Photoshoot-The Monster on the Mountain
One day while brainstorming my author brand (and therefore the design of my website), I had a pretty fabulous idea (well, I thought it was fabulous). Rather than give a summary of each of my unpublished manuscripts, why not use one of my other passions to share them? By no means am I an expert with SFX makeup. However, I’ve stumbled my way through the years, picking up tips here and there, learning what to do and what not to do (often plowing ahead with things I shouldn’t do), and feel I do a pretty decent job. Not only that, but I love doing it. So I decided to take advantage of that and tease any future readers with a photoshoot of each monster from each of my books.
One monster I was looking forward to doing the most was Darius from The Monster on the Mountain. While I love the end product, it was by no means easy getting it. The shoot proved a bit of a challenge and so I wanted to share the “behind the scenes” of what actually goes into an artistic/collaborative photoshoot. A very good friend of mine, Rachel, is a very gifted photographer and lucky for me she loves collaborating for projects and was totally on board for this shoot. In fact, all of the photos found on my website have been shot by her. You can find a link to her website on my Contact page
But prior to the actual photoshoot, I had to start applying the makeup.
This was probably one of the easiest makeup applications I’ve done. Using tissue paper and liquid latex, I applied multiple layers on my neck, chest, and shoulders to get a textured appearance. After the latex dried I merely applied black, grey, white, and purple oil paints. I originally wanted a more rotted look (which is Darius’s actual look in my book), but after trying a few practice shots with the camera earlier, we realized that the dark effect I wanted in the photograph would probably drown out a lot of the makeup work on my body therefore making all the time I spent on the SFX obsolete. So in this instance less was definitely more. Lastly, I kept my hair pulled back into a dark beanie. This was done in the hopes of being able to hide behind the skull a little easier without too much computer editing needing to be done in post processing. Thankfully it worked!
The phenomenal elk skull was donated by my husband’s cousin for artistic use. This thing was a monster (pun intended) and it wasn’t even the biggest skull he had! But keeping in mind that I had to find a way of suspending it in the air, bigger was not better. And come on…this thing is huge enough on its own.
Rachel and I debated ideas and tried multiple ways of suspending this guy in the air so that I might stand behind it for the photo. All of them failed. In the end, I purchased fishing line that could handle the weight of the skull and tied the line to each antler so that we could suspend it. This “technically” worked. The weight of the skull inevitably made it flip over, but it was our only option.
We settled on shooting at night in my backyard and roped in a volunteer (okay, let’s be honest, I “voluntold” my good friend Jasmin to help me….she’s a good sport). Using the fishing line we were able to suspend the skull between a ladder and Jasmin (she received quite the arm workout during this shoot).
However, there was still the counterweight issue to contend with. The thing about elk skulls (all skulls?) is there are a number of nooks and crannies inside them. Inevitably, what I ended up doing was angle my head back, set the skull on my face with my nose in one of the holes, balanced it as long as possible while Jasmin tried to keep it still/elevated, and wait as Rachel ran around with her flash trying to get as many photo angles as possible.
If the neighbors looked out the window I’m sure they had a good laugh…or considered avoiding eye contact with me in the light of day. To be fair, I’ve walked out of the house with monster makeup on often enough that they really shouldn’t be surprised at this point.
Despite the few hiccoughs (this photoshoot took two different days of tries and attempts), I’m so pleased with how the photos turned out. My neck killed me the next day and I had a pretty gnarly rash from the liquid latex (please see video below), but otherwise I’m thrilled. Rachel had to step in with some editing to take out certain things (the fishing line which all but glowed under the flash) and crop out things (aka my bright pink and healthy skin that peeked out in certain angles), but otherwise this is a genuine, badass photo (in my not so humble opinion).
It is so fun to see a collaboration of different medias and how a person might create something in real life with just an idea in their head (or story on paper). I hope that you enjoy each of my monsters and hopefully can appreciate the amount of work that goes into not only my photos/sfx work, but any artists work.
