guided meditations which are supposed to introduce you to your angel without much success other than feeling more centered afterward, like with any meditation.  My point is, the meditation with Mojo was very different.  I could actually feel and sense my angels; I could hear and even see them in my mind.  I know now that they have always been with me every second of my life, and they will for the rest of my time on earth.  I am never alone and they are a great comfort to me.

This new connection with my angels led me to buy a handful of books about angels; I wanted to learn EVERYTHING that I POSSIBLY could about them!  As I’m sure you all know, my passions are all-consuming.  When a new one ignites, my life becomes focused on that and only that until I feel I have a grasp on it.  For anyone else interested in learning more about angels, I recommend Angels In My Hair by Lorna Byrne, and The Angel Therapy Handbook by Doreen Viture.  Both are fascinating, well-written and impart excellent knowledge.  Angels In My Hair is more of a memoir while the Angel Therapy Handbook is more of a textbook.  I feel they compliment each other well.

Mountain Dweller 3 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

I mentioned being a lightworker a little bit ago.  What I mean by that is that I am certified at level 2 in Reiki.  I do energy work, sending positive energy to people, animals, places, situations, objects, whatever you want.  It’s healing and can never be used to harm.  I also began meditating much more regularly this year.  In the past, when I’d try meditating, I would always enjoy the effects of it, but I had a lot of trouble making myself do it with any consistency.  I’m not sure what changed, but for some reason, this year I was able to push past that.  Once I got over that initial block, I discovered that I LOVE meditating!  It’s incredibly healing and healthy for your body, mind and soul.  I found it was a bit like starting to work out.  At first, you don’t really want to do it, but after a little while of making yourself stick with it, you like it and actually begin craving it.  I now have meditation (guided and not) as a regular part of my life and I’d highly recommend it to absolutely everyone!  One thing I discovered are the millions of meditation tracks on YouTube; literally something for absolutely everyone and every interest.  There are also long tracks of nature sounds and/or music, some with binaural beats in them, some lasting up to eight hours, so you could listen to them all night while you sleep.  I’ve been learning a great deal about crystals as well from my dear friend Jessi who owns the shop Mineralism Crystals.  I HIGHLY recommend her if you’re in the market for anything!  Even if you don’t see something in her online shop, chances are, she has it.  I’ve placed numerous orders with her and they always exceed my expectations!  Also, she is a fellow spoonie, so your money goes to help support her as she’s unable to work a “regular” job; win-win!

As all these new revelations were opening up to me, meditation, angels, being able to “hear” animals more clearly when I contacted them energetically (for example, I was able to help one very special cat overcome his abandonment fears when he was newly adopted, something I was honored to have been a part of), Teri came along and we had our shoot.  I knew that I wanted some of this deeper spirituality to be reflected in something we shot, but I wasn’t really sure how.  However, I did know that I wanted to photograph Teri in a beautiful lace dress I had… that combined with feeling inspired by some images Geoff shot recently with a back-lit model that made me decide I would shoot an “angelic” look with the gauzy white fabric and light behind her.  (Although really, just try and make her NOT look angelic; that would be a far more difficult job.)

Mountain Dweller 4 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

As I suspected, Teri made the perfect angel.  Sorting through the images later, I realized that I was creating a new race of DreamWorld beings.  The Aethereans, as I called them, are DreamWorld’s angels.  They live high in the mountains, away from the more populated areas so they can be focus on devoting themselves to spiritual studies.  They are very wise from their decades of pursuing the truth in every facet of life, as well as skilled and compassionate healers.  Many of the other DreamWorld inhabitants send their young to train with the Aethereans for several years, where they are taught empathy, love, plant and animal care, healing, sacred geometry and the mysteries of the universe.  I thought that the Aethereans needed some kind of uniform or mark that visually informed everyone of who they are and the spiritual life they have chosen for themselves, so I decided they would all have a flower of life symbol on their foreheads.  I wish I’d thought to actually apply this in real life to Teri, but this idea only came later.  Thankfully, Photoshop made it possible to add it to all the images!

Teri did such a spectacular job modeling, she made it so very difficult to choose which images to work up!  I ended up editing quite a few more photos than I typically would pick because I simply could not narrow my selections down any more.  It took a bit longer to finish these because of the volume I had to work through, but also because of a couple other wonderful new journeys I was taking…

Mountain Dweller 5 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

Through a very miraculous series of events, I discovered Calista Ascension.  Calista is one of those very rare spiritual teachers who actually embodies and lives everything she preaches; I have met very few more accepting, genuinely loving and wise people in my life.  She offers numerous classes which I was lusting after, but when I saw that she created her own Unicorn Healing System which I could take online from the comfort of my home, I was hooked.  I had to take it.  Immediately.

I’ll let Calista explain the course in her own words:

Unicorn Healing™ is a hands-on healing modality for empowerment and wellness, but also a development tool that can awaken your Souls’ gifts and purpose. It can be used as a stand-alone therapy or complemented with other energy practices.

Brought forward in 2009, direct from the Unicorn realm via Calista, it is a very sacred modality that can provide all that you are ready to receive.This is a course for those who are ready to step-up, break-through and arise in their POWER!

Just as you have a Guardian Angel that walks with you so to you have a Guardian Unicorn. Once regarded as the fabric of fairytales, Unicorns are very much real. They have walked with us since the times of Atlantis and are now returning to our awareness to help us awaken to love and the infinite potential we hold within.

As this is a distant learning course, you can set your own pace and progression. A commitment is required however as this course is deeply transformational – the more you put in, the more you will receive. The Unicorns are ever-present to those who wish to better themselves and assist Mother Earth to ascend with grace. 

