Part of Your World, Reprival

The Little Mermaid, Part Two

The beautiful weather in Chicago gave the perfect opportunity to revisit The Little Mermaid concept. While I was happy with the way the original photos turned out, the weather had not been pleasant that day, and Lauren Schultz (model for the shoot) also worked on a killer new bikini top for halloween the following year, so it made sense to reshoot.

With the whole day ahead of us, we were able to visit two beaches to get a full variety of shots I had always had my heart set on.

Lauren was an incredible model, clambering over rocks and jumping straight into Lake Michigan to get the perfect shot. In fact, as we were wrapping up, a group of spectators even asked who she models for, evident of her natural ability.

Using the Clark/Division and 12th St beaches, we slowly photographed our way through the afternoon, stopping only at Walgreens to get a bottle of water.

It was evident this photoshoot was meant to be redone for further perfection, as on 12th St, we were even joined by a group of photogenic seagulls, giving Ariel and Scuttle a reunion they deserve.

While most of my fairytale shoots have a concept for each photo within a larger group, the more the day went on, it was evident this fairytale was destined to tell a larger story.

With Ariel emerging from the sea with her human legs, she washes up onto the beach, alone and unsure, waiting for Prince Eric.

Of course, Eric by now has found a great job in the city and has discovered the delights of online casual dating, so his visits to the beach are less frequent.

Ariel, quickly realising the world she has longed for is not what it seems, manages to drag herself from the sea, and take on the human world by herself – #independentwoman!

Part of Our World

Keeping with the fairytale theme of my last post, the images in this post are the results of a shoot themed on "The Little Mermaid" from earlier this year.
Being one of my favourite childhood Disney movies, during my teens I researched the story more and found the ending of the original fairytale to be far, far darker than a happy marriage to the prince of Ariel's dreams.

Not wanting to go quite so dark (and not having a male model on this occasion), I tried to take the stance that opposed to her prince abandoning her for another woman and leaving her to die a mortal, my version of Ariel would instead be tempted by the riches of the world, but with a over-demanding attitude and unworkable desires, she ultimately remains alone and once again longs for the sea.

Despite it being mid-May the weather was still pretty cold, so I was conscious of keeping my wonderful model Lauren Schultz as warm as possible. After climbing around on the rocks and getting some of the shots we had pre-planned, we wrapped up warm pretty quickly without much space for spontaneous experiments.

The images were taken on 12th Street beach in Chicago, and as is quite obvious, I later edited the blue hue to make the ocean look unrealistic in order to mirror my Ariel's impractical expectations of general society.