Of all the weird things I’ve asked people to do with me, I think this one takes the cake.

On one of my annual visits to India I went on a motorcycle tour. It came highly recommended and we were told it would be a really fun time. And it was, but not in the way we expected. We visited the Mother Theresa house, Garbage Mountain (where our motorcycle broke down in front of a pile of dead dogs), a cemetery, and finally, a funeral pyre.

We sat witness to a funeral and cremation of a man and saw the family gathered, grieving but also celebrating. It felt wrong to be there, and we soon asked to leave so that the family could have privacy, though the funeral space was open to the public.

On that same trip, I watched a a hearse went down the street, carrying the dead in a glass car so that everyone could look in.

I started to realize that death in India isn’t the same as death in America. That death in so many cultures is less taboo. Sometimes death is a celebration; sometimes it is a cause for weeks long mourning. Sometimes we put a wall between us and it, or sometimes a thick, ornate wooden box. Sometimes, that box is made of glass, and sometimes those in mourning ask others, strangers, to join in with them.

Death is not such an easy thing to grasp once you’ve started traveling and understanding other cultures. This peek into how death is treated in India gave me pause, and started me thinking about death as a subject for serious introspection. Two years later, the idea for this series was born.

Though these images will not be featured in the final series, it was one necessary step in my exploration. These images were inspired by that glass car in India, and serves as a window – or really, an invitation – to get a little closer to death.

The experience of this photo shoot was all of these things: hilarious, freezing, difficult, dangerous (at times), and above all, absolutely wild.

I had an amazing team helping me. And when I say helping, I mean doing a lot, if not most, of the heavy lifting. My friend Dave Junion had the coffin made locally and we used his forest, his fork lift, and his building skills to get it strung up in the tree. Dan McClanahan lent us his height and strength as we tied the coffin to the trees. KD Stapleton took behind the scenes images and drove some of the heavy machinery. And Randy Verhasselt worked the fog machine and helped work out the electrical wiring.

Not least of all, Payton Bottomley, our model, fearlessly got into that coffin. I got in first to test it, and we did put it through some rigorous testing to make sure she would be okay. She didn’t flinch at the idea, and remained excited before, during, and after the shoot.

Step 1: Put the coffin on a fork lift.
Step 2: Drive the fork lift into the forest.
Step 3: Tie rope onto two trees after the distance has been measured.
Step 4: Raise the coffin to the height of the rope and attach.
Step 5: Pray. (Just kidding, mostly).
Step 6: Set up the heater underneath the coffin to warm it and set up the the fog machine.
Step 7: Test shots.
Step 8: Get model in place.
Step 9: Shoot from every conceivable angle…because we are not doing this again.
Step 10: Hot chocolate and high fives.

And so the shoot went. It took 3 hours from start to finish. It was a beautiful day, absolutely frigid, and we laughed so much we cried.

Do you want to know the secret to getting people to do weird stuff with you? Acknowledge that their contribution is worthwhile and appreciated. Be weird…as weird as you genuinely are. People love to hang out with weirdos. Create. Being part of a true artistic creation process is priceless, and a lot of people will recognize that. Give your energy and passion, and you will attract people who are looking to ignite their own energy and passion.

That’s my secret. I am wildly passionate and energetic about life, and I never fail to find friends who want to help me bring my visions to life. Though these images aren’t going in the series, they will remain a testament to what can be accomplished when your passionate vision gets loosed on the world.

The STORY

A year ago I traveled to France to shoot in the most spectacular location I had ever seen. I got there, concepts planned, props in hand, and I shot all day long, for hours and hours straight. I took the images home, proud of what I had done, and yet I had no desire to edit them. The longer I waited the more I came to terms with the fact that I would never edit them. They had lost their magic. They weren’t as special as I thought they were. They were complicated and the lighting wasn’t right, and I felt really down about it. I could have edited them and I could have created something from what I had, but I knew that I was going to go back, and so I didn’t touch them.

A couple of months ago I did have the chance to go back. I went in with an idea but didn’t put too much pressure on myself to do what I had sketched out. Instead, I helped other people shoot throughout the day and contented myself with enjoying the moments I shared with my friends. At some point in the day someone found a dead bird. I went to the attic where the bird was resting and I sat with it for a long while. I pleaded with someone to let the bird stay where it was for a time. The truth was that I wasn’t finished with it. I have a very deep and sincere connection to animals and death, two things one wouldn’t normally pair together, and I am inspired by separately. But put together, I become overwhelmed with emotion – and inspiration.

I find beauty in death, light in darkness, and inspiration in the macabre. This is how it has always been. I embrace it. It makes me who I am. And so I found beauty and inspiration in that tiny bird and what it meant to me, in my life, at that time. To me, inspiration is how we most authentically manifest our truest self. It is why we create. I took that little bird with me throughout the day, carrying him as I looked for locations to create self-portraits, while coming up with a narrative for him, and for myself.

I challenged myself that day. I went into the chateau with ideas in mind that were safe and easy and would guarantee results from the shoot. But when it came time to shoot, I didn’t do what was safe or easy for me. I did several things that I almost never do, as a rule for myself. I shot directly at light sources. I shot in harsh light. I didn’t overcomplicate the work with a lot of Photoshop or heavy editing. I kept it simple, posed how I felt, and embraced the emotion of the day. It felt right. It felt respectful, in a way, for my little co-character. It was all perfect, no worries and massive inspiration. At the end of the day my friend asked if I had anything solid to take away from my shoot. I said I had no idea, and I didn’t…and I didn’t care. It felt wonderful to do what makes my heart soar, to try something new, and to connect with my deepest inspiration.

The TECHNIQUE

While shooting each of these images, I exposed for my skin tone. Because I was so often shooting at a light source, that meant that windows were blown out and the surroundings were bright in order to see detail in my skin and dress. I shot each image underexposed as well, so that everything but the light source fell into darkness. While putting the images together, I used a manual HDR type of stitching process, matching up the darkened window with the nicely exposed images and combining them.

In Photoshop, I spent a lot of time refining the light. In each image, I identified the light source, chose how soft I wanted the light to be and began to create softer light coming from those sources by adjusting my curves layer like this:

I added vignettes to each of the images to make the light stand our more.

I spent a good deal of time selectively changing colors. For example, in the image with the red floor, I had to selectively enhance the color of the floor. It was naturally orange/pink, so I made it a more uniform color and enhanced the darkness and saturation of the red tones. In others I selected the dress to change or enhance the color, and in others still I selected walls/doors to change colors.

To finish each image I softened them to give a more painterly look, since the light spoke to me as being like something from a classic painting.

The CONCEPT

When I found the bird, I wanted to create a small series that would honor his life while also speaking about the fragility of life and how heavy death can feel. The first image I created was the one where I’m standing next to the large feather. In it, I wanted to show how small we can feel around death, and how looming it can be. In a way, we shield ourselves from death so that we can experience life, but it is only when we accept our imminent demise that we can appreciate the impact our life can have.

The second image I created was the one laying down with the bird on the floor. I really pushed myself with this one and the lighting, but I felt it was important because that particular lighting spoke to me about fragility. It seemed so perfect, with the way it raked across the subject and bird, highlighting the shape and form of the lifeless pair. I wanted to pose like the bird, solemn and asleep, eternally or not, to embody the beauty in death.

The third image I went about creating was the white feather on my back. I posed in that space first sitting up and realized quickly that the light would not allow for such a pose, with it being so directional and harsh. That was when I decided to take a concept I had planned for a different room and try it out here. To show the weight of death (and life) was something that was important to me. Death weighs heavy on us all, whether it is thinking of our own or dealing with that of a loved one. All of these images speak to both instances.

The fourth image was taken in the room with the red floor and black dress. I wanted to dress in mourning, yet also like a blackbird – ominous and strong at the same time. Foreshadowing death perhaps, or mourning someone’s life, was what I was thinking of when creating this image. When I started editing I was thrilled with how stark of a contrast it presented in color and light, and I thought that appropriate in such a dark image.

The fifth picture was the one on the bed, looking up at the feather. To me, death feels like a dream – it is something we consider but cannot imagine, something we dream of but cannot feel, and something that is, often, better not to think on. I personally struggle with many dreams of death and darkness, and this felt an appropriate connection for me, visually, to the theme at hand.

The sixth picture was meaningful to me because of a memory I have. When my grandmother died I remember lying on a set of stairs, I couldn’t even say where now, and looking backward out the window, feeling the light on my face, and wondering if it was my grandmother touching my face. I saw these stairs and the light shining down and wanted to create an image in that fashion, looking toward the light with the little bird in my hands, as if offering him up to the light. All of these images deal with light and darkness in a literal and metaphoric way.

I hope that you can find something in one of the images that speaks to you.

She is filled with heaviness
like rain water sitting on a window sill,
cracked wood, fogged glass, unseen.

She is filled with heaviness
like autumn leaves under a long winter snow,
waiting for the melt to breathe again.

She is filled with heaviness
like a small dead bird filled with worms,
under the weight of a feather.

Share with me a series you’ve done, or a theme you are connected to.
Remember to never apologize for what makes you unique.
It is, indeed, what makes you so wonderful.

What was most interesting about this writeup was the drastic similarity between the film I made in 2008 and the images I create now. The headline reads: “Shaden Creates Three Worlds…” while my quote inside reads, “We wanted to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.”

I worked on that film for one full year of my life. I put my heart and soul into it. And you know what? It really wasn’t very good. I had little concept of how to create characters and how to write a script. But at the end of the day, good or bad, it was so unbelievably me.

We can get so caught up in our craft that we forget to look at the bigger picture. For an artist who has a recognizable mark, it shouldn’t matter if they are working within their comfort zone, medium, or space. It is likely that an artist with a strong voice will be able to create their art in different genres. It might not be immediately similar, but it will have the same life, the same soul.

I can’t claim to be one of those artists; I haven’t tried hard enough to test myself. But what I am reminded of today is the amazing talent we all possess to find the voice inside that wants to be let out. When I was in my early teens I used to write morbid stories of blood and supernatural happenings…think of a Radiohead song turned into a short story. When I was in high school I took a filmmaking class on a bet, and fell in love with visual storytelling. The first film I created was about a girl hanging herself in a basement. The next one was about a girl who went crazy, broke out of an insane asylum, and drowned herself in a pool.

No one can say my heart wasn’t in it.

I know what I want to say. I know that my artistic voice makes people uncomfortable. It always has, ever since I can remember. From teachers telling me to cheer things up to my family wondering why I concentrated on death so much. But along the way there have been certain markers that have given me the confidence to keep going. A certain teacher telling me I wrote well. My short film of that girl drowning herself winning a local film festival. This article of my college film in Kodak magazine. And in photography…it is you. It is community. It is having a space to share what I love and being able to do so with people who do not judge me for it, but support me.

Milestones come in many ways. Sometimes they are concrete, and we can point to a product and date. But sometimes, and I believe them to be the most important times, are when they are substantial yet intangible; when you look around and have nothing to hold or write down on your resume, but instead have a full heart and a community of people who spread the love.

Thank you for being my milestone in photography, and for giving me the confidence to keep creating, expanding, and sharing.

Listening to a certain song in my husband’s car the first day we met.

Chasing hot air balloons with my mom through the countryside.

Walking through a pitch black underground cave with my sister.

Quitting my job to pursue art full time.

We all have inspirations and passions in this world. My own passions have been called creepy, distasteful, and inappropriate because of my love for all things dark. But nonetheless they press on in my mind, and I share them with whomever will watch, because I believe in the power of passion. I believe that one passionate soul can inspire another. To be wholly yourself and embrace your inspiration is to live a life of freedom and beauty.

Never be ashamed of what excites you. Be yourself, and others will respect you for it. Shout your passion to the world and someone will respond.

What moments have defined you? What are your passions?

A few days ago I was in Miami, Florida and I happened upon the Bass Musuem of Art. I wandered inside and asked the woman at the front desk what exhibits were up. She said that they had one inspired by death and fashion, and I immediately bought tickets. I was not at all disappointed, and drew inspiration from almost every piece of art I saw there.

I was reminded of how much I love death, dying, and the art of living. One piece in particular there featured an explosion (fog, flowers, debris, etc.) and my image is inspired by that as well as the show as a whole. If you get a chance to see it, definitely do. You will not at all be disappointed!