Meditation, Stopmotion Animation & the Heart of things.

I chose to work with the symbol, "om" "auhm" from Sanskrit because it represents interconnectedness, inner peace and the metaphorical alignment with the universe & higher conciousness.

Last friday, Januarary 13th, 2012, I did a photoshoot with actor & model, Victor Santoro. The purpose of the photoshoot was to create footage for a stopmotion animation, as well as to do a regular photoshoot at the end. For those of you who follow my work, you'll know that in the past I have worked with well over 20 photographers at this time, but now, due to a lovely birthday gift, I am equipped with my own professional camera, a tripod & a small traveling film light.

Anatomically correct heart layered behind the metaphorical heart, with tree branches growing out of the arteries.

This would have been my first shoot I felt confident enough in my skills to do my own photography; I am very pleased with the results. Our theme was the inner transformation both directly & indirectly created by meditation, with some loose interpretations. It was very organic process and I designed it as I went along. My intention was one of flexability with regards to the needs of my model; if he got too tired, I was prepared to be able to wrap up the drawing/painting so we could call it quits, but otherwise preferred to go with my flow until it reached the end. Which I didn't know what that end was until I got there. It's like the painting creates itself in some senses.

Beginning of the meditation process during the photoshoot. The timing of adding the "om" was meant to indicate the relaxation into letting go to the meditation process.

It was really nice how it all pulled together. When Victor first arrived to my studio, I shared my ideas which I had come up with during a brainstorming session the night before. Victor then gave me feed back and we talked the concept out a bit more until we had the visual broken down (didn't take long) as a mental storyboard.

Clips from what will become the Stopmotion Animation.