Yes.  Unicorns.  REAL Unicorns.  As I mentioned earlier, I am well-versed with Reiki energy, which, I learned, is apparently an earth-based energy.  The Unicorns however hail from another planet (bear with me here) so their energy is cosmically-based.  (For those interested, Calista recorded an excellent podcast all about who and what the Unicorns are, where they come from, etc, with much more detail than I’m giving in this post, which you can listen to here.)  I hadn’t expected their energies to feel particularly different from each other; I just hadn’t thought about it.  You may believe that these Unicorns are simply a pretty fantasy I’m escaping to in my imagination (which I’ll freely admit is an escape I would likely pick!) but OH MY GOD – once you’ve felt their energy, there is NO mistaking them.  They are every bit as real as we are, and their energy is incredibly powerful… yet also full of the most unconditional love I’ve ever experienced.  It’s nearly impossible to describe how energy feels in words, but the ones that keep coming to mind when I think about my Unicorns are high, clear, clean, bright, powerful, silvery, shimmery, penetrating, deep, beautiful, wise, loving, celestial, ethereal, and immense.  I love Reiki, but the Unicorns really kicked things up a huge notch for me.

Mountain Dweller 6 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

As part of my studying, I went through an attunement with their energy, where I met my three guardian Unicorns, who all serve different roles, and who are all equally exquisitely beautiful.  I spent 30 consecutive days meditating and communing with them every day in different ways so we could really get to know each other.  And I also practiced doing healings with the Unicorn energy, both in person and across distance, much like you do with Reiki.  The Unicorn healings I’ve done so far have been the most powerful I’ve yet witnessed in my life.  Problems that have bothered people for very long times suddenly lose their sting, allowing the people to let go of them.  Hurts are overcome, trauma is healed.  They are truly miraculous.  And my guides assure me that I will become physically healthy myself in time.

My guides… yes, I should mention the other guides too.  Meeting the Unicorns as well as my angels has opened my mind up to the idea of there being more spiritual guides for us in the universe than I had previously realized.  Currently, in addition to my guardian angels and Unicorns, I also have a dragon guide, a pegasus guide and a mermaid guide, although I have not worked with them nearly as long or as deeply as the Unicorns.  I’ve also started to sense and sometimes communicate with the elementals all around me.  The trees in my yard, for example, will remind me if the bird feeder has gotten low or the plants need watering.  I’m becoming a MUCH better gardener with their help!  🙂

Mountain Dweller 7 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

Then, right on the heels on my finishing up my Unicorn Healing course, I began taking Doreen Virtue’s Fairyologist course!  This is more or less what it sounds like; you learn all about the various fairies that exist, what they’re about (the fairies are mostly concerned with environmental and animal issues, but certain groups emphasize different causes), how to communicate and work with them.  At the end, you take a quiz and, assuming you pass, you become a certified Fairyologist.  As I’m also in the process of having all my Unicorn work reviewed by Calista as we speak, I’m on the cusp of becoming both a certified Unicorn Healer and a certified Fairyologist… both are NOT things I expected that I’d be saying if you’d asked me at the beginning of this year!

I’m telling you guys about all this for several reasons.  One, working with my guides and walking my spiritual journey is becoming an ever-more-present, ever-larger part of my life.  I wanted to just lay it all out there in one go and not feel like I had to tiptoe around it on my own blog.  Two, everything in my personal life effects my art.  Case in point, the images I’m releasing today.  I probably wouldn’t have even shot them if I hadn’t met my guardian angels, and I certainly wouldn’t have added the Flower of Life symbol to the Aethereans (who would not exist) without having learned more about sacred geometry in my studies.  In my life, there is very little separation between the real world and my art.  It’s all one big pot of stew where each ingredient enhances all the others.

Mountain Dweller 8 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

And lastly, I’d like to invite all of you to explore your own spirituality.  When you find what works for you, there is very, very little in life that is as rewarding!  There are many charlatans both online and off, so you must be discerning in who you choose to listen to.  A strong connection to your intuition and sense of truth will help you navigate the waters.  Any of the people or authors I’ve mentioned in this post have gotten the thumb’s up from me if you’d like to start there!

Mountain Dweller 9 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

I am an energy worker.  I work with Unicorns and angels.  I talk to animals, fairies and elementals.  I am a creator.  I collect crystals.  I am an empath.  I am a photographer.  I am clairvoyant and clairsentient.  I am a fulltime student of truth.  I am a healer.  I am a woman.  I am an artist.  I am Sarah.  I am me.  I don’t apologize for any of that.  You go be you, and don’t apologize for any of it either.  🙂

Mountain Dweller 10 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

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Flora Awakens

Poor, patient Katie shot this same concept with me three times, spanning almost a solid year from the first take to the last one.  I assured her each time we reshot it that the problem was not her, because it honestly wasn’t.  This was a case of me having a very clear vision in my head of how the image should look, but not taking the time to inspect it closely enough.  Each of the other two tries at this shoot came close, but there was always something just enough wrong with it that I knew I needed to reshoot it to be truly happy with the final images.

Flora Awakens

Here they finally are!  Flora is a DreamWorld character I’ve had in my head for a long time; an obvious statement given how many times I’ve tried to capture her visually, but much longer considering all the time I spent conceptualizing her and building her elaborate costume.

Flora was a nature spirit to me, the bringer of spring, renewal and life.  I strongly pictured that wherever she walked, flowers would grow in her footsteps.  I thought this was quite original until I remembered…

When I was young, I watched (over and over and over) an animated version of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, which remains my favorite film version of the novel to this day (it’s the only version which, in my opinion, gives Aslan a truly “golden” voice as CS Lewis describes it, for one thing).  In this take on the story, when Aslan is resurrected and romps with Lucy and Susan, flowers spring up wherever he steps, leaving a trail of paw-shaped floral clusters.

