“At least devils danced.
All the angels ever seemed to do was cry.”
-
K. F. Gecko
INSPIRATION
This project was inspired by the myth and legends of fallen archangels featured in religious mythology as well as by modern day superheroes.
MOOD/STORY
The characters in this project are based on a short poem that I wrote about the fall of archangels. The story is told from the perspective of a human who is observing the tragic fall of a chosen one, moments before he falls into oblivion.
WARDROBE
When I arrange a new project, I approach wardrobe with one goal – that is to blend both contemporary wardrobe with accents of the past. It was important to me that the wardrobe for this project have a gothic influence; therefore, each angel was fitted with different textures and designs to illustrate their personalities and warring styles.
MAKE-UP AND HAIR
Much like the wardrobe, the make-up for this project played a large role in educating the viewers about the different personalities of each angel. I focused primarily on our use of color and the different mask designs.
BTS featuring make-up artist Sabrina, talent Megumi, and stylist Susana Blair.
BTS by Susana Blair
LIGHTING
This project was fun for me because I move away from my usual lighting preferences and toward something more dramatic and direct. I wanted the lighting to be strong, commanding, and for it to emulate a comic book-like aesthetic. Therefore, I used strong rim lights and a hard-key light. This helped bring out the textures in the wardrobe and to make the characters stand out from their surroundings.
COLOR PALETTE
I typically navigate towards using earth tones, but for this project I decided to break with my natural inclinations and instead worked with brighter, more electric hues like the ones found in superhero comic books.
POST PRODUCTION
The final images for this project were created in Photoshop using compositing techniques. Each location was especially constructed for the character featured in the photograph. Overall, I focused on creating a dramatic comic book-like aesthetic by using contrasting colors to separate the subject from the background, bright hues, and dark imposing skies.
SONG INSPIRATION
As a former dancer, music is a huge inspiration and motivation when I am creating projects. If I can find a piece of music that captures the soul of my project, I feel that much more in sync and centered on what I’m trying to create. This song, by Harry Ft. Skrein, was one of the inspiration pieces for me. It captures the chaos, elegance (in the songs introduction), and the mood of the shoot. The song starts off slow and unassuming, eventually morphing into a style of music called dub-step. The song illustrates the theme of my story perfectly, the tragic fall from light to darkness.
Playing around with color selection masks.
DREAM TEAM
Producer, Photographer, Retoucher: Alicia M. Blair
Styling: Susana Blair
Make-Up & Hair: Sabrina Ozuna
Model: Chance Howard, Megumi Smisson, Michelle Spence
To view the full series, please click on the link bellow.
https://www.aliciamblairphotography.com/the-fallen
Thank you for reading!
-Alicia M. Blair
BTS of a highlight and shadow selection mask.