My very first Halloween shoot was pretty epic if I do say so myself. Up to that point I had never done one and had been plotting just the right setting and subject. I ended up getting a lot of help from my good friend Summer. She was not only able to be the perfect model, but also styled the shoot to make sure the theme was right on point. It was a vampiress theme that looked like something straight from a Hollywood film if I do say so myself. The only thing we were missing was the blood. That was an unintentional omission on both our parts because we definitely meant to include it.
Now I knew that I would catch a little flack from some of my more conservative churchgoing fans. Maybe even some family members that were definitely more religious than I. What I didn't anticipate was that some folks would go to the extreme of deleting me for what they deemed sacrilege. All due to the fact I was 'celebrating' the Halloween 'holiday' with a photo shoot. And that was with no blood at all.
Well I've always tried to been one to march to my own drum. At least as it pertains to artistic freedom. If I have a certain vision in mind, I'm not going to cow-tail to someone else's expectations because they may be offended. Not when I know that the end result will produce some excellent images. They should consider themselves lucky that it happened when I was older. The high school me would have snapped back with an actual revolting shoot. I mean I am a horror film junkie so the possibilities were limitless. But I didn't go there.
Fast forward to 3-4 years later and I still had not done another Halloween shoot. Part of it may have been because I subliminally thought it would be hard to top that first one. Most of it was just because every time I had an idea, I never had anyone to help make it come to fruition. Schedule conflicts and commitments always prevented it from happening. Fortunately, that wasn't the case this year.
I happened to catch a post from a local MUA (makeup artist) where she had used some horns on a model for a shoot she was doing. I had been wanting to do a horned model shoot every since watching "Face Off" on Syfy. I just never knew anyone who had the horns available. I lucked up because the shoot she was planning to use them for didn't pan out. Struck lightning twice when I hit her up and she was just as down to shoot the concept as I was.
The model was a young lady I have shot with a few times. I immediately had her in mind because she has got the smeyes thing down. For those who aren't up on Tyra Banks and "Ameirca's Next Top Model" it means smiling with the eyes. The really good models got it down pat. It was essiecial for this shoot so that the model could sell that dark temptress look I was going for.
So then we come full circle to the whole blood thing again. I made sure it happened this time. It had to in order to sell the story of the shoot. She was a vampire queen patiently awaiting her prey. She finds it. She makes a slow first strike. Then an all out feeding that brings us to this photo. Now to be fair, I still found myself self-censoring a bit as it pertains to this image. There was a more intense next portion that I could have showed you. But again, I know there are some conservative folks out there. They can't handle full throttle. However, I'm still rather feeling this pedal to the metal.