Ok, so the idea wasn’t exactly mine.  But at least I realized where I’d gotten the idea before I started calling it completely my own!

I started with a beautifully embroidered corset top at a local second-hand store.  I spent a while deciding if I would keep it as part of my personal wardrobe or use it for this costume, and the costume obviously won.  I decided I had enough pretty things that I don’t wear often enough as is, and it really added a lovely depth to the costume with its subtle ornateness.  The other base piece of clothing was a lovely, fluffy aqua-colored skirt made from layers of the lightest, softest netting.  This was another thing I had to seriously debate weather to sacrifice to the costume gods, but in the end, I decided I could always buy another one for myself.

 

Over the aqua skirt, I added an airy overskirt of ivory tulle, lifting it in two spots at the front with a small spray of flowers to hold it in place.  I added a layer of tulle around the top of the bodice as well to give flowers more to hold on to and also give it a dropped shoulder.

Creating is usually a messy process.

Next step, as it so often is, was to cover it with flowers!  My handy hot glue gun proved its worth again.  I tried to pick flowers which enhanced the shape I was creating in the clothing.  The wisteria dripping down from the shoulders seemed so perfect to me!

Once I had the front looking pretty much like how I’d pictured it, I started working on the most exciting part; the train!

This dress’ train started at the top of the back and went all the way down to the bottom of the skirt; a very old-fashioned and somewhat unusual style of train.  Since I knew I was going to have use my flowers carefully and wisely to make them cover everything I wanted them to, I hemmed and hawed over this part a lot; pinning flowers in place, moving them around, flipping this one and that one… Eventually I just had to start gluing flowers in place and trust that I would figure it out as I went.

The almost-finished train!

 

After I was satisfied with the dress, I started working on the flower footprints.

Fabric feet

I traced the shape of my feet onto paper and then cut four pairs of feet out of some nice dark green material I had leftover from another project.  Again, the next step was to cover with flowers!

This gave me a total of eight feet.  I would have liked to have done a few more, but I was running out of flowers, so I had to make due.

Beware of hot glue drippings. I still have a faint scar from where this guy landed a year ago.

Apparently I didn’t take any making-of photos of the flower pieces for Katie’s face, hair and hands, which is too bad.  For the pieces in her hair, on her eyebrows and ears, I cut rough shapes from a thin sheet of plastic; I knew the glue would melt the plastic where it came in direct contact, but it would provide just enough of a frame to make my life easier.  They were very free-form creations, which I put together on my foam head to make sure the proportions were at least somewhat reasonable.  I had planned on cutting them slightly to fit Katie’s face when the shooting day came, but they ended up fitting her beautifully!  The pieces in her hair were held on with bobby pins and the ones of her face stayed on with a little help from garment tape.

Katie being adorable and showing off her new prosthetics.

Her “hand flowers,” as I was calling them, were meant to show life just springing off her, literally dripping from her fingers.  These were only constructed the day before the third shoot, and I loved what they added to the images, so perhaps it’s lucky that the first two takes didn’t turn out 🙂  These were very, very easy to make.  I tied a loop of clear, stretchy cord to slide over Katie’s palms.  From each of these loops I tied three lengths of monofilament thread and randomly glued little petals and blossoms to them so it looked like they were falling.

At this point Katie and I shot the concept… then we reshot it… and then we finally shot it for a third time, which was the one that stuck.  It goes to show, if something doesn’t go right the first time, just try and use it as a learning experience!  With Katie, we always have a fun time, no matter what we shoot, so when concepts aren’t perfect right away, I haven’t wasted anything.  I had a good time with my friend, and I hopefully learned something about how I don’t want my final image to look!

With that said, allow me to show you the finished trio of images, with detail shots beneath each of them!

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

 

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

 

Joy Of Renewal

Joy Of Renewal – detail

Joy Of Renewal – detail

 

Life Eternal

Life Eternal – detail

Life Eternal – detail

 

And here’s a few more detail shots to cover all my bases!

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora Shoot detail

 

If you have a favorite of the three, I’d love to hear your opinion!

 

Lastly, before I go, I’d like to mention the lovely interview I did with the well-respected photography site PhotoFocus!  I was very honored to be their Photographer Of The Week 🙂

Read the interview HERE!

Thank you, PhotoFocus!!  And thank you to all my readers and supporters!  And an extra big, special thank you to Katie Johnson for being so patient and willing to keep redoing this one concept with me and knocking it out of the park every time!

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DreamWorld’s King

**Before I get into the meat of this post, I am happy to announce that I will soon start holding mythic photography workshops!  We’ll go over techniques for drawing the magical and awe-inspiring out of the ordinary.  Email me at sarah@sarahallegra.com if you’re interested and I’ll keep you up to date!**

Closeups of both finished photos.

Oh my… this is one of those posts where I have so much to say I can hardly figure out where to start!

I think pretty much everyone reading this will already be familiar with my DreamWorld series, right?  The series portraying the characters and landscape of the world we visit in our sleep?   I have become quite obsessed with it, even though the photos usually demand so much more preparation and work than other photos do.  There is something incredibly therapeutic and wonderful about imagining an entire world and breathing life into it one photo at a time.

The very first character I imagined for DreamWorld was its queen (who we will meet in the future) and eventually I thought that if there is a queen, there probably should be a King  too.  And while I imagine that the queen is really the one in charge, the King is the ultimate father figure.  Warm, approachable, unfailingly kind and wise, but still powerful and majestic.  It’s a lot to ask of one person, and I mulled over who could play him for a long time.

