Goddess Joey

Blue Goddess

I've been going to the Siuslaw Valley for a few years now, ever since Joey invited me down for a shoot. I was the first photographer to take her up on the offer, and I try to get down there at least once a year. The two of us have shot all over the valley and traveled to a few places outside the valley to shoot as well. Joey's charge is to find the locations while my responsibility lies with choosing the concept and bringing the costumes and props. 

I've been wanting to shoot a fall shoot in the valley and during our most recent shoot I had asked Joey to find us a new spot to shoot. So we set a date for early fall and I made the trip down earlier this week.

Sun Goddess

Joey had told me she had found a great new spot. True to her word, it made an excellent location for what I wanted to shoot. As a bonus, it wasn't far from her home. This time of year, before the rainy season has returned, the river runs shallow and warm so we managed to get some shots in the river as well. 

I had mentioned to Joey that I wanted to do a set of Celtic Goddess images with woad drawings on her face and body and she was excited to do something different like that. We also started later in the day that I normally shoot because I wanted to use the evening sun instead of morning light. That worked out well for us because the river ran to the west side of our location giving us light under the trees for the final part of our shoot. We didn't stop shooting until the light failed.

Celtic Warrior

Our shoot started without the woad designs though, since I wanted to shoot some unpainted goddess versions before she applied the hard-to-remove body paint. We began under the trees with sheer gowns and backlighting from the late afternoon sun. 

Despite being in a county park, the location stayed mostly deserted during our shoot. The first interruption occurred when a man and his dog came looking for a friend. We heard both of them long before they hiked up the trail to our spot. The guy accepted our word we hadn't seen his friend and off he went, pup in tow, back down the trail from whence he came.

Nude Goddess

Our second encounter didn't count as an interruption because no one came anywhere near us. A truck simply pulled into the area, a couple of guys jumped out, looked at the river, and left after just a few minutes. For the remainder of the shoot, no one bothered us. 

We shot for about 3 hours and got some great images. Joey looks great as a Celtic Goddess and warrior and she's much better at handling swords than 6 years ago during our first shoot. 

Compositing with Floofie

Athena Before

I've been trying my hand at compositing images lately, but the issues I've run into are the backgrounds. While green and blue screens are great for video compositing, they suck for still photography. The light bouncing off the backdrop creates color contamination around the outlines of the model that is difficult to remove during the editing process. Black is better, but then you have the problem of dark hair or clothes blending into the background causing problems with selecting just the model. White could work with very controlled lighting and distance, but is a real pain to set-up. So, I decided to experiment with a couple of different gray backdrops that I have in my inventory. 

Athena After

I started with Floofie using a patterned gray portrait backdrop. Since I'm still working on improving the goddess concept, I chose the costumes and props for that inspiration and added some new items I thought would add to the fantasy. I shot this is my home studio (basically my living room where I set up the backdrops and lights withing the confines of the room's furniture). It's not ideal due to the space constraints, but hey, you've got to work with what you've got. 

After having Floofie play dress up for a couple of hours while I took a few hundred shots of her poses, the more challenging work began. Now, I've been working with Photoshop since version 6.0 was released 23 years ago, and I've taken quite a few lessons and attended several seminars. I don't consider myself an expert, but I mostly know my way around the program and I can usually get decent results. Selecting images and compositing them into a coherent and harmonious final shot requires more complex conceptualizations than simply editing an image.

Celtic Witch Before

When compositing, not only must you separate the initial image from the background, you also must consider the angle of the light hitting the subject, the color of the light source, the density of the shadows, and any reflections in the subject. Once you've chosen the background, you then have to match the perspectives and then harmonize the colors between the background and the subject. I'm definitely still learning, but I think my results are much better than my original attempts a couple of years ago.  

Celtic Witch After

The images you see here are simple composites, though. I'm certainly not to the skill level required to add multiple elements to the composite. I'll need to get much better before I attempt that. Anyway, you can see my results in the images posted. 

New Model - Jade

Jade

 I contacted Jade on Instagram on a whim. I just liked her look and the images posted on her profile. To my surprise (because of my prior luck with IG models), she responded immediately and we set a date to shoot within the week. I messaged her on the 9th and we were shooting on the 15th. 

She let me know she would be bringing an escort with her, and I let her know that I had no issue with that. I've never really had a problem with escorts. Usually I can put them to work holding reflectors, which is a big help, or bringing me props. 

Sparkly Girl

Only on a couple of occasions have I had an escort interfere with a shoot. The first time was a female friend of the model who thought she knew better than me how to run a shoot––that ended quickly along with the shoot. The other time wasn't the escorts fault, but rather the model's as she kept using part of our shooting time to show the outfits off to her boyfriend.

That wasn't the case with Jade's friend. He helped with the reflector, but otherwise stayed out of my way and let Jade and me do our thing. 

Amira Chains

Once again, I chose the area around the Sauvie Spaceship for my shoot. I know, I know, I shoot there a lot, but the spot has a lot going for it. It's fairly close to one of the entrance gates. Most of the time, you can count on a wide area of beach, and the woods surrounding the spaceship offer a different backdrop from the water and sand. Then there's the spaceship itself, all covered in colorful graffiti art which changes constantly. 

Caribbean Silk

Jade worked out great for the shoot I had planned. She has the look of a blonde bombshell and posed like one too. She could be both seductive or innocent depending on the outfit. She seemed to really enjoy the shoot, and we managed to get a great many poses and costumes done before we had to wrap up the shoot. I'm hoping to shoot again with her in the near future. I think she'd be perfect for a Christmas pinup.