I was looking at my journal calendar and realized – it’s been quite some time since I created and shared a fine art self portrait with all of you. I managed to complete four of these pieces in the early winter months, but once we hit the end of the school year – my schedule picked up and I had to set the project aside. But now that I have a little break before the summer and fall rush – I thought I’d finally put together an idea that I had when I first started sketching out concepts for this series.

You may recall that this new (yet-to-be-titled) series is a self portrait series dealing with emotions or traits like hope, strength, anger, sorrow, etc… The many fragments that comprise the whole of a person. You can take a peek at all my fine art work features here. This is an image I had been thinking about for a long time, though it’s morphed and changed over time.

The idea for this Fine Art piece is Harmony. Well actually the original idea was Serenity… but I felt like the word Harmony fit better… let me explain. Have you ever had an alter ego? Like the person you wish you were? My alter ego is Serenity – she’s calm, put together, but carefree. She spends all her time outdoors and is super connected to nature. She’s more of a flower child-hippy. This is the person I often wish I was – calm, collected, always finding peace and balance. … Thus the image you see here.

I spent a while trying to find the right top for this. I wanted it to be fun and feel very “flower-child-esque.” I happened to find this dress/shirt at Target on clearance one day for $6 and the cheery yellow color felt perfect for the idea. I paired a headband I already had and a long necklace I wear often. The birds and butterflies, I picked up from Hobby Lobby for pretty cheap and you probably recognize our special little bunny.

I set up in our front yard, backlit by the setting sun. I’ll admit, I waited a little longer than I should have to start shooting so I had to rush a little to get all the shots I wanted. I did use an off camera flash to help pop a little extra light in and really separate me from the background a bit. I took a bunch of different images of the birds and butterflies in different positions – though I really didn’t use very many of them. It’s always better to have plenty of options instead of not enough.

Then the compositing began. The image I liked best I still unfortunately had the remote trigger in my hand – so I had to swap out my right hand. I wanted my hair to look a lot longer so I added some length to both sides by dropping in hair from another image. Of course, the birds and butterflies were added in too. I sat here with it for a while but something felt off with it… It felt like something was missing. And then I decided I needed more nature! So I found this awesome Creative Commons image of a mountain, and it was the perfect addition to finish off this image.

I put together another behind the scenes video for you guys on my YouTube channel too! (please excuse the grill blocking your view while I’m photographing.) You can check it out below 🙂

And the final image:

I spent a lot of time playing with this one… little tweaks and adjustments to get the feel I wanted. It feels really different from my other images but I really LOVE how this one turned out.  I’m looking forward to working on the next one in this series and seeing what unfolds as I go! I’d love to hear from you! What do you think about this fine art piece? And how long do you think it took me?