An idea for Iris – a Climate Change Shoot
Every year I enter the Iris awards and I had an idea for a shoot for several months for the in-camera portrait section of the 2020 awards. The theme was climate change. Next I had to think how to set up my climate change shoot.
My Model
I had a beautiful model in mind – Francesca. She is a ballroom and Latin dancer with Silhouette Studios NZ and has the perfect look for being a goddess of the earth. I had no idea who this goddess was, so googled it, as you do, discovering that the most common name is Gaia.
Costuming and props
I had a green maternity dress which I decided to put on Francesca (even though she wasn’t pregnant) and then started to dream up the rest of the props. It was a long process. I made a headpiece with lots of foliage in it. I had to think about what props I needed in order to represent the earth dying and heating up in my climate change shoot.
I got a small globe from the Mayfield antique shop. “Two dollars,” the lady on the counter said. I needed to find a globe that matched in size and found a kids bouncy ball at The Warehouse. It wasn’t perfectly smooth so I put some papier-mâché over it and painted a dried up earth.
Flowers
A friend of mine who is also a photographer was selling the contents of her house to leave Christchurch. She sold me some lovely flowers. They are fake flowers but perfect for what I wanted.
Trimming the trees
I had a camellia tree which I needed to chop the top off and that was going to make my green background and dried up background was from my friend Alison who was chopping a tree out. I let it dry for several months. This is the kind of thing that annoys my husband to death. We had dead branches in our porch area where we usually eat alfresco. It was more difficult to eat there because of my branches.
Nailing down my model
My model Francesca is a very busy and talented person. It took me several weeks to nail down a date when she could come to my house for the shoot. It didn’t help that I was taking ages with my set.
The Dead stuff
I ordered a fake human skull collected some dead animals from the beach at chi colder. When I put it all together I realised I needed another dead thing. I’m a little bit weird I was sitting in my lounge with a puffy eye and a really bad head cold which was bordering on the flu when I decided to go for a walk at McLeans Island. I got in the car and drove there, started walking towards my usual spot where I often see dead rabbits and then noticed that there was a sign for spraying at the golf course. I decided that this was not really what I wanted to do was to walk through a cloud of spray. Instead I got back in the car and decided to drive down the road to look for some roadkill.
Roadkill
I hadn’t seen any roadkill on the 5km drive I’d already done. I wasn’t even sure if I would find any at all. I turned out of McLeans Island Forest Park towards West Melton and I only drove 500 m before I saw the most perfect piece of roadkill. I was driving too fast so had to turn around and come back to pick it up. I parked on the wrong side of the road on a very large piece of grass opened my car door and picked up the dead hare with a plastic bag.
A perfect specimen
I put the hare, which was perfectly formed and perfectly dried, into a supermarket bag and put it in the front of my car. Because it was so well dried didn’t smell. I didn’t put it on my set until the actual day of the shoot as I knew my husband would have an absolute fit about roadkill being in the house. I really don’t blame him, but sometimes it’s for the art.
Guinea Pig and a parrot
A few days before the shoot I decided I needed a live parrot in my shoot as well as a live guinea pig. The guinea pig was easy as we own three. I thought about having a rabbit but I thought a guinea pig was just as good. I decided it should be almost hidden in the bottom corner almost under my models skirt. The parrot I had to advertise on Facebook and luckily a friend of mine knew someone with a beautiful green parrot he was available on Saturday.
Practice
I put my daughter Maia in the dress, set up my lighting and she sat on the throne with the two globes. She posed for me and I took some shots and was able to figure we are needed to add more greenery and more dead material. I sent the photo to Lightroom and looked very hard at all the components and figured out where I needed to fill gaps. This photo is all about clutter and business and finding little surprises. It is not meant to be simple or boring.
The shoot
Francesca arrived with her boyfriend and proceeded to get ready. Lovely Rebecca arrived with her parrot Alby and the guinea pig was in a box next to the set ready to go. My family went out which made it easier for me.
More foliage
That morning I’d added live ferns and some fuchsia which added a lovely look. It really completed the set.
A smelly piece of roadkill
The hare was starting to smell. Even though it was very dry it had an odour when you moved it and these black grubs crawled out of it. I was not feeling great about it suddenly. But it needed to be on the set to really ram the idea home – it was after all a climate change shoot. I tied it to the dead branches. I went to vacuum the grubs up but they ended up crawling back into the hare. I burnt incense to cover the smell.
Francesca my goddess
Francesca sat down – not minding the smelly hare. She posed so well and little Alby sat on her knee. The guinea pig was on the floor by her skirt. In the end the shoot took only 10 minutes as I’d prepared things so well. I was so happy! This climate change shoot had been designed for the beautiful Francesca and it had worked so well!
Final product
I printed the final photo with my friend Craig who I call my master printer. He did such a wonderful job. I’m so glad I did this climate change shoot. Even if it just makes one person think, it was work it.