While I contemplated that, I thought about what the King’s costume should be like.  I wanted it to be book-inspired, both literally and metaphorically.  Carl Jung’s and Joseph Campbell’s writings have had such a big influence on my life, and on this series in particular, I wanted the King to be an homage to them and their works.  So books, paper and writing would be the main themes of the costume… and as usual, I had no idea how I was going to pull it together.

While all that was happening in my head, I learned that Peter S. Beagle would be in town as part of his world-wide “The Last Unicorn” movie screenings tour (which I HIGHLY recommend!).  I suddenly pictured Peter as the King, and once I’d done that, I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it.  He was absolutely perfect.  He is the King.  Every single time I’ve met him, he has exuded such warmth, wisdom and kindness that I wished I could adopt him as an uncle.  And given my recent partnership with his publisher, Conlan Press, I thought it would be the mutually beneficial to everyone.   I’m very happy that Connor, Peter’s publisher and manager, agreed and was able to loan me Peter for a few hours while they were in Los Angeles.

So, casting was settled, but that left me only about three weeks to build every prop and costume I’d be using.  Which was not nearly enough time.  I’d begun working on the King’s magic book before I even got a yes and had already spent over 30 hours just building it.  It was going to be an ugly three weeks, but very, very worth it, so I launched into creation mode.

You really have to see the book in person to understand why it took so long to make. At this stage, it’s just many, many subtle layers of paint.

Peter would be wearing long robes that would transition into paper scrolls at his feet, along with a crown made from folded paper.  His collar and cuffs were lace made from tissue paper, with crinkled paper accents.  A buckle portraying a tree of life would hold the robes closed, and the part I was perhaps most excited about was the collar of paper birds taking flight.  That was the end goal… how I’d get there, let alone in three weeks, I had no idea.  But I started with what I knew, making the tunic under his robe, and the fabric part of the robe itself.

Initial sketches

The tunic and robe themselves were pretty easy, standard pieces of DreamWorld wear, so they came together quickly.  The robe was made mostly from cotton muslin, since it’s inexpensive and takes tea-dying well (which I suspected would be in its future).   The yoke was made from the most beautiful metallic gold jacquard-type fabric (I purchased it as a remnant, so I’m not sure exactly what it is, other than gorgeous).  The first introduction of paper into the robe came by using long sheets of corrugated cardboard in the place of pin-tucked fabric.  I broke a needle on my sewing machine trying to get it on before finally locating my super-heavy-duty-heavier-than-duck-and-denim-together needle, which held up.

The robe with cardboard “pin-tucking.”

I’ve never felt especially adept at sculpting, but I knew I was going to have to do at least some for the King, so I got some silicone clay which could be baked in an oven and a couple molds.  One mold featured different female faces on it, while another had branches, leaves and birds.  Leaves I though I could probably get away with on my own, but with the time I had, I didn’t want to have to try messing with making a beautiful face on my own.  Plus, the molds were on a 40% off sale, so I took it as a sign.  Most of the sculpting ended up on the cover of the book, which became quite symbolic all on its own, incorporating elements of Joseph Campbell, Peter Beagle and myself.

Beginning to sculpt. You can see the shell of the unpainted book in the upper left-hand corner too.

The King’s costume incorporated keys and locks in numerous places, a metaphor for how Peter and Joseph Campbell’s writing had unlocked so much wisdom for me.  Around the large keyhole (obtained from a wonderful architectural salvage yard) I sculpted two pieces which could look like either paths or (bull’s) horns, nods to “The Last Unicorn” and the hero’s journey.  I made my own little cloven-hoof stamp by carving the end of an eraser and covered the “paths” with a smattering of hoof prints.  Between the paths/horns was a woman’s face with long white hair and a horn coming out of her forehead; an obvious reference to “The Last Unicorn,” but also to my own own identification with the story.

For added symbolism and a little more depth, I also crafted two small anatomical hearts, alluding to the “Two Hearts” story Peter wrote as a novella sequel to”The Last Unicorn.”  Though you could never accuse “The Last Unicorn” of being shallow, “Two Hearts” adds such richness and depth to it that I feel it’s really just a continuation of the same story and not two separate ones.

Stamp, hearts, unicorn girl and hoof prints.

After the sculpting and baking came many coats of paint.

Painted pieces, along with a key I ended up not using for this photo (but which will be used eventually).

The keyhole and clay pieces were glued to the book cover and that prop, at least, was done!

At some point during the three weeks I was making all this, I pictured Peter with two ladies in waiting.  At first, I dismissed the idea since I already had more than enough work to do, but, to my annoyance, once I pictured it that way, I knew it would be lacking without them.  Damn.  I sighed and added two more costumes to my to-do list while I emailed frequent models Dedeker, Aly and Katie to see if they were available.  Unfortunately, Aly’s work schedule prevented her from joining us, but I was glad to have Katie and Dedeker along!

Turning my attention back to Peter’s robes, I used more of the corrugated cardboard t make wide cuffs.  I’d found some beautifully-dyed, crinkly paper, a little thicker than tissue paper, but not by much.  I had some in orange and some in purple, and I used the purple paper to edge the cuffs.  The inside of the cuffs was lined with an untold amount of tissue paper, cut to various widths and run through a paper punch on one side to create a look like lace.  I alternated white tissue paper with some beautiful, metallic silver tissue paper.  The white tissue paper went through the punch well, but the silver paper would utterly clog the punch up after 3-4 presses, no matter how few or how many pieces I put through at a time.  I even tried running it through at the same time as some nice, heavy cardstock, but the paper press just laughed at my attempts and clogged again.  In the end, I used less of the silver paper than I had planned, but was left with more of my sanity intact, so I thought it was a fair trade.

