I wanted to write a blog post about my process in creating the piece "Virtue," as I always like to explain how I went from the beginning to the end product. When I had first started taking a more fine art approach to my photography, my mom suggested I take photographs representing the eight Young Women Values. I began to look at all the scriptures and characteristics of each value to determine how exactly I wanted to take the pictures, and after a few months things had worked them out to a point where I felt like I was ready to start the first photo.

As I mentioned, each value has its own scriptures and color that represent the value. Virtue is gold, and so I spent the week leading up to the shoot trying to find some dress or skirt that would work for what I had envisioned. It wasn't until the day before we took the photos that my mom and I went to a charity shop in town and found exactly what I was looking for. Hanging in the window (and underneath everything set up in the display) was a gold saree. I thought it wouldn't work at first because it was part of the display and so probably wasn't for sale. I went and looked around the rest of the shop but didn't find anything that would have worked. Finally my mom and I decided to just ask if it were possible to purchase it, and luckily enough the agreed to sell it to me!

One of the scriptures that goes with the value is Doctrine and Covenants 121:46 which states: "the Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion." So I thought she ought to have a scepter and a dove as she looked out over a beautiful panorama. I therefore decided (with my moms urging) to take the photos at Brimham Rocks, which is this beautiful area just twenty or so minutes away with a lot of odd rock formations that afford beautiful views over the surrounding area. I had her hold a cricket stick so I could make that into a scepter later and had my sister McKenna throw the skirt in the air a bit just to give it some movement.

I ended up using two different photos of her: one for the skirt (the first photo above) and one for the head and front arm (the second one above), combining it to make the above image. Also, while the saree had been gold in the shop light, the day turned out to be cloudy and so the skirt appeared more blue than gold. I fixed that so that it shone more gold, and also made her shirt appear as if it matched a bit better with the skirt by tinting it a bit more gold (second image below).

As it was windy that day and her skirt was being thrown back, her white keds (I hadn't told her what to wear previously and I wasn't about to tell her to kick off the shoes and go barefoot in the middle of November) kept peeking out from the bottom. So the next thing I did was edit the skirt so that it would cover her shoes.

I also played around a bit with setting the dove (the Holy Ghost) on her shoulder, but it never looked right to me. I think that's because her hair is thrown over her shoulder and is underneath the dove, so ultimately I threw out the dove resting on her shoulder idea and went with something else. I also added in the scepter (seen below), which was taken from a photo I took while in Vienna two years ago (I love when things like that happen).

Ultimately I ended up having the dove flying in front of her, which I think looked much better. The last step was to stitch the panorama together and, as lovely as my beautiful sister is, I didn't need her in the photo, so I took her out.

It's always fun to finally have a concept that's been mulling around in your mind finally become a real creation and piece of art. I have high hopes for the rest of this series!