“From you the flowers grow, and do you understand with every seed you sow you make this cold world, beautiful.”
― Florence Welsh
One morning while out location scouting deep in the woods I came across a strange and striking sight.
A fallen tree, its bare limbs spread out almost as though searching for a subject to embrace. The bizarre architecture of it sparked my imagination and a seed of idea began to grow.
I reached out to local florist Safia who had reached out to me before on Instagram. After meeting with her I knew she’d be the perfect person for the job! I wanted the flowers in this scene to play on this concept of bloom and growth and I thought that this would work quite interestingly against the starkness of the tree limbs.
Photo by Alastair Jolly
Our model for this shoot was Isaac, a young lad on the cusp of manhood. He also happens to be Scarlett’s brother, yes I know, the good genes run strong in this family!
For this piece I was inspired by my brothers. Both young men that I’ve watched grow and shift, into adulthood navigating all that it entails.
For the styling I wanted to transform Isaac into a character, inviting him into my world of play and make believe. I was certainly inspired by roman-esque and fairytale influences
The idea was to create a scene that captures a moment in time, to play upon the themes of the innocence and make believe of childhood, the inescapable blooming into adulthood, and an unknown world lurking and waiting.
Not gonna lie, the tree did remind me of the shadow monster from Stranger Things. And it wasn’t until post production that I noticed the strange face-like detail on it! It gave me chills! Perfectly positioned to feed the story of the piece and bring another level of detail and character. Can you see it too?
Photo by Alastair Jolly
“From you the flowers grow…”
C R E D I T S
Model: Isaac
Florist: Safia Floral Design
Assistant: Scarlett
Lighting Assistant: Jake Hicks
Retouching: Bella & Pratik Naik
SmugMug team: Alastair Jolly & Anton Lorimer
GEAR
Camera: Phase One IQ3 100MP Trichromatic
Lenses: 55mm & 80mm Schneider Kreuznach
Lighting: Profoto A1
Edited with Capture One & Photoshop CC
Check out the SmugMug film!
A closer look…
Click on each image to view it larger!
““How strange it is that when I was a child I tried to be like a grownup, yet as soon as I ceased to be a child I often longed to be like one.””
