It was an other beautiful day out in Philadelphia, and my two photo pals came up to visit the area for a fun photo adventure. Earlier in the day I was reading through my notebook, looking at ideas and finding inspiration on what kind of concept I wanted to shoot. I was looking through some of my old work and came across one of my fabric photographs. There is just something I love when I use fabric in my work and I was instantly inspired to do another shoot like. that.
My friends Tom and Marisa made their way up to Philly this time for our photo adventure, and I knew just the right magical place for us, in Wissahickon Valley Park, right outside of the city. My friend and our model for that day, Steph, was luckily off from work that day and everything seemed just to fall into place.
This park is one of my favorite places in my area. Long trails, rivers, huge rocks, so many great spots to shoot at! It wasn't too hot that day, but the water felt so refreshing. When we reached our location in the park, Tom and Marisa took turns doing their shoots and I paced around to focus on the idea I wanted to execute and where exactly I was going to set up my camera. An image popped into my head from the movie The Haunting in Connecticut and I knew what I wanted.
Back in June, I was on a road trip across the mid-west, exploring abandoned buildings. While stopped in Cleveland, I came across smoke bombs that were really cheap. I was really excited and bought a few boxes. I've never used smoke bombs before shooting, so this was something I was pretty eager to try. Since I only shot architectural during that trip, this was my first opportunity to try them out.
We did a few test shoots with Steph before getting in the water. Once I got a chance to figure the timing with how they work, I planted three or four behind Steph, that I had Marisa ignite for me across the river.
After about 10-15 minutes in the water modeling in the dress, Steph looked over and it started disintegrating in the water! It starting tearing up and falling apart in a lot of places. None of us expected that or had even ever seen that happen before. After, we wrapped up our gear up and relaxed in the park for a bit. This was such a fun day!
Shout out to Tom for some of these BTS pics!
