I was asked a few days ago “What one shoot can you say drastically changed your life”, after pondering for a few minutes I said “forsure the Alice in Wonderland shoot”……………
I woke up one day with a text from Brittney saying:
“Hey do you want to go see a movie in a min?”
“Sure, what movie?”
“Hmmmm… Alice in Wonderland??”
We showed up at the theater, got our tickets and sat in our seats with a bucket of popcorn that cost more than the actual movie ticket. As the movie started I was in aww, with every scene I was more and more inspired, thinking about how I should do an “Alice in Wonderland” inspired photo shoot, thinking about all the different poses I could do, all the different props I could use, and the location I wanted. I wasn’t even paying attention to the movie, all I was thinking about was the shoot that I wanted to do.
I went home that night and started drawing sketches and brainstorming different props and locations I could use. The only problem was the outfit, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to just do a blue dress, or if I actually wanted it to be exactly like the book “Alice in Wonderland”. As I pictured the shoot in my head, I just couldn’t picture it in just a blue dress, it HAD to be like what Alice wore in the book. But finding outfit would be a little bit more difficult. I tried looking online, but all I could find was costumes. I didn’t know what to do. I was stuck.
A few days later, I got a call from Brittney telling me to come over ASAP because Ill never guess what she found in a box on the top self in her parents closet. I drove over and walked into her house to find Brittney holding the perfect little blue dress, with an apron on top. She said she wore it in a school play when she was younger. I started freaking out! It was PERFECT!
After quite a while of planning, the day of the shoot came, I set up the set, watching how my thoughts in my head were coming to life. The models came and we began shooting. Through out the shoot I was excited but nervous, I didn’t know how people were going to react to a shoot like this. I went home and started editing. I was up all night. When I was done, I finally blogged it on my little, free photography blog and instantly started getting comments. I decided to send the shoot over to one of my favorite wedding blogs, Green Wedding Shoes. I had never been on a blog this huge before, so I wasn’t really expecting to get accepted. When I got the reply, to my surprise, it was accepted! It was blogged later that week, and has yet to slow down since then. It has been on more different wedding blogs than any of my other shoots, all over the world. The model in the shoot cant walk through Wal-mart without someone walking up to her saying “Alice?”.
I am grateful for this shoot, it gave me the courage to make myself step out of the “traditional photography” box and do things that I really wanted to do without being scared that I wouldn’t be accepted in this business.
“What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?” -Alice
Here are just a few of those blogs:
Stats on Green Wedding Shoes as of 9/11/11:
And here’s the pictures (because I have never blogged them on this blog) :
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