The Project
This project was for a Christmas event at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Saints. Members of the church were invited to create art about Christmastime. I can’t draw or color, nor am I crafty, so naturally I chose photography as my medium.The Inspiration
Along with scripture from the Bible, I was very inspired by the Church’s video The Christ Child. This short film is an amazing piece of art with amazing cinematic video and epic and amazing story telling. Here are some of the screenshots from the film from which I got my inspiration to portrait Mary.And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
...A virgin, most beautiful and fair...
Mary
In my efforts of finding the right young woman to portray Mary, my wife suggested a dear friend, Ana who would do great! Despite Ana not being a professional model, she sure brought her A game! We went through several poses and lighting until we found that 1 hero image that I saw in my vision for this project.
Lighting
I wanted to achieve a very dramatic lighting setup. Shot with 2 Elinchrom ELC 500s I went with a large umbrella with diffusion directly above the model, and a big soft octobox on camera left. This lighting achieved the dramatic mood I was going for in the portrait. I achieved a nice Rembrandt lighting that I just loved.
The Final Image
Take a look at the zoomed photo for the beautiful details in the skin and her expression 🥰
I retouched the image myself along with the presentation in a beautiful frame I found at Hobby Lobby!
2 Responses
You know how I feel! Touched me deeply! I love this!
Thank you very much! 🙂