When It’s Hard to Create: It’s Not What You Think

The hardest part of creating my images sometimes is not the costuming or the props… it’s not even finding the location.

Sometimes it is just seeing the image… imagining it before I can bring it out to the light. This has been the case with Daughters of the King in particular. I attribute this to the fact that this series is depicting a set of beliefs, not something concrete that can serve as a jumping off point to begin my story-telling. How do you depict something you can’t hold in your hands, and that has the same number of interpretations as there are humans on this earth? It’s not easy.

I was at a loss with Integrity. This wasn’t a value like Faith, or Knowledge, that had commonly recognized symbols like blindfolds, or books, or owls that I could use in my image to indicate what I was trying to express. I kept asking myself, how can I photograph just an idea? An idea of staying true to your beliefs? It wasn’t until I read several verses in Job 27 that I found my inspiration. The definition of integrity himself, the story of Job gave life to this very abstract value I was trying to recreate in photographic form.

[eltd_blockquote text=”3 All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils; 4 My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. 5 God forbid that I should justify you: till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me. 6 My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.” title_tag=”p” width=””]

Perhaps because I struggled initially with this piece, it took me three separate tries to get To Hold Fast right and, understandably, took quite a bit longer than usual to create. While I cringe at the embarrassing first two pit stops on this particular creative journey, I thought it might be a little bit entertaining if I shared them with you today.

My first take on this image ended up almost being a complete failure. Looking back, the pitiful attempt at a light ray coming down and the cheesy green fog are just…. Well, terrible. The saddest part of this little mistake, though, is not the cheesiness, but the fact that I spent much more time than I should have trying to get this image to look right. In the end, my photoshopping began to feel more like I was beating a dead horse, and so I finally broke down and asked for some second opinions.

I loved this second edit at first. It was miles ahead of the previous rendition and wasn’t quite so cheesy. However, it just didn’t fit the story and the mood I wanted to create in this series. And so, after staring at and trying to rework the image multiple times, all without success, I realized it was like someone had been shining their headlights right into my eyes. I couldn’t see anything except those lights… nothing except this now fluorescent purple image.

Ultimately I decided to “turn off the distracting lights” and start fresh from the beginning. I even picked a different set of raw images to edit, and completely scrapped the first two pieces. In the end, I realized that sometimes we need to just let go of what’s not working and not be afraid to start over. Even if it means hours wasted. Perhaps it is better to look at these as hours spent learning.

So what does To Hold Fast mean? How does a girl standing in the middle of a forest in the fading dusk, represent integrity? The best way I can answer this is by explaining the use of my props.

The shepherd’s crook, long recognized as a symbol of our Savior, represents Christ as the Shepherd, who guides us to safety. The forest in winter and the fog creeping in represent not just the evils of the world, but more importantly, the difficult times in our lives. Wickedness and “wrong” are not some giant “evilness” that people willingly grab hold of and surrender to… I have always thought of it more like a gentle fog rolling in, the daily struggles and the sorrows that occur in our lives, that obscures our path back to Him and eventually can lead us to do wrong. While all of the temptations of life are creeping in, it is our grasp on Christ’s love that allows us to stay true to what we believe and to have integrity.

Finally, my two favorite pieces in this image, the kanzashi, worn in Kacey’s hair, and the cherry blossoms, blooming around the crook, don’t actually have any symbolic significance for integrity. However they do represent Kacey’s Japanese heritage and draw the viewer’s eyes immediately to the subject.  I wanted them to recognize that, although Kacey seems to be wandering through this dismal scene, she still had life and hope inside of her for better things to come and would follow through until she found them.