Hadn’t done a tarot card in a while. Had a lot of them building up. Including this one from my first shoot with Chaste a while back.
I really love the sepia look of the coin cards and can’t wait to do more. I also like the lingerie for this one. It gives a great old fashioned look to it. I actually bought that vanity and the screen just for this shoot. I’m glad I did. It’s made a wonderful addition to the studio.
With a name like Morganna, I figured I had to use her for a sword card (my gothic look). I think this turned out fairly well. A lot of my more recent tarot cards have been fairly prop heavy. It’s nice to just get one that goes back to basics.
I love her stare in this. I thin its absolutely piercing.
I’ve never been fond of my old Wheel of Fortune tarot card, and since I ended up using the model on another card anyway, I was happy to use Mandie for the new version when she posed for me the other day.
I actually like this idea a lot better. It’s less literal and I think it fits the idea of th rest of the deck better.
I always love when i get the chance to work with someone who’s not a model. Most people seem to think that they don’t photograph well. But I think that given the right circumstance and concept, anyone can be great.
Doc is the bouncer at the Tennyson, and had seen some of the other tarot cards and was telling me how much he liked them. I looked at him for a moment and then knew that he’d be great for the King of Swords. He has just the kind of imposing and menacing frame that really suits what I wanted for this card.
The shoot was easy and straightforward and I think turned out exactly right.
Still adding to the male tarot cards. I did so many female ones in a row that now I’m having to do a bunch of males to catch up. Wayne was one of the earliest people I cast for the project, but like so many others, it took me a while to get to him. No matter, I’m quite happy with the results.
I’ve been trying to catch up with the male tarot cards lately, so I’ve done a few shoots of guys.
This one is Marcel on the Six of Cups. All of my sixes have the modern equivalent of suit item. It took me a long time to figure out what a modern cup would be, as drinking technology hasn’t really changed much over the last couple hundred years. But then my friend Katy recommended a simple disposable plastic cup and I knew that was perfect. I had wanted to do a street musician picture anyway, and I like how the saxophone kind of slightly mirrors the cup idea.
Sometimes its amazing how simple something can be. I spent months obsessing over how I was going to rig the hanged man card just right to have someone hanging upside down by one foot. Only in the last week or so did it occur to me that I had changed the base pose of pretty much every other card, so why not that one?
Anyway, once I figured out that i should change the base pose, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this one. I had wanted a male bondage card to offset Temperance anyway, and Cade seemed like a natural for it.
I loved this one shot from the Jameel and Stu photoshoot so much that I decided it had to be the Lovers card. While on one hand it’s nice to have another card done for the deck, it kind of sucks that now I have to redo both of their previous cads, Wheel of Fortune and The Tower. Bt really, I guess it’s for the best. I want the deck to look as good as possible, and this one is just perfect.
Day 518 of 365 More. One of my professors back in school used to tell me that the secret to good writing was to kill your darlings. It’s a good lesson, but its one of the hardest things to do. The same seems to be true for art. With yesterdays’s posts, I’m halfway through the…
It’s been a while since I posted a new tarot card. I just hadn’t been doing them. Partly I needed a break, and partly I just hadn’t been doing shoots in general or those in specific. But I did get one done with Marlo during her shoot.
This is actually one of the earliest ideas I had. When I realized I wanted to use dead and hurt people for the five cards, I decided that I had to do the old tradition of placing coins over the eyes for the coin card. And then when I found out Marlo had a wedding dress, the whole thing just came together.
Somehow, I like the juxtaposition of a wedding and a funeral at the same time. Somehow to me, nothing says worry like a bride who has died in her wedding dress, still holding the bouquet.
Jack Scoresby is in town on his flickr roadtrip vacation and was nice enough to pose for the tarot deck while he is here.
Kind of neat having a Jack for a Jack.
Jack also posed for a 365 shot with me and did a similar shot himself.
And of course, comments and criticism welcome.
Opal Rae was another model I met on Model Mayhem. She initially wrote me several months ago wanting to be a part of the tarot project, but like so many others I was unable to find time to sync our schedules together.
Finally got that chance earlier this week. I’m quite happy with the results, and though its subtle, I feel as though the card says Mystery quite well.
One of the things I’m trying to do with the tarot cards is keep them as simple as possible. I was worried that I was getting too intricate with some of them. Lately I’ve been happier, as I feel that I am returning to the original spirt of the cards and design concepts.
Comments and criticism as always welcome.
Sarah was nice enough to volunteer to pose for the Tarot deck when she was visiting last week. The second she volunteered, I knew exactly what card I wanted to use her for. I love the tattoo on her shoulder and she has just enough hair to obscure her face in mystery and make a perfect High Priestess. Originally I was thinking of adding some background elements like I did with some of the other cards, but as I was finishing up, I felt like that would have been doing too much. I remembered why I went for the cold black backgrounds in the first place. Not to distract from the model. Just let her create the mood alone.
Comments and criticism welcome and encouraged as always.
Rima contacted me about posing for the Tarot deck on Wednesday and we shot her on Thursday. It’s about the fatest turnaround I’ve ever done on a shoot, but it was another case of just trying to get a shoot in when both the model and I happened to have time.
I was quite happy to work with her, since through happenstance right now, the deck was very "caucasian." It’s been hard to find people of color for it. Especially women. I was hoping her complexion still comes across well in the B&W.
The big challenge here was representing "love" while only using one person so that it conceptually fit with the other twos in the deck.
Interpretation, comments and criticism welcome as always, and in fact encouraged.
Sarah was another of my very early picks for the tarot cards, but it took me a while to get to her. I had been saving the Page of Staffs for her because I thought she was perfect for it. If there was a problem it was deciding which of the many great shots of her to use for the card.
There will be more shots of her posted later.