Lily's Journey

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This is an old project now - conceived and begun with my regular collaborator Lily La Mer aka Frankie - long before either of us really had much idea what were doing. For various reasons we've only recently got around to making the results public.

The idea was to stage a series of shoots around a central character in her wedding dress. It was loosely about exploration and change, and at the same time we were going to allow the dress to deteriorate naturally in a kind of prolonged 'trash the dress' process.

The underwater scene was intended to be a pivotal transformational moment - everything which was to come after was going to be much more dark & surreal, and involve numerous other characters.

We managed 5 shoots over 2 years before some unfortunate events brought the project to a premature close. We might pick it up again one day.

(For nerds interested in lighting stuff.. follow the links from the relevant flickr pages for info on most of the pics).


Lily's Journey #1: A beginning; an ending; a fleeting glance by Simon Carter, on Flickr


Lily's journey #2: A final smile by Simon Carter, on Flickr


Lily's Journey #3: Travels By Night by Simon Carter, on Flickr


Lily's Journey #4 by Simon Carter, on Flickr


Lily's Journey #5 by Simon Carter, on Flickr
 
Thanks for the nudge. I can tell you my immediate favourite, that just drew me straight in, is the trunk on the beach. Not saying I don't like the others, but that really feels like a story in one picture and much more going on. I'll have a better look later I'm sure, but I do enjoy the wonderful images that do inspire me a little.
 
The splashing under the pier and the underwater shots. Oh my word. Outstanding
 
J Veitch said:
Thanks for the nudge. I can tell you my immediate favourite, that just drew me straight in, is the trunk on the beach. Not saying I don't like the others, but that really feels like a story in one picture and much more going on. I'll have a better look later I'm sure, but I do enjoy the wonderful images that do inspire me a little.
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Thank you! I didn't like that one all that much at first but it's definitely grown on me.

NickTB said:
The splashing under the pier and the underwater shots. Oh my word. Outstanding
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Cheers Nick! The pier splash is one of my favourite pictures of any I've taken.
 
juggler said:
Thank you! I didn't like that one all that much at first but it's definitely grown on me.



Cheers Nick! The pier splash is one of my favourite pictures of any I've taken.
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With good reason!
 
I love the hair and dress lines in #4 and #5 and the underwater ones are exceptional. If I didn't have a morbid fear of water than that's something that I would have loved to have tried.
 
Michael Batten said:
I love the hair and dress lines in #4 and #5 and the underwater ones are exceptional. If I didn't have a morbid fear of water than that's something that I would have loved to have tried.
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I can barely swim :) The underwater shots were taken from outside a tank - which is incidentally what made the lighting possible.
 
juggler said:
I can barely swim :) The underwater shots were taken from outside a tank - which is incidentally what made the lighting possible.
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Well in that case I'd better look for a tank.
 
Great set Simon, as others have said the underwater photos are excellent, so sharp through water and glass with a great reflection under the surface and I remember the pier shots you posted a while ago, very good then and still good and still memorable. #2 whilst a very good photo, feels a little out of place to me perhaps because of the more yellow light and traditional pose but then maybe that was intentional to go with the wedding dress theme.
 
I agree with Chris above, a great set some of which are memorable, specifically the under the pier portrait and the underwater shots.
#2 and #8 feel somewhat at odds with the others in the project. As sublime as they are, the eye contact in them just seem 'out of place' in the set.

It'd be great to see some more from this project Simon.
 
Superb set and a great read, thanks Simon. Hopefully you will do some more work kn the project in the future.
 
Thanks folks. I agree, the square on portraits don't sit so well with the rest of the images. The original plan was that they would be a recurring theme throughout and as the project continued they'd be sufficiently familiar that they didn't stand out any more than pieces of punctuation.
One of the things I wrestled with was how large to have the figure in the frame. I've never quite been brave enough to leave the figure really small or get really close; that's partly due to the pressure of collaborating with someone else and making assumptions about their expectations.

All that said, these were taken between 2 & 3 years ago; I'd do things quite differently now.

A finally corollary.. Frankie aka Lily La Mer recently donated the wedding dress from the project to a Syrian refugee couple in Greece. They met in a refugee camp, fell in love and wanted to get married - but of course had nothing, let alone a dress. In theory the dress will be returned to us; in practice we're both delighted with this as a conclusion.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1832327993719626
 
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