I had an epic hike planned for this morning, my alarm set for 4am and the car all packed. My body had different plans. I woke with a lot of joint pain (not to worry, this is normal) and decided to take care of my body a little bit better today. Instead of heading out to the forest, I made my own little studio by hanging a black piece of fabric in my garage! The light was beautiful, and my neighbors were, undoubtedly, suspicious. I was taking a 10/10 in creep factor.

I get asked sometimes how I manage to run a business, take photos, etc. with an illness. (For those who haven’t read previous blog posts, I have Fibromyalgia, and I’m doing fine). Some days are great and some are not. Some days I rock my awesome cane, and other days I can climb a mountain. It varies. And not just for me, for everyone.

We all suffer from something. Mine isn’t very bad. It isn’t comforting to know that there are people who suffer worse than I do, but that does make me shut about about it most of the time. I don’t like to complain or whine or make excuses. I get my work done, plain and simple.

But some days you have to take care of yourself, and instead of overexerting like I used to do, I refocus and plan again. I take a step back and ask what will be better in the long run. Today I didn’t go hiking and I didn’t get to see my beautiful forest, but I had, dare I say, an even better time. I paraded my red fabric clad figure all around my driveway, walking as creepy as I could with my head down, obviously, to scare my neighbors. And I created something I love.

Today, my success looked like a sleep in until 5:30am, a sheet hanging in my garage, and a flame princess. Heck yeah.

To anyone feeling less than your best, mentally, physically, or both, I hope you know it is okay (and rewarded) to take time for yourself, to do what you need to heal, and to put pride in your well being. And, big hugs from me.

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.