Post Journey Pre-Temperance

I've been posting a lot about this transitional period I'm in with my work, so I wanted to take today to go back, and post these four shoots that sort of highlight how things came together with Temperance.

I usually think of Journey to the End of The Night ending because we decided to move out of the building that it was shot in, but I had already started to phase it out before the move.  The amount of photoshop that went into creating each image for Journey was a long and pretty ridiculous process, and I had the idea to replace textures I was using to create interesting walls with fabric.  So Nicole and I went to Jomar, bought 5 yards of a couple different upholstery fabrics, and stapled them up for test shoots.

Immediately I fell in love with the results, and Kacie and I created probably one of my most iconic images on the red filigree fabric that isn't actually part of any series.  After seeing how well that fabric photographed I decided to do the opposing wall in a floral fabric to see how if I could do something that would look nice with this sort of low contrast edit I had been working on.  My plan was to do one of those flipbooks where going through it one way would be red fabric, and going through it the other would be floral, and then our ceiling fell in on us for the 6th time, and I decided it was time to move.

I didn't do nearly enough shoots for a book on either of these, but I carried the love of fabric with me to our new place in Philly.

Once we settled into our new place I was able to turn an entire room into a shoot space.  It was much smaller than our apartment where Journey and the "Pre-Temperance" photos where photographed, so initially I struggled.  My preference at the time was to shoot at least 3/4, but more often full length in sort of a tableaux in a style heavily influenced by Jan Saudek, but it just wasn't possible.  Most of the images were nearly head shots to begin with which I found to be creatively limiting.  My first shoot with Kacie I was still pursuing that sort of soft edit, that I later abandoned because it only worked on 1 or 2 papers when it went to print.  

It was on a different shoot with Miss Miranda that I did my first shot through a mirror that allowed me to essentially double the distance between me and the subject allowing me to utilize longer lenses, shoot full length, and really play with DOF through the reflections.  That was the break through shoot that really helped me establish the series.

The images above I think really capture this slow transition.  I wish I had  photo of Kacie from Jourbey to show how things changed a little better, but we never actually worked together for that series.  Still the top left image was created in 2011 and Kacie and I had our first true Temperance shoot winter of 2013.  It took two years to work itself out, but I love seeing the journey.  I hope you do as well.

Full Gallery