Tissue papers, purple crinkle paper and the cuffs coming together.

I used the orange crinkle paper to make a lapel and more of it was used as a belt.  I’d wanted to give the robes a feeling of embroidery, so I used some metallic gold paint to create swirling, organic, art nouveau-like designs on the pin-tucking.

Speaking of the belt, I wanted to have another Campbell reference, so I decided to use one of the most commonly recognized mythology symbols, the tree of life, on the buckle, quite literally bringing everything together.  The backing was made out of clay and painted with several layers of gold, green and bronze paints.  Some pretty green rafia made up the tree itself.  The untwisted ends made very convincing leaves, and the twisted ends made wonderful roots.  In the middle was another keyhole, continuing the motif.

Tree of life buckle above the paper belt.

Around this time, I started wondering how I would turn the robe ends into paper scrolls.  I spent several nights not sleeping while I contemplated it, and eventually came up with the following.  I sewed six long panels of muslin, each about two feet wide, and of varying lengths.  The sides were sewn with wire in them, and I covered both sides of the panels with torn-up paper mache.  The paper mache was made from countless pieces of tissue paper I had tea-dyed from a barely noticeable off-white to a dark cream.  I used the lightest pieces at the top and let it gradually darken toward the bottom.  I washed the panels with layers of thinned-out white glue (many, MANY thanks to my wonderful neighbor Donna for giving me a huge vat of glue!) until they were suitably stiff.  Applying paper, painting and letting them dry between took the better part of a week.  By the time they were done, it was nearly time to shoot and I didn’t know what I’d do if they didn’t work.  I breathlessly tried rolling one of them up… and it stayed.  It looked like paper!  It looked like a scroll!  I was so relieved!

I attached the panels to the end of the robe with some heavy-duty safety pins and hot glue, then added another layer of tea-dyed tissue paper, creating a gradual transition from a little below the belt of the robe with just a touch of paper, all the way to the bottom of the scrolls where it was thick paper.

I’d had a very clear vision of how I wanted the King’s crown to look, formed primarily from folded paper, dotted with keys and old quill nibs, which I found a whole bunch of on Ebay!  While it wasn’t really hard to make, it did take a lot of trial and error.  I am not much for origami, so I ended up just cutting out different shapes and experimenting with what produced the best results.  I used a cream-colored cardstock for this, quite a relief to work with after the filmy, fragile tissue paper.

Trying out different objects as stencils.

The crown ended up being my favorite part of the whole costume.  Geoff kindly took some BTS photos of me working on it.  The medallion in the middle of it was something I found in the jewelry-making section of the craft store, and it added the perfect finishing touch with the purple gem in the middle of it.

Making the crown.

Around this time I realized I also needed to make a staff for the King.  I had actually found such a good stick while I was hiking one day that I brought it home, not even having a plan for it, just knowing it would be good for something, eventually.  I spray painted the stick bronze and gold, and used several thin washes of acrylic paint in green and gold tones on a glass Christmas tree ornament (which I have a large stock of for a future project).  A very, very thin spritz with some dazzlingly-silver spray paint finished off the ornament, which I flipped upside down and anchored to the stick with a big old blob of hot glue.  I had wanted to incorporate some more flowers into the costume anyway, and having a cluster of them under the ornament hid the transition beautifully.  A key under the ornament and flowers finished it off!

Things get a little blurry as I think back on the days right before the shoot, and I honestly don’t remember the exact order of events anymore.  But in the last couple days, I sewed some easy, empire-waisted gray chiffon dresses for the girls, with long, matching chiffon sashes.  The dresses were decorated at the bustline with a fan-shaped piece of folded cardstock, tissue paper lace and flowers.

The big project for the girls, which bled over into the last of the King’s costume, were the paper birds.  Those damn, damn paper birds.  I printed untold sheets of cream and white cardstock with chains of birds (which I’d laid together in Photoshop) which then had to be cut out by hand, one by one.  I was so sick of seeing the pile of papers waiting to be cut out by the time I was done.  Days and days of cutting out birds.  So, so many birds of different sizes, shapes, angles and colors.

Sheets of cardstock with birds cut out, a pile of cut birds, the king’s collar being assembled.

Obviously, many of the birds went to making the King’s bird-and-lace collar, but the majority ended up going to the two maiden’s headdresses and arm pieces.  I loved the symbolism of the birds; they were taking off from Peter’s throat (where words take flight as well), they landed and traveled down the girls’ heads, as they take the stories and information in, then they make their way down the girls’ arms to their hands as they put the lessons they have learned to work.  Just remembering it all gives me a headache, but I really loved how it turned out, even though it was nearly midnight the night before the shoot when I glued the last string of birds together, was finally done and went to bed.

Calantha helped whenever she could.

The morning of the shoot came after not nearly enough sleep, and I knew it was going to be a very long, grueling day, but I was very excited!  Donna and John, my neighbors, had very kindly allowed me to use their dining room to shoot in, which gave me more room to move around.  I started hanging curtains and getting the set constructed while I groggily drank my tea.  Everyone helped me get the set ready, which I was very grateful for; I couldn’t have done it all on my own!  Then my lights decided they didn’t feel like working, and I had to troubleshoot that as it got closer and closer to the time of the shoot… it was quite stressful, but it all came together just in time!

Thank you, Dedeker, for these adorable furbaby pics 🙂  They are a friendly lot!

Connor pulled up and dropped off Peter and his assistant Cat, who was helping them with the tour, and then I had a most surreal moment when Peter Beagle, one of my two very favorite writers, author of “The Last Unicorn,” a story that has profoundly influenced my life, was standing in my living room.  He was just as warm and wonderful as all the other times I’d spoken to him, and he showed excellent taste in admiring Calantha and asking what kind of dog she is.

