This shoot all started because of a tree. This year was full of crazy rain and wind storms. I live in Morro Bay California and for a couple of months we had so much crazy weather and floods that submerged streets and damaged lots of property and unfortunately people got hurt.

As a community we had to come together, provide homes and resources until the weather calmed down. Lots of businesses were not open because of the roads and news channels advising people to stay in.

How It Started:

From all the hecticness that surrounded us so much creativity sprouted. One of the trees in the garden split in half and encompassed the yard for about a month. Once the rain stopped I ran outside and went to see what I could scavenge. I was happily surprised to see that so much moss had grown all over it. I collected enough to fill a medium sized basket. Now it was my time to ponder ideas of what to even do with this. I started to sketch some ideas and I landed on (now bear with me) ocean goddess + moss + gothic.

About a week later my wonderful friend (also the model of this shoot), my fiance and myself went to the beach at night time. It had just freshly rained and the tides were in. We found huge shells all over the beach. One of the highlights was my finance disappearing for 20 minutes and reappearing with tons of watched up crab bodies that were HUGE. So huge in fact that I know I had to include this in my shoot.

Lillian, Rachelle & Sheileen Texting lighting & background

My Chest Piece:

I started this chest piece with a sheet of worbla. Worbla is a fantastic thermoplastic that can mold however you see fit. I decided to mold it to one of my mannequins, paint it, add moss and jewels. For the centerpiece I resined one of the crab exoskeletons and added gold accents.

I punched holes so it can be laced up like a corset. And This is by far my favorite chestpiece that I’ve ever made. I think it mixes with my dark aesthetic and mermadic vibes so perfectly.

Day of the Shoot:

We started the prep for the shoot early Sunday morning. We piled the car up to the brim and charged the camera.

We arrived at the location about 3:30 in the afternoon. My assistant and I scouted for location and found a stunning tree dripping with moss. We started on makeup when the model arrived and did a transformative consume change that left me gasping. Was so happy when everything came together better than I imagined.

The shoot was a breeze and was us just laughing, posing and enjoying the active scenery and views.

A big thanks to my model and assistant that made this shoot worthwhile. Rachelle you were so professional and so willing to work with all the crazy ideas I had for the images. And thank you for being so patient with me. Truly a trooper. Thank you to my assistant Aether who is the bubble gun king as well as the best equipment holder ever. He trekked all of the shoot materials and made sure everything was on site when needed. Thank you to my other assistant who is my mother. She kept everything organized and used the heck out of the lighting tools. She made my editing job so much easier.

Editing/ Publishing:

This part was pretty easy. All I needed to do was tone the image, retouch some parts of the image and overlay some things. This whole process took me about two weeks.

Shortly after I submitted to Spellbound Magazine. It took them one day to get back to me and accept my images. Which is by far the fastest time that my images were accepted to a magazine.

Its publishing date was about three weeks after I submitted. They were published August 7th 2023.

Now images will be up for sale on my website. Thank you to everyone who helped and supported me.

Duchess Of Crustacea

The Sea Witch Blog

The Great Storm-Series