Every so often I put down the booking calendar and do something purely for the fun of it. This was one of those projects.
The idea came to me and I immediately knew who I wanted in front of the camera. She’s been coming to the studio for years, her and her mum are always brilliant company, and as soon as I pictured the concept, I could see her in it. She’s confident in front of the camera, and it turned out she could act too, which mattered a lot for this one.
Because most of the backgrounds are digital composites, the poses and expressions had to be very deliberate. You can’t just stand there and look nice, you have to actually sell the scene. Falling down a rabbit hole requires a specific kind of controlled chaos, and that’s not as easy as it sounds. Her mum was an excellent sport throughout, including a stint standing off to one side blasting her daughter with a hairdryer to get the movement right in the hair and dress for the falling shot. Proper behind-the-scenes commitment.
The sequence runs in order: reading on the sofa, drifting off to sleep, falling down the rabbit hole, stepping out through the pages of the book, and finally wandering through Wonderland itself, glowing mushrooms, fireflies, the lot.
It was one of those days in the studio that reminds you why you picked up a camera in the first place. Staying creative outside of client work keeps the work itself better. That’s the theory and I’m sticking to it.