I caught Connor snuggling Maynard and made him stand there until I got a photo of it.

Peter told me he’d been instructed by Connor to be regal and majestic, which I agreed with, but also highlighted the King’s warmth and kindness.  Peter said, “So I should be regal and majestic, yet warm and approachable?”  I said yes, and he just said, “Got it,” and then he was all that, all at once.  I helped him get into his costume (with the help of Katie, Dedeker and Cat, it was really a several-person task).  I shot a few different setups; since this was not going to be a chance I’d have again, I wanted to cover all my bases.  And everything fit everyone, and it all worked and came together beautifully, and I knew that the last weeks had been more than worth it.  Katie very thoughtfully took some behind-the-scenes photos once her part in the shoot was over, which I’m so happy to have!

Thanks, Katie! 🙂

Mei Mei photobomb

Dedeker and Katie being beautiful.

Cat took this one for us; thanks, Cat!

My imagination hero and me.

After the shoot was over, we all helped Peter out of his costume and then I got to just chat with him and Cat and the girls until Connor got back from the errands he’d been running in preparation for the screening that night.  It was my first time meeting Cat; she was utterly delightful and I was honored to have them lounging in my living room.  Again I was overcome with the surreality of the situation.  Connor got back shortly, and we parted ways for the time being.  We’d all meet up again that night for the screening in Newport Beach.  The shoot was successfully checked on my list!

I have to say, though all my shoots are done on a budget, this was the most expensive one yet.  A lot of the expenses were things like the paper punch and a self-healing cutting mat (for all the damn birds) that I’ll be able to use again.  All in all, I think I spent between $100-$150; an amount that felt absolutely extravagant to me!  The total time I spent on this is really incalculable.  A couple hundred hours on pre-production, but I spent a good six weeks editing it… it’s easy to say that I spent hundreds and hundreds more on post-production.  There were many times I was cursing myself and why couldn’t I just take nice, pretty photos that edit up in an afternoon (not to mention don’t require hundreds of paper birds) but even in those moments I knew it would be worth it… and it was.  🙂

Katie was giving me a ride into Hollywood on her way home, so Geoff and I could meet up and travel in one car, so she helped me dismantle the set.  We got some lunch since we were ravenous after such an exciting morning and she left me with Geoff while she went home for a bit before also heading down to Newport Beach.

I was exhausted, but also completely wound up.  I attempted a nap in Geoff’s office, but it was pretty pointless.  It was going to be a long night though, so I thought I’d better try anyway.  With anxiety over the shoot done, I could now concentrate on being anxious about that evening.  Connor had specifically asked me to come to the Newport Beach showing and bring my portfolio with me so that he could introduce me to Peter’s fans as one of their new featured artists who will be working with them.  Gulp.

Connor under the marquee.

Geoff and I (and Katie, in her own car) battled the traffic from Los Angeles to Newport Beach and made it just in the nick of time.  I really wasn’t sure what “introducing” me meant, so I had lots of possible meanings to be worried about.  I was heartened when I got to the theater and was greeted as long-lost friends by Connor and Cat (Peter was somewhere else) and then entered the theater to find a bunch of my family there, which I was not expecting!  It was so sweet of them all to come out and support me.

There was a great Q&A session before the movie started.  There were raffles, giveaways, and the mayor of Newport Beach showed up to present Peter with a plaque.  It was really quite an event; I would heartily recommend it, of course to any fan, but just to anyone in general 🙂

The mayor giving Peter his plaque; thanks to my grandmother for taking this photo!

Just before the show started, Connor had some of the vendors who had come with their Unicorn wares stand up and pointed them out, and at the very end of all that, he had me stand up and introduced me to everyone, saying I’d be there after the show with my art.  Whew.  One hurdle down.

Then we all got to watch the movie itself in a theater, which no fans my age and younger have ever been able to do.  It was pretty amazing.  I cried, and not just because of what an emotional day I was having.  Seriously, if you get the chance to see it, GO.

After the movie, Peter was around to sign books, take photos with people and talk to them like they’re actual human beings and not just cattle being herded through a chute.  Cat and Connor set me up behind one of the tables where the wares were spread out, and I set out my portfolio and my cards.  Geoff and Katie both really stepped up and stayed the entire night with me.  It was so good having them both there with me since I’m so intensely uncomfortable a) in crowds, b) around strangers, and c) having attention drawn to me and people looking at me.  Hopefully this is something I will get more used to.  It was great having the two of them there to distract me and make me feel less alone.

Wearing Geoff’s jacket over my pretty dress – it got quite cold!

Peter was true to his word and stayed until every single fan who wanted to had a chance to say hello and have their book/DVD/whatever signed, then all the theater workers still there got their turn.  I’d told my mom I would have him sign a book for her (“The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche And Other Odd Acquaintances,” which contains “Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros,” the favorite short story of my mom’s, mine, Cat’s and Peter’s) and Katie and I wanted our own photos with him to cap the day off right.

Getting mom’s book signed.

Katie, Peter and me!

And then it was all over!  Months of mental planning, weeks of physical planning, all the crunching and sleepless nights and hard work… it was done.  I was relieved and disappointed, and also knew that it was going to be one of the highlights of my entire career, no matter what else happens.

We didn’t leave Newport Beach until 1:30am, and it was closer to 3 by the time I got home and went to bed.  Luckily I was so exhausted it overcame my nerves and I didn’t have too much trouble getting to sleep.  I knew the next day was going to be ugly, and it was.  You can’t throw that much work and lack of sleep at ME.  Not to mention the very long, emotional day it had been and how late I’d been up.  ME doesn’t let you get away with that kind of shit.  I planned on feeling pretty terrible, and I did.  But it was underscored by a feeling of deep satisfaction, and even more, an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everything that had happened.  I was a bit emotionally fragile by then, and I burst into tears more than once that day, just out of sheer joy and thankfulness.

