Head in the Clouds
Often more than not, I am constantly re-imagining shoot concepts that I’ve done more than twice before. With every shoot I do, I’m always constantly trying to re-access what I did before and see how I can improve if shooting something similar. Sometimes, that’s changing the lighting, the camera angle or lens, the location, the overall styling or sometimes it means digging deeper in researching symbolism, in order to bring forth a new idea in it’s re-imagining.
This is one of the many reasons I love photography as a medium, because I am never bored, even if you made me shoot against a plain white wall every day or the same outdoor location, I am pretty sure there is an infinite number of possibilities in how it can be perceived and captured.
Back on 22 November, 2015, I was shooting a brand new face, Ella for Viviens. It was in fact her first shoot. So after we did the stock standard images for her modelling portfolio, I asked if she wouldn’t mind at the very end of the shoot, a little extra time for me to flesh out a concept on her. I had made a cloud prop, stuck it on some cardboard and hung by a nylon thread from a tree branch, which I roped in Ella’s mother (who was present at the shoot), to hold it over Ella’s head, as I wanted to conceptualise “head in the clouds”.
2015 Head in the Clouds with Ella @ Viviens
All my life, from childhood to even now, I’ve been told in numerous ways that “your head is in the clouds”, “stop building castles in the sky” or my husband’s favourite “get out of LaLa Land”.
I always thought I could re-shoot this concept I did on Ella. As back in 2015, it was a quick little shoot I tacked onto the end of a model test, where there was no makeup and hair, Ella was just barefaced. So I improvised by adding some whimsical stickers of unicorns, as I imagine they live in the clouds somewhere and what’s not a cloud without a rainbow, which I imagined as a rainbow lolly.
Fast forward to almost 10 years later (I shot this in December 2024), I did the whole shebang, with a creative team. This time I recruited the perfect pastel-fairy obsessed makeup artist around, Laura Hohua of @theballerinabridemua on Instagram. Looking at Laura’s whimsical and ethereal makeup, I knew she’d be perfect for a concept like this, injecting her sparkle and love of butterflies to the cotton candy clouds I was making for the hair. Next, was my photo assistant, Summer Renolds, who jumped in when needed, whether that was to pin the cloud hair, shoot some behind the scenes, hold some clouds in front of my camera as well as lend her creative eye to the overall capture. Of course, we needed to have a muse to build our dreams upon, and we roped in Stella @ Tamblyn Models to be our ethereal butterfly queen of the cotton candy clouds.
We shot 3 different looks in half a day, starting with the softest of baby pinks, building up to a magenta pink and then a lilac-purple.
Of course, I’d be lying if I told you I was done with this concept! Of course not!
Back to the drawing board on how to improve, build upon or completely start from scratch with this concept.
Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, on which version you prefer - 2015 vs 2024 and why?
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