Tag:concept shoot
Alice in Wonderland is a much loved and immensely popular fairy tale by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll, and published in 1865. While Dodgson (1832-1898) was an English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist, his novels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, are most remembered for.
The Story
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tell the story of a young girl who falls asleep in a meadow and dreams she saw and followed a white rabbit down a rabbit hole. During her time in wonderland, she has amazing and bizarre adventures, meeting many strange characters such as the Cheshire cat, blue caterpillar, the knave of hearts, Red Queen, White Queen, and of course, the tea party with the Mad Hatter.
The books have inspired countless films, performances, and ballets over the years and remain popular to this day.
Our concept shoot
We gathered our cast together for our concept shoot of a mad hatters tea party. Alice, plus the Red and White Queens, Mad Hatter, and White Rabbit, all participated. We took a little from the original story, melded it with Tim Burton’s version from the Disney film, and centred it around the tea party. I sourced the backdrops and costumes for our cast, and members contributed props and chairs to complete our scenes.
Alice
“I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.”
~Alice
Alice, a fictional character living in Victorian England, gives her age as seven and a half in the sequel, Through The Looking Glass. She is believed to be based on Alice Liddell, the daughter of the author’s friends.
Alice is a young girl with shoulder-length blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes and wears a blue Victorian dress. Alice can memorise things quickly and recites poems and rhymes with ease.
The Mad Hatter
“I am under no obligation to make sense to you.”
~The Mad Hatter
While the books never referred to the Hatter as the ‘mad hatter’ because he was portrayed as ‘mad’, the title stuck. The mad hatter is stuck in a never-ending tea party as he angered the red queen and was sentenced to death for ‘murdering time’. While he escaped that fate, he is forever halted at 6.00 pm forever.
The White Rabbit
“Oh, my fur and whiskers! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”
The White Rabbit
Famous for his quote, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!” the white rabbit is the first character Alice encounters in Wonderland.
The Red Queen
“I dont know what your mean by your way, all the ways about here belong to me..”
~The Red Queen
Our Red Queen is closer to Tim Burton’s version, where she is a combination of the Red Queen and Queen of Hearts. She is arrogant, bad-tempered, demanding, and fond of calling for people’s heads to be cut off when they displease her.
The White Queen
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
~The White Queen
Like the Red Queen, the White Queen is based upon a chess piece. The White Queen is the rightful ruler but has been usurped by her sister, the Red Queen, who has claimed the throne as her own.
Around 20 members of the Victorian Photographers Collective attended our shoot – plus helpers and cast throughout the day. Everyone had a fabulous time and their photographs coming out of the shoot looked great.
Our Cast
- Amelia – Alice
- Anjel Taylor – Mad Hatter
- Emily Reinhard – Red Queen
- Jess Garrett – White Queen
- Mark Busuttil – White Rabbit
Props
- Backdrops – Bevlea Ross
- Cakes – Carole Perry
- Chairs – Therese Kidd and Mark Busuttil
- China – Bevlea Ross, Kellye Wilson, Susan Martin, Glenda Laing
Back in 2019, before the world went to hell in a handbasket, we held two 1920’s shoots around the theme of a speakeasy with flappers and gangsters. We had so much fun, and I decided to hold another one, this time, on location with a 1926 vintage tram as our set. Unfortunately, due to Covid, and with our state being in total lockdown for 13 weeks, we ended up having to delay the shoot twice. The delay blew out to eight months, but we eventually had a brief lockdown free window to do the shoot. And just in time, too, as a week later, we are back in a short lockdown.
Flappers of the 1920s were young women known for their energetic freedom, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time as outrageous, immoral or downright dangerous. Now considered the first generation of independent American women, flappers pushed barriers in economic, political, and sexual freedom for women.
1920S history
Our Cast
Our four flappers were Jess Garrett, Emily Reinhard, Lisa Willmore, Anjel Taylor, and one gangster – Boris Struk. We also lucked out with Bob, the Conductor who took charge of our vintage tram. He proved to be an absolute hoot in front of the camera. To say there was a lot of laughter and shenanigans is an understatement. It was a fabulous, fun shoot – and after months of lockdown, it was just what we all needed.
Ballarat Tramway Museum
We booked a tram for the day through the Ballarat Tramway Museum. Our tram was a lovingly restored W2 class tram that first went into service in 1926 before being withdrawn from service in 1982. It was then purchased by the Melbourne Tramcar Preservation Society, where it was restored to prime condition. The tram is currently on loan from them to Ballarat Tramway Museum.
We shot around and on the vintage tram for a couple of hours before they took us for a ride through the streets of Ballarat, in “our” tram to another outdoor location. Sam and Bob from the museum were fabulous and went out of their way to make our day a success.
The 1920s also brought about Prohibition, the result of the 18th Amendment ending legal alcohol sales. Combined with an explosion of popularity for jazz music and jazz clubs, the stage was set for speakeasies, which offered illegally produced and distributed alcohol.
1920 History
Many thanks to our fabulous models and the Ballarat Tramway Museum for a fabulous day.
Entry to the museum is free. The Ballarat Vintage Tramway is located in the Botanical Gardens on the western shore of Lake Wendouree.
Pre Photoshop, an image was worth a thousand words and proof of something’s existence. Post photoshop – yes, the camera does lie. IG influencers with shoddy photoshop skills share images making themselves thinner or curvier. We now have experts, hunting down photo fabricators, examining pixels and EXIF to see if the image is doctored. Prestigious competitions demand you have a RAW copy of the image if they want to check its authenticity. There is even an app now for businesses to weed out fake IDs.
If you arent one to enter competitions with said rules, or you aren’t submitting the image as true and newsworthy, then Photoshop is a whole heap of fun. It takes your image beyond simple cloning out distractions or adding the odd bird here and there, opening a whole new world of composition related art.
Obviously, I was not in a boat in the arctic with three polar bears but it was fun to imagine the scenario and bring it to life. Photoshop also played a big part in the image below of my nephew. This image required no compositing as we created our set and shot the photos – but photoshop turned it into a whole different concept.
The Concept
I wanted something along the Game of Thrones, north of the wall look. We setup our backdrop and dressed our subject in medieval costume. From there I took the images into photoshop.
The Editing
To get that cold, blue look, in ACR, I brought the temperature down to 3100. I also upped the whites to +42 and dropped the highlights to -76. From there I ran a few of my favourite actions from Greater than Gatsby (they have a 35% off sale on at the moment too). I also used the Detail Revealer brush on the face, turned the eyes blue (another GTG action), and using a selective cool workflow brush cooled down the skin tones. Lastly, I added two snow overlays from Summerana.
The whole edit took about ten steps and 10 minutes. I do love photoshop. But I don’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel and spend hours on one image when there are tools out there to speed up my workflow. Why handwrite a 5000-word essay when we have computers? To me, it’s the same thing. It’s just time management. Yes, there are a lot of crappy actions out there, but there are pearls among them and GTG stands out. They are in fact the only ones I now use having ditched all the crappy free ones. And no, it’s not a paid endorsement.
If you haven’t got into Photoshop actions yet, give them a try. They will speed up your workflow immeasurably as well as create work you didn’t think yourself capable of.