I am so grateful that I get to partner with Conlan and Peter.  I am so thankful they not only agreed to let me do my photo, but were enthusiastic about it.  I am blown away by what amazing people everyone at Conlan, my friends, models, family and husband are.  They have all been so immensely supportive of me and my art and my journey…especially Geoff as I ignored him night after night in my struggle to complete everything.  I am very lucky to have wonderful neighbors who will let me conduct an entire photo shoot in their home at the drop of a hat,  Everyone who reads this, who emails me, who comments on photos, who encourages me to create, thank you all.

But most of all, thank you to Peter.  Not just for creating the measuring stick by which all other fantasy will always be compared.  Not only for ripping our hearts out with his words, and returning them back to us more whole and healed.  And not just for being willing to play the King, but for being the King.  Peter simply is all those qualities that make me love the King so much.  And I got to capture it forever in two photos in my favorite, most meaningful series.  That is unbelievably wonderful to me.  Thank you for all of it.

And with that, I present to you the DreamWorld King.  Detail shots are below each main image.  Click on them to see them larger!

Beloved Of The Crown

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Beloved Of The Crown – detail

Aerie

Aerie – detail

Aerie – detail

Aerie – detail

Aerie – detail

A very quick, thankful, somewhat tear-stained selfie the day after the shoot, wearing my beautiful horn from Firefly Path, which is going to be my every day wear now. Click here to visit their Facebook page to get your own horn!

Thank you to every single person who helped make this day happen.  I will never forget it.  🙂

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Creating A Dryad

When I started planning my DreamWorld series, one of the first characters that came to me was a dryad; a nature spirit representing our connection with nature.  I saw her as a strong, benevolent queen, keeping watch over the woodland creatures and protecting them.   The first concept I came up with that made my heart pitter-patter with excitement was the idea of building a huge crown for her from sticks and branches.   I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this, but I had a vision.  And I have learned over the years that having a vision will pave the way to making it a reality, regardless of if I know how that will come about.

A sample of the three completed photos

I tried to get a lot of photos to document the lengthy creation process, so this will be a longer post.  Bear with me!  Or just skim over it and scroll down to the finished photos 🙂

After I sketched out my designs, I decided to just dive into the project and tackle each step as it came.  So the first part was simple; I needed sticks and branches.  There are lots of trees in my yard, so there was no shortage of sticks to choose from!   The challenge was to try and find ones that already held the kind of shapes and curves I was looking for.

I started by bundling the branches together into small clumps, and eventually joining the smaller clumps into larger ones.

It was quite simple and  low-tech, it just took wire, wire cutters, pliers, time and patience.

I gently guided the branches into the directions I wanted them to go, and wired them into place.

Calantha bomb

Once the shape was right, I spray painted it with various layers of black, bronze and silver paints, giving it a subtle, organic variation of colors.

At this point I started working on the dress and, in particular, the lace leaves.   Oh, I was excited about the lace leaves!  I’d found a really beautiful yard of lace with an iridescent shimmer to it.  I cut out hundreds of leaves from it in several different sizes.  And I decided that any mild flaws would only enhance the natural and organic look I wanted 😉  After the leaves were all cut out, I painted veins on them with pearly fabric paint; you can see a small sample of the veined leaves trying on my bathroom floor below.  I had to paint them in the bathroom so they could dry without the cats trying to help.

Lace leaves and happy owl shower curtain!

After they were painted, I created a small landscape of bubble wrap and plastic bottles to give a wide variety of angles for them to take shape from, and covered them thoroughly with spray adhesive.  As they dried, they took on gentle curves and curls much more like actual leaves.

Most of the leaves were for the dress, but I wanted to bring a few of them onto the crown as well.

Hot glue is a crafty girl’s best friend.

Lastly, I added pinecones and a small plant holder which I thought had a very regal look, all of which had been painted to match the rest of the crown.

The $2 plant holder, pinecones and lace leaves

This whole time I still wasn’t sure how I would attach the crown to my model.  The crown was really pretty huge, fragile and awkwardly shaped, but it was quite light.  After some deliberation, I decided to try mounting it to some extra thick foam board with zip ties, using a piece long enough piece to run from the base of the crown to where the model’s hips would be.  I covered the back of the foam board with adhesive-backed Velcro, and cut matching Velcro lengths, planning to use them as straps around the model’s shoulders and waist.

There was the crown; next was the dryad’s dress!  I wanted it to be long and flowing, with a very natural feel to it.  I planned on having the bottom of the dress be cut into strips, using fabrics with different textures and colors to help emulate the look and feel of a tree.

The back of the dress, lace pinned onto and under it.

I used plain, unbleached muslin to make the dress, both for it’s inexpensive cost, and because I suspected it would dye easily.  After the form of the dress was created, I tied a rope between two trees to make a clothesline, bought a HUGE amount of instant ice tea and a spray bottle…

I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed it… letting each layer dry, so the color could build up and have a natural gradation.  It worked, but oh my heavens, did it SMELL.  I drink tea, and I’ve never found its smell offensive, but apparently I’d never experienced it in such a large and intense quantity.  I had to email the model and warn her that her dress would be beautiful, but stinky.  It had to lay out on a chair on the porch the first night; I couldn’t even deal with it being in the bathroom.

Once it was dyed, I needed to tie up the metaphoric loose ends of the dress; put grommets in the back, sew the ribbons around the waist, etc.  Byron and Maynard both did their best to help with this.

They do their best despite their lack of thumbs

After that, it was finally time for the part I was most excited about: attaching the lace leaves!  All along I had been planning on creating a collar and cuffs out of the leaves, and I was quite excited to have finally reached that point after all the work I’d done leading up to it.

Hot glue again works wonders

I had suspected that I would need to paint in some shadows to define the various layers of the leaves; with white on white, I thought it would look like a white blob from far away.  After some thought, I decided to “paint” the shadows on using eye shadow.  I wanted the shadows to be very light; I love the pearly iridescence of the leaves and I didn’t want to cover that up.  I thought eye shadow would offer me a wide range or affordable colors (and I ended up just using an eye shadow variety kit I’d had forever) and allow me to gradually build up subtle changes of color.  After working on the dress all day, and the shoot looming in the near future, I spent one whole evening painting eye shadow in between the leaves of the collar and cuffs (with an awful headache, I might add).  I loved the result; it was beautiful and just like I had wanted.  To help preserve everything, since shadow can smear so easily, and also fortify the shapes of the collar and cuffs, I gave them all a light mist of spray adhesive to bring it all together.

That was the wrong thing to do.

Somehow, the spray adhesive turned my carefully constructed, beautifully built-up shading into a nasty, muddy blob.  It looked awful.  I wanted to cry.  At this point, I was only a day away from the shoot, and I had no idea what I was going to do.  I absolutely couldn’t use the dress the way it looked.  And it was now very late on a day I’d spent every hour of working on the dress, I was tired, cranky and tearful.  Just to feel like I was doing something potentially useful, I painted on a couple different colored swatches of acrylic paint I had on hand for another project, and decided to let the whole thing dry overnight.  I’d figure it out in the morning.

The acrylic paint worked.  And I ended up liking the end result of the paint even more than I’d liked the initial eye shadow ones.  It still took a lot of time to do the next day, but I was able to work on it without feeling panicked or totally stressed out, because I knew it was going to look beautiful.  And of course, acrylic paint dries quite quickly, which helped!

The back of the painted lace collar

One of the cuffs

So much work, but so worth it!

There!  The costume was done!  All I had to do now was shoot the photos.

I had been envisioning one of my go-to models for this, Dedeker Winston.  I love working with Dedeker; we’ve been creating images together for several years now, and she always delivers above and beyond what I ask of her.  It also turned that she especially likes dryads, so she was very enthusiastic from the beginning!  Since this was going to be a more challenging shoot, I asked my sister-in-law Kim, who is herself a very talented artist, if she would come along and assist.  Kim was also excited about the shoot, so the three of us got up a bit early on a Saturday morning and went out to one of my favorite woods.  Kim was also kind enough to take some behind the scenes photos for me, which I will share with you here 🙂

Getting Dedeker into the costume required a bit of work and was definitely not something I would have been able to do without Kim being there.  Dedeker had to step into the dress, I strapped her into the crown while Kim stabilized it and kept the branches from gouging Dedeker’s eyes out.  After that I got the back laced up around the foam board.  I had Dedeker stand on a stool to give her extra height and presence, adding to her ethereal feel.

Helping Dedeker onto the stool; it was not very easy for her to navigate with all that she was wearing.

I had been considering adding an additional underskirt of some really beautiful, shimmery green fabric I’d had in my fabric stash.  Once I saw Dedeker with the crown in the actual location, I thought it would add a lot, so I quickly safety-pinned it under the dress.

There is a Frisbee golf course at this wood, and one of the “holes” is quite near the location where we were shooting.  Every now and then a golfer wandered into the background.  No one seemed to think what we were doing was particularly odd.

Frisbee golfers golfing

I made some bird stand-ins out of soft foam sheets and a little wire.  I thought it would be useful to have something casting a realistic shadow when it came to adding in the birds in post.

I clambered around on the trees, trying to find the perfect location to shoot from.  I went tumbling off this log at one point, but managed to twist in the air and not land on my camera.

More shooting

I had my photos!  The weather had been perfect, and I was really excited about the shots I got.  Next it was time to edit them, and add in the birds and squirrels.  Editing ended up being more difficult and complicated than I had expected (which often happens) but I got through them all eventually.

I had been taking photos of the birds at my feeder and yard with this shoot in mind, so I had built up a bit of a library already.  Stalking the birds for so long has given me a much greater appreciation for wildlife photographer; it can take a long time, LOTS of patience and a fair bit of luck to get the shots you want.

I’m really pleased with the final images, and even more pleased that I managed to create these with a very limited budget.  The sticks and branches were free, I already had the wire and some of the fabric.  The only money I spent money on was some fabric, paint, instant ice tea and the crown decoration.  All together I’d guess I spent about $40 or $50 on this, most of which went to the different colors of spray paint.  Huge budgets are not mandatory to create great things!

Below are the the final edited photos, along with some detail shots from each one; the small size these have to be on the internet just can’t display everything I’d like you to be able to see.

The Court Of The Dryad Queen

The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail

The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail

The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail

The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail

The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail

The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail

Annunciation

Annunciation – detail

Annunciation – detail

Annunciation – detail

The Queen’s Consort

The Queen’s Consort

The Queen’s Consort

By the way, does anyone know what kind of bird this is?  It’s one of my favorites who frequents the feeder; I’d like to know what to call her!

Thank you so much to Dedeker and Kim for their help in making these images happen, and to Geoff for all his support!  I couldn’t have done it without you guys.   I’m so pleased to be able to have these photos completed.  They really sum up what I want DreamWorld to be about; beautiful, ethereal, mysterious characters with a lot of production value.  Thanks to all who read all the way down to here!  🙂

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