Portrait Stories
Portrait Stories is an ongoing series where I share my conceptual portraits, the sparks that inspired them, behind-the-scenes chaos, and the lessons each image taught me. It's a blend of photography and storytelling - an honest look at the making of art.
Table of contents
A Music-Inspired Portrait: Butterfly
Inspired by Crazy Town’s “Butterfly”
Back in 2021, a couple of photographer friends and I undertook a project we called “Jukebox June” where we aimed to create a music-inspired self-portrait every day. Since then, it has evolved into an ongoing project for me and I have made many music-inspired portraits since. You can see more images from the collections here: The Jukebox Projects.
“Butterfly” was inspired by a song from my early adult years by a band called Crazy Town. I remember listening to it on repeat when I pregnant with my first daughter. And yes, I listened to the CD on repeat! Spotify wasn't a thing then. Not only do I love the song, I found the album's artwork incredibly interesting. When I decided to make an image for this song, I knew I wanted to attempt recreating the cover artwork. I knew bringing the light to life was going to be a challenge.
Here is a link to the song on Spotify with an example of the album cover's artwork:
The Making Of: A Living Room Studio, Broken Gear & Miserable Teenagers
I set up a studio in my living room. I am lucky that it has 10’ ceilings to allow for the overhead light. Here is a behind-the-scenes video clip of how I transformed my living room into a portrait studio for this image:
Just before this shoot, I was making a portrait outside and, as I was hauling all my gear back in to shoot “Butterfly,” my tripod fell over, hit my flash trigger, and snapped the hot shoe right off my Z6. The horror! How was I going to make this portrait now?! I enlisted my teenage daughter to hold the trigger down on my camera so the strobe and speed lights would fire. Let me tell you, she was not happy about it, but she stuck it out like a trooper.
Here is the straight-out-of-camera version that I started with:
What I Learned: Bad-Asses, Backups and Bodacious Light
First, don't I look bad-assed in this image? One of the things I love about photography is being able to channel your alter egos. You get to see what you would look like as someone else. Here I got to explore having finger and arm tattoos, devil horns and halos, butterfly pupils and purple irises. Playing dress-up is one of my favourite things about creating conceptual portraiture.
Second, when I was in the process of backing up my hard drive to online backup service, Backblaze, I had incredibly slow internet. I started taking my drive with me to places that had fast internet in the hopes of getting everything backed up. On one such trip, a family dog hooked the cord and yanked my hard drive off the table. The fall damaged many of my files including the Photoshop and Final version of this one. All I have of it is the original raw file and an exported jpg. I have since gotten much faster internet and no longer worry about backups, but I lost many great files due to that fall.
Finally, I enjoyed the process of figuring out how to make the light in a hand-drawn artwork look realistic in a conceptual portrait. For this image I used every light I had that time. I even had to shoot an extra frame to get the halo light because I didn’t have enough lights to do it in one shot. There are speed lights with green gels on either side of me, a strobe facing me, and an LED panel sitting on my knee to create the orange light on my hand and lower cheeks. Here is a frame showing the orange halo light:
Unfortunately, these attempts ended up not aligning during my edit (in post) and I ended up painting the hair light in with Photoshop brushes. You can never learn too many skills.
Final Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed this little insight into my creative process for conceptual portraits. I wish I had the Photoshop file so I could show you the layers I added to bring the image to life, but for this image, those edits were largely adjusting the light, adding tattoos and modifying my eyes.
Since I photographed “Butterfly,” I have acquired forearm tattoos on both of my arms. Unfortunately, I don't have butterfly pupils.
My Z6 is still broken. I might take it to get fixed this month. I bought a Z7 like a week later because I was too impatient to wait for my Z6 to be repaired. I tend to use the Z6 for low-light situations like music photography. You can check some of that out here: Music Photography
Since this is a new series, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Would you like to see more? Is there something you specifically would like to know about my work? Is there an image you want to know more about? Share your thoughts in the comments.
