SO: this all began when I had in mind a continuation of "The Witch" series of photoillustrations. Rachel did a photography session, and when we were looking through the images, there were more than the usual handful that turned out pretty well. I say "more than the usual handful" because what usually occurs during these sessions is out of a score (or more) of photographs, only a very few have the "right" pose, the best lighting, and most importantly, the best focus. Even when setting the camera "just so" the number of times that the image is not-quite in focus is high, so to have a lot of photographs that met expectations was surprising, and opened up the possibility of doing not just one or two further images, but to create a sub-series. That was the initial idea, anyway. It started with this one:
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wherein I set up what became a kind-of internal tension between the natural world and the "built" world, overlaying cracked plaster on winter trees. From there - well, it just kept growing. That first overlay of tension would become the spring-point of where the backgrounds would continue to develop in my mind. As I furthered the creation of the witch imagery, continuing to use the overlapping worlds, I had that "aha!" moment of her facing-off against whomever had caused the overlapping in the first place, and so the idea for the warlock.
I was fortunate to find down in Frankfort, IN, that there was an old railroad roundhouse and repair facility that was falling down - and was exactly the sort of urban decay that can be so wonderful to photograph, and particularly here, as it became the "battleground" between these two characters.
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The exterior of the roundhouse.
It actually wasn't until I took this photo that I realized what I had been strolling through, but the semi-circular arrangement of the large bay doors is pretty-muchly only ever for one thing: train engines. What I find puzzling is that the only part of the facility that is fenced off is the old turntable, the center point of which has the yellow steel arch to the left of center in the picture.
ANYway, one of the things that I have trouble getting to in any story idea of mine is how to finish the damn thing. With this story, I finally got past that particular stumbling block (unlike Sheppard's Ghosts, which is, technically, still unfinished) at least in concept, but that meant that as the story began to round out, the number of images needed just kept growing. And that meant more photographs, and more backgrounds, all of which eventually encompassed the following:
1 camera and tripod
1 body
2 characters
3 months
over 1,000 photographs taken
11 locations
12 costume changes
over 50 images created
39 finished images in the series
over 800 visible Photoshop layers
Obviously not all the images I was working on became part of the series; some became "two-fers," some just weren't working out as I liked so I had to change something, or they didn't fit in the narrative. Like these:
While I liked the effect I achieved here, once I had the warlock and the roundhouse backgrounds, this background wasn't working in context any longer.
This one I thought turned out really well - technically - as it portrays the warlock making his, um, breakthrough? in much the fashion that I wanted to achieve, but the angle is turned too much away from the previous shot, so I used the elements in other ways.
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This one is only, I guess, tangential to the story, but as one of the many photographs that turned out well "in camera," I just wanted to do something with it.
Other than the roundhouse, there are also background images taken at Fall Creek Gorge (the Potholes), down in the basement of the Purdue Union, at Turkey Run State Park, and alongside the back county roads where I like to go take photos.
I suppose next I need to have the Witch and the Wizard do something together. But that would probably be another 3 month-long project! Not that I have any problem with that.