Essence

For the second theme for The Affinity with Aoife Casey we chose 'Essence'. I was quite excited about this theme and I felt it opened up a lot more options and concepts than the previous. However this turned out to be a bit of a difficult one as I just had too many ideas. At one stage I was exploring the idea of 'essence of the city' and looked into trying to get into Boland Mills in Dublin, as amazing as that would be I realised that's just not who I am as an artist. I like to create my own world in my photography inspired by fashion, fantasy and my bizarre thoughts and dreams.

I've always been inspired by astrophysics and the cosmos and have been watching the tv show 'Cosmos' recently. In it the fantastic host Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how we are all made of star stuff, and how we are all tiny universes. This was it. This was my concept, I can't believe I hadn't thought about it before now. It was perfect, it would challenge me to think outside my comfort zone yet appeal to my love of science. I began looking to fashion photography first as that's normally my first move for finding inspiration and came across various sci-fi, galactic, space-age and starry images, all with the same use of colour. Colour, hasn't really been my friend, I tend to lean towards black and white and prefer subtle tones than bright colours. But the more I looked the more I realised I just had to do colour. This scared me a little bit but I knew I had to do it.

I decided to shoot inside, also an unfamiliar concept, I much prefer natural light but knew CI just couldn't achieve the galactic feel outdoors. I had my ever trusting model and friend Clara come to my home and basically painted her face with bright purples and an insane amount of glitter. I had found some fairy lights earlier in the day and thought they would create some nice shadows and simulate the stars in the image. 

To be honest we struggled for the first few shots, I was unsure, out of my comfort zone, she was uncomfortable, uncertain of what she was doing as we had never done a portrait before. All my models are usually posing in a natural landscape so I knew this would be a challenge for both of us.

About half way through I decided to switch back to black and white, I knew it was where I could relax and I see light much better that way and feel I can work better with it. And BOOM there it was, the light caught the glitter magnificently, every spec was highlighted and it was creating the shadows I desired. Only problem was it was in black and white...

I decided to play with colours and looked at galactic photography for the colour palette. I added some stars I made with the brush tool on photoshop and came up with this! I called this one 'Body', representing the star essence we are all made up of, every living thing is connected through this make up,every living thing has a body made up of tiny universes.

My second image was inspired by the line "nothing can be created from nothing" from Lucretius' 'On the Nature of Things'. I called this one 'Void', as a contrast to the first image. 

Our next theme will be 'Greed', deadline is end of April. I've already started the research process so hopefully I find inspiration and a willing model soon!

The Affinity

I have recently embarked on a collaborative journey with my friend and mentor, photographer, Aoife Casey. I previously worked with Aoife as a model and find we always inspire and challenge each other. Aoife is from Dublin but currently resides in Seoul, South Korea. As we haven't worked together because of the obvious geographical boundaries we decided to collaborate through social media, both taking photographs of the same concept and uploading them to a project page.The current project is called 'The Affinity', both of us will receive a concept or theme and are given a deadline to create an image based on this.




I feel we both have different yet similar styles, both with a fine art feel yet will always come up with something completely different. Aoife has always been my mentor and my inspiration so having her as a partner is strange but also exciting!
Our first theme was 'Neolithic', drawn from a hat of words we each had picked from books, articles, poems etc. I began researching this theme and found that I kept veering towards images of tombs, burials and bones. I thought the way in which these people buried their dead in the foetal position was beautiful, soft and calming. I wanted to recreate this idea, this beautiful vulnerability.
With this in mind it was time to pick my location, this was easy as I knew straight away that I wanted to go to my childhood paradise, Hook Head, Co. Wexford. I spent endless hours exploring the rocks and pools there and still find something so peaceful yet energizing about this harsh landscape. The rocks are dark and flat, moulded by rough seas, covered in fossils and sun drenched pools of water. To me it is heaven and I rarely go a year without visiting it.

The first image I called 'Burial', originally taken in black and white I added subtle colours to make the model stand out against the beautiful dark rock. 




The second image, came as a bit of an after though. My poor model Clara was freezing in the cold March wind and as we were packing up our things I decided to try a few shots for fun. She threw on her leggings and a pair of heels she had brought and we wrapped a black chiffon sheet over her shoulders. The result blew me away, the landscape, her figure in silhouette and the glimmer of gold on her head just worked perfectly and I couldn't leave it out of the project. It turned out to be a beautiful contrast to 'Burial', a strong powerful image yet still beautiful and fitting of the theme. I called this one 'Rise', representing the rise of civilisation during the neolithic period, the birth in contrast to the burial.





This image was also taken in black and white, I decided to add some colour to the rocks and make use of the beautiful contrast. I am extremely happy with both images and have already began thinking about our next theme 'Essence', deadline for which is end of March.