This self portrait fine art series is becoming more and more special to me with every piece I get to create. It seems so strange to me that something that started as just a single image… the idea of the elusiveness of hope… has grown into a series of images like this. And I love how the ideas morph and change as I create or how they will randomly come to me. By giving myself this space to create and be creative – I find that I’m acquiring a deeper glimpse into who I am and who I want to be.

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… 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. I actually created an image for this idea back in September last year but the more I played with it – the more I realized that it wasn’t really creating the feeling I was going for.

The idea for this Fine Art piece is called Insignificant. I’m sure you may have felt this at one time or another. It could be in relation to spirituality – the idea that you are so small in a great big wide world. I feel this way often as we sit on our back porch and look up at the vast array of stars in the sky. Or maybe it’s a self esteem thing… you feel insignificant compared to your peers or your parents. You might feel like you don’t matter in the grand scheme of things or as though you are under appreciated by the people around you.

So to convey this idea of insignificance or smallness – I wanted the image to have a slight “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” type feel. I liked the idea of working with a different type of material. So I ran out to Hobby Lobby and purchased a couple yards of this satin-y fabric. I felt like the shine on this fabric would add a fun new look and texture and also really help convey that feeling of movement I wanted. For the rest of the outfit, I simply wore a long sweater top and some brown heels I had at home.

I wanted to have complete control of the light to create a really dramatic lighting effect for this image so I chose to wait until evening to shoot it. I set everything up in our shooting space at the home studio, and then asked the hubby to stand in as my background subject. I knew I wanted looming feet in the background and after trying a couple different things, we realized the best way to get the realistic look I was hoping for was to have my husband actually put the shoes on and take a step. We took a few different shots to try and give myself plenty of options for the background image and lighting. Then it was time for the self portrait portion.

I knew I wanted to be running from the person about to step on me, so I took a variety of shots of me posing in various running positions. That way I could chose whether I was looking forward, looking back, etc. Once I was happy with my running shots, I took some photos of myself as I flipped my hair to help again create that movement in the image. Lastly, I took a bunch of shots as I ruffled and twirled and shook the fabric. Then I just pulled all the pieces together in photoshop to composite together into one completed image.

I put together another behind the scenes video for you guys on my YouTube channel too! 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. But I’m pretty happy with how it 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 these fine art pieces?