Some of you may have seen the image ‘inner journey’ that was shot both for my own enjoyment and for a challenge entry at dgrin.com in the DSS challenges forum. What I have never revealed are the behind the scenes preparations and thoughts behind the creation of the image.

inner journey

The challenge was to shoot an image that represented either Chaos or Serenity. I chose to shoot serenity mainly because it comes much more naturally to me, an immediate image that came into my mind was a yoga practitioner surrounded by nature and peaceful elements. My vision included candle lit lanterns water and reflections of those things in the water.

The first challenge was to find a model that I felt fit the role perfectly and as luck would have it that person was close at hand. Maria a good friend and leader, readily volunteered to help me out. Second challenge was to find at least 40 tea light lanterns. This challenge was met by deciding to make the lanterns myself with the help of my wife. Two days and four really sore hands later we had 60 paper lanterns with coat hanger wire stands.

The lanterns are created by cutting a sheet of 8.5×11 paper in half and folding it into a topless cube. For the bottoms, a small square of corrugated plastic (coroplast) is used for stability and a straightened coat hanger is stuck through the plastic square and bent at a 90 degree angle. You can see the bottoms near the pliers on the table. Then the bottom is stuck through the paper cube and is stuck down with a small loop of masking tape. Finally a tea light candle is placed in the center of the cube with another loop of tape.

Once the lanterns were ready the final challenge was to find a suitable place to set them up and do the shoot. We wrestled with several ideas, from creating a pond in my back yard to a lakeside private Zen garden that had its own network of artificial streams and ponds. In the end another good friend who owns a forested section of land that borders a local creek, was happy to let us setup in a section of the creek where the water was calm due to large log that acts as a dam and slowed the flow of the creek down considerably.

The depth of the water near the log was about 16-20 inches but quickly became deeper as the lantern path moved out from the log. The water was almost 3 feet deep about 4 to 5 feet in front of the lanterns, so moving from the log to my shooting position was an exercise in careful stepping through silt, fallen sticks and leaves at the bottom of the creek. I was wearing hip waders to protect myself from the icy water. To give you an idea of how cold this shoot was it was shot on March 08, 2009 at around 10 am and it snowed a light dusting of snow that morning. Maria was an absolute trooper and was very cold by the time the shoot was over (about 30 minutes).

I started out by using several remote flashes to try and achieve some dramatic lighting but ended up just using the natural light filtering through the canopy of trees above. I went back later in the evening to take a few pictures of the lantern path with the tea lights lit up in the dark.

One of the reasons this shoot was one of my favorites this year is the amount of preparation and work involved in bringing it to fruition. It wasn’t just me that went out and shot something it was a collaboration of many friends and their generosity. Working with the people involved was both very rewarding and fun. The more I am involved with photography the more I realize that it is the people you meet and work with that make it such a worthwhile passion.

Incidentally the image did take first place in the challenge. My regular participation in the challenges have given me a great reason to explore my creativity and find out who I am as a photographer, I have made some great friends along the way as well.