Kevin Thom - Hamilton, Toronto, Ontario Photographer

It’s been a while since Laura Hollick and I created a new image for our Live Your Spirit series. We planned for an outdoor image, showing Laura posed like a white tree in a white winter landscape. We drove around through the country until we spotted the perfect location, just outside of a little church in Westover, Ontario. It had what we needed: a place to park nearby, a slight hill covered in snow, and a not-too-distracting background.

We did a few test shots to get an idea of the composition of the final image.

We had to work quickly. Although the thermometer read above zero, the wind was whipping in towards the camera, and quite violently too. I would estimate it was coming in at about 60-70 km/h, making it feel much colder than the true temperature. My light stands kept blowing over, and I had to dig them deep into the snow so that they would stay up. It’s a good thing hair and makeup artist Sue Upton affixed the wig very securely to Laura’s head, otherwise we could have had a real hair disaster that day!

Our plan was to wrap Laura tightly with white fabrics to create the tree costume. I moved as quickly as possible to clamp the fabrics around her using plastic clips. Canvas cones would create the “root” system of the tree. However, because the wind was so strong, the fabric kept blowing loose. We decided that we were going to work with what nature gave us, and I shot a number of frames of Laura dancing with the flapping fabrics. The tree quickly transformed into a winter wind angel. We couldn’t shoot for long, because it was extremely cold, and there was real risk of windburn and frostbite to Laura’s exposed skin.

After reviewing the images in the car, we decided that the canvas cones weren’t “reading” as well as we’d imagined, so we went out again to shoot some more photos of the base of the dress without the cones. I later blended one of these cone-less  bases into the image using Photoshop.

This image is technically a little different from my other ones. Usually, I shoot with lenses wide open so that I get shallow depth of field and can isolate my subject. In this case, because I needed a shutter speed of 1/200 to sync with the strobes, the aperture had to be set to the polar opposite, f/22.0. This was the about one stop underexposed for the natural light, and it gave us a very mysterious looking sky, with the winter sun struggling to gleam through the low clouds. I lit Laura using two Alien Bees B800 strobes at nearly full intensity, powered by the Vagabond II battery pack.

Here’s the final image.

Laura Hollick is the MacGyver of art.

While we were in California, we wanted to do a photo shoot on the beach. She found a couple of sticks on the ground, and with a few scraps of fabric from a local textile store, she fashioned a brilliant flying rainbow bird costume. We scouted an amazing location: the Torrey Pines State Reserve, in La Jolla. The reserve is home to a stunning beach, backed with high cliffs. Boulders, layered with gold and purple hues had tumbled down the cliffs, and lay in ruggedly beautiful disarray on the sand. They seemed the perfect backdrop for our initial photos of the rainbow bird.

Next, I wanted to see the rainbow bird fly, so Laura headed into the surf for some leaps. A lot of leaps, actually. It took a lot of trial and error to find the right angle, pose, and to time the shots and leaps with the waves. I think Laura leaped about 120 times before we figured we had the right combination of sky, sea, sand and rainbow bird. The sky was overcast, the sun being obscured by the thick marine layer that invades the So-Cal shores at this time of year. There was still ample light, though, allowing very fast shutter speeds for freezing those leaps in mid-air. After we’d exhausted our quota of leaps, it was time to cool off by splashing into the Pacific Ocean. As a side note, jumping into the ocean in your clothes is only fun until about five minutes after you get out. Then it’s just damp and clammy. It was still worth it though!

Later on, I reviewed the images on my laptop. I couldn’t help but wonder if the photos of the colorful rainbow bird would have been better with a bright blue sky. The next day, after we’d moved up the coast to San Clemente, and checked into a motel that can only be described as “kitschy,” the sun came out. It had turned into the perfect blue-sky California day that I’d envisioned when we’d started talking about this shoot. I persuaded Laura to don the rainbow bird costume once again and we walked down to the beach.

Many more leaps ensued. Finally, a hundred and fifty more leaps into the shoot, Laura announced that it was enough.

Here’s the final image that we chose from the many that we shot over those two glorious days at the beach. I feel that it captures the mystical character of the rainbow bird with a slightly unusual perspective. I shot it from a low angle, close to Laura with my 24-70mm f2.8L lens at 24mm. I asked her to leap as close to me as she could, so the wings would brush over my head as she passed me. This is what it took to exaggerate the perspective and get that shot that stood out from the others. To obscure her footprints in the wet sand, we timed it so she would leap just as the white foam surf washed under her while she was in the air. This helped to further the illusion of flight. I’m very happy with this image. I think all the elements finally came together in the moment to create a photo better than either of us could have imagined ahead of time. That’s my favorite way to work.

This rainbow bird photo is the final photo that we shot for our book Live Your Spirit, which is now available at Blurb.

Laura Hollick and I have finally published our first book, Live Your Spirit. After three years of shooting, it was time to put it in print. The book is a true collaboration between the two of us. Each of the photos combines elements of Laura’s art and philosophy with my photography.  A lot of the images in this book are the same as the ones we showed at our Birth Your Dreams exhibition last August, but there are a few new ones. You’ve also seen the creation of a number of them in this blog. Although it was an enormous amount of work to collect this number of images, it was also a lot of fun. It was amazing also how easy it all seemed. Sure, it was a struggle to get up at 3am to prepare to catch the right light sometimes, and we often had eyes turned to the skies, waiting for just the right weather, but in the end, all of it just worked out perfectly, or at least exactly as it should have. Anyway, we’re very proud of the final product. My copy is on its way to me right now. I can’t wait to see it!