The making of the Journey

Here is the finished portrait of the very lovely Karin Adcock. Karin established Pandora jewellery in Australia, and the narration captured here is complex. It tells the tale of an beautiful story of trust that happened when in India when Karin was in her twenties, and how that ability to trust empowered her business decisions and her life. As Karin will tell you, there have been many versions to arrive at this final image, but after all, this portrait is called "The Journey". To read the full story, you will need to buy the series "Unearthly" when it's published next year.

I really love the idea around Karin's story, which she told me about when we first met. I wanted to tie in the idea of the green fields or "grass roots" to the starting up of the Pandora business, which Karin approached in a very unconventional way, mainly because the jewellery industry conventions were not familiar to her at this time. I had an original concept of Karin floating (see below) which was also about trust, although we went with the feet on the ground approach in the end.

 Below is one of the "evolving" versions of the image. The background is moodier, and the Pandora charms are only on Karin's wrist. The background image of the mountains, and the foreground image of the fields were both taken on my trip to New Zealand in January this year. The sky is yet another image layered over the top. The suitcases were photographed at Manly Antique Centre with their permission.

 Below was the original image before "grounding" Karin onto the grassy field.

Below is a peak behind the scenes on the day of the photoshoot...

Here is Eloise applying Karin's makeup...

Below - Karin models one of dresses that we brought along for the photoshoot. We didn't end up going with this one.

Warming up for the photoshoot - and it was cold in there! At least until the heater warmed it up a little.

 Eloise took a shot from above...

The original dress in the final portrait was actually black, and I inverted the colour to make it white. The black was too harsh for the atmosphere I was trying to achieve visually.

 Below is one of the versions of Karin in the black dress, and floating, as I had originally envisioned.

 So this the end of this story for "The Journey", but definitely not the end of the Unearthly journey...