“New York is definitely haunted. Old lovers, ex-boyfriends, anyone you have unresolved issues with you are bound to run into again and again until you resolve them.” Sarah Jessica Parker
When Halloween is on a Monday night, you have no classes but photo at 1:25 on Tuesday, and you really don't want to go out and deal with all the insane celebratory drunks, what do you do? you do a photoshoot! Originally, this shoot was supposed to take place in a friends of mine's bathroom, who had bloodied it up as a prank on her housemates. However, when that didn't happen, i asked my friend Justin whose and R.A. on campus, if i could use one of the bathrooms if i cleaned it up. Thankfully, he said yes. I went out and bought fake blood, grabbed my good friend Salina, and we started to transform my wonderful model Hannah Foster into a dead girl. Not only during this shoot, did i not have my smaller lens to work with, i also was missing my larger memory card. Thankfully, it worked out, and by having to use my bigger lens, as difficult as it was, the images came out much more dramatic and i was thrilled with the outcome. Salina with her amazing artistic talent helped me make a murder scene out of the entire public bathroom. Not only was this not at all what i had originally planned, but it was almost a completely different shoot. However, we made the best out of what we had and with all our improvising ended up creating something magnificent that became a huge hit throughout my entire school. The florescent lighting added to the eerieness of the shoot, and also brought a glow to her already super pale face. I used a vignette to help draw the eye in and add a more supernatural feeling to the images. Besides the actual composition of the photos, i really liked the stories behind them. I was able to take the pictures to show different stories which were up for interpretation. In some, Hannah looks like the victim who is stuck haunting the bathroom. In others, she looks like the murderer - which can also be seen as cutting herself or internal battles within a hurting individual. In addition, there are some where she looks dead and is yet again the victim, but not a ghost or menacing. Just, dead. The photograph to the right is one of my favorites. When I realized I was going to have to do it in a public bathroom, this was the first image that came to my mind. I was really lucky i was not only able to recreate is successfully, but also make it so eerie and disturbing. This one is the least posed, movie like, or fashion like of them all, and it shows my more artistic side which rarely comes out. I entered this one, the first image above, and the image below in a juried show and all three made it. It was really exciting, and they were loved by many. PS: Yes, the clean up did take FOREVER. (Justin High is amazing for helping until 4am)


"The work was hauntingly and disturbingly beautiful. It was thought provoking, and as gruesome as it was, the images were so powerful and intriguing, you couldn't turn away." - Phil Young

Labels: blood, fashion photography, fingerprints photography, ghosts, halloween, haunted, haunted bathroom, juried show, murder scene, portraits, wilder bathroom