When I started the Imaginary Girl series back in September 2009 I’d had in mind to shoot at least twenty-five different women for the project. But over the summer I was side-tracked by other work and the whole thing lost momentum. Only now, a good six months after the previous shoot, have I managed to photograph my twenty-fifth person.

The subject of this portrait is Sam. She recently got married in Vegas and the vintage dress, faux fur shrug, shoes, and crinoline, make up most of the fantastic outfit she wore.

We did this shoot outside on a very cold day and I was really concerned about Sam freezing to death while she posed. Lucky for us the weather was saving the really harsh cold and wind until after we were done, and we just had a long-suffering walk back to my place.

This part of the photo shoot was done against the magnificent pink walls of La Casa Gelato on Venables. We were walking past and I decided to do some “warm up” shots here, because when your model is wearing a pink dress, why not add more pink? The rest of the shoot was at a more subdued location and those photos have a completely different feel. I’ll be sharing them in a separate blog post.

I really found this shoot very invigorating to do. I’d been feeling insecure about my photographic work because I haven’t been doing much of it lately. Now I feel inspired again and hope to continue doing more fun and exciting portraiture in the coming months.