Collaboration time again, this time with a burlesque/dancer/videographer Ana Morphic. Ana had shown me a studio in London that has a massive seamless white cove wall. This would allow for pure white backgrounds that I could utilise in post-production. 

I was looking forward to this so I jumped on the tube to Ealing Broadway on the District Line and as normal turn up 30 minutes early… OK, so I sent a message to Ana asking if she would like a large tea from the shop across the road. She did, so while carrying two large cups of tea I walked across the park with my hands slowly burning. I was hoping that my camera bag would not slip off my shoulder and pull my arm around splashing hot tea over someones unsuspecting face. 

Luckily I did not scald any passers-by and I met Ana just outside the studio. On entering, I noticed the cove wall was bigger than I thought and the main light had been set up already. Yay!

Ana introduced me to the owner and we then set about arranging which costumes Ana would be modelling. While discussing the options Ana mentioned the tattoo she had on her back. Once I saw it I made a mental note to shoot that and do something with it later. While Ana was getting changed I set up my Canon 70d on a tripod with the 24-105mm f4.0L attached. I didn't think I would need the wide-angle this time and set up a chair as a reference point.

We had discussed a few weeks before trying some levitation shots and my mind immediately thought of the famous painting 'The Creation of Adam' by Michelangelo. I wanted to try something like that. Not in exact detail but something in a similar vein.

Ana came out dressed in black with a headdress sporting a pair of horns.. the demon in our composite. The other costume was a lighter colour representing the angel.. we didn't have any wings but you get the idea. I dragged over a white box for Ana to balance on as the chair was only designed to be sat on and not to be used as an acrobatics platform. Neither was the box really but it didn't complain.

This is the resulting composite with a few extra tweaks here and there.. can you spot them? The rune brushes were provided by http://www.obsidiandawn.com/

Just after the demon shot was taken I asked Ana to sit with her back to me and reveal the tattoo on her back. I had in mind how I wanted this image to look so asked her to cover her chest and turned back to look at me as I noticed the lightness of the hair would be a good contrast to the dark of the headdress. 

Ana also had an Alice in Wonderland costume. This was a bonus after we were discussing doing a levitation shoot! We could try a falling down the rabbit hole shot too.

For each of the costumes, I asked Ana to sit on the box and look up at the light. I didn't really know where I was going with this, just wanted something to work on later.

The two hours we had together just flown by and I really enjoyed it. The light settings did not change from shot to shot, unlike a live show where lighting changes are in abundance, so we had time to try other shots and angles. I left Ana in the studio as she was working on some videos. 

I declined to get another scalding hot cup of tea and caught the tube home. I only culled a couple of frames from the shoot, just the ones from the start where I was working out the lighting. 

Really want to do that again!

You can see more of Ana as Miss Morphic on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/missmorphic and her Patreon site at https://www.patreon.com/missmorphic.