"A forest bird never wants a cage."

The theme behind my latest shoot was simply birds. Yes, I know it's overdone, and yes I know it is totally uncreative, but I had a lot of fun with it. I wanted to do more of a fashion spread, rather than just a mere interpretation of wild birds. The look I am trying to go for with a lot of my photographs is more editorial and something you might see in a magazine. So I hope that I have started to achieve that with my photographs. This was the first shoot that I got to work with my best friend and now hair stylist and make up artist, Danielle LaDeRoute. She did a SPECTACULAR job. I could have never done any of the make-up or hair that she did with the models that I had. We will definitely be collaborating A LOT more in the future.

To go along with the title of this post, the quote is by a man named Henrik Ibsen and he says exactly what I wanted to portray through this shoot. I wanted to show how a cage can never keep a bird from flying. I wanted the shoot to have a very edgy and wild look to the shoot to represent that sense of freedom a bird feels when released. In the shoot I had Janelle portray a raven throughout. For her outfit and make up, I wanted to do something very dark but with a sense of royalty. To me the raven is seen as a bird of power and strength. It is one that other birds fear and with that, we wanted to incorporate a lot of black and gold. I also made a crown out of feathers to show that hierarchy. Amber portrayed both a blue-jay and a peacock. For the blue-jay, I wanted a lot of light colors and to be very feminine. Something that would fear the raven. Her second portrayal was a peacock, and for those shots we had her in blues, greens, and purples and gave her a tail. Olivia was a robin, something small, yet aggressive. And Olivia was perfect for that. Her outfit consisted of a lot of earth tones and lace. But I added a splash of red, and through that came somewhat of a "pirate-y" look, which worked out perfectly.

Overall, the shoot went very well, but enough with the backstory, here are some pictures from the shoot which took place on Wednesday, August 4.


Danielle doing Amber's make-up.

The mess we made for this shoot. You could literally not walk around without stepping on either make-up, bobby pins, feathers, or clothes. But the mess was cleaned up once the shoot was done.

Danielle doing Janelle's make-up.

Before we began our journey through the hills and before we were covered in little prickly things.

Poor Janelle. :(

Olivia came a little late, but that didn't stop us!

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Now onto the finished pieces.










I hope you like them! There may be a few more to come.