The second retreat is an hour outside of Milan, Italy from July 6-10, 2015. When I found the mansion we’ll be creating at there was no way I could turn it down. I immediately exclaimed: “I hope someone comes and shares this with me!”. The house that is booked for our living accommodations is super luxurious (totally opposite of what I’m used to booking into!) and I can’t wait to see it in person.

                                                          Flayosc, FRANCE                                 Milan, ITALY
                                                          May 21-25, 2015                                   July 6-10, 2015
                                                          $2,450                                                     $2,800

www.brookeshaden.com/workshops

Both prices include all expenses while at retreat (living, food, locations, transportation, etc…). Travel to our living accommodations is the responsibility of attendee.

The difference between the retreats is that attendees share rooms (2 per room) in France whereas each attendee gets their own room in Italy.

The information packet details everything from our itinerary to addresses and info about the content of the retreat. If you decide to join me, be ready for an adventure and discovery of inner-inspiration. And lots of hugs. Always lots of hugs <3

The FRANCE location:

The ITALY location:

I wanted to combine several stories here to create a new one. The poisoned apple. Little Red Riding Hood. And the beautiful decaying house we had the fortune of photographing in. I took the idea of poisoned apples with the Little Red character and put them together. When I was setting up I brought my apples out and asked the attendees to take bites out of the apples, which they did, and I set them up so that the apples would come toward my camera.

The light came most harshly from a window camera right, and there was another window, less direct, also to the left so I positioned the model (my beautiful sister-in-law Steph) to the more direct window. Later in post I closed in the walls around her so you couldn’t see the edges of the windows in the shot (it was a very tight space).

With the concept I wanted there to be multiple apples eaten as though she is searching for the one with the poison. When one of the attendees asked what the story was, I gave it all: This girl had been traveling through the forest and got lost, and so she entered this house, falling apart and decayed, and she stayed for shelter from the pending storm. When she tried to leave the doors would not open and the windows would not break, and she found herself trapped. The only thing she had were apples, and so she tried each one hoping they were poison.

It was completely meant to be fun and have a story, one that was dark and beautiful to me. I love having fun with fairytales, and especially taking existing fairytales and twisting them a bit. Sometimes we all need a reminder that our craft does not need to be so serious all the time. I create images like this when I want to open up my mind and just have fun with my camera.

Isn’t int incredible how much we can do? I haven’t scratched the surface of what could be done to bring my imagination to life, and thinking about the possibilities makes me giddy with excitement. I can go out and create something singlehandedly that could express what words cannot. I say “I” selfishly as I write on my own blog, but of course I mean that to extend to all people with any craft. Photography allows me a medium in which I feel comfortable working. But I believe that anything in life that allows you to feel complete and understood is an art form.

Creating this image was fun and simple. I love pictures like that. No crazy setup (aside from dragging all of these vines into an abandoned seminary). No strange Photoshop work of putting body parts together. No flying girls or anything “fancy”. Just a girl standing trapped (or maybe willingly blended) into the scene. It felt, to me, the right kind of simple for what I wanted to say.

What does your fantasy world look like? If you could wake up and see anything, hear anything, smell anything…what would it be? Do you work to create that reality?

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You can watch the creation process of this image, and some of the editing slowed down, on my creativeLIVE class “Master Your Craft” – you can look at both of my cL classes in the STORE on this blog.

Special thanks to Jane Love for modeling, Nikoma Souza for hair/makeup, and the whole creativeLIVE team for just plain being amazing and allowing me to do this.

My life centers around believing that impossibilities are simply undiscovered possibilities, and I have the power to find them.

I photographed this snow scene on creativeLIVE, so if you are interested in seeing how it was photographed or more of the editing process in slower motion, you can check that out here. My goal was simple: create a fantasy world that has more meaning and beauty in it than what I saw in front of me. I was confronted with an abandoned room. It was beautiful in it’s own right – peeling paint and debris all over the floor. But for me, it was missing that magic spark.

We threw paper bits and fake snow all around. We covered the floor in flour. I dressed the model in my favorite cloak to finish her fairytale makeover, and then I shot a couple different setups until I felt like I had achieved the feeling in my imagination.

Wonder. Darkness. Beauty. Fantasy.

Everyone has the ability to create a unique reality through art. It may be that your perfect reality is the one you live in and so you capture life as you see it. Or perhaps you’re on the other end of that spectrum and create surrealistic scenes. Either way, we can create our own magic, and it is never further away than our imaginations.

How do you create your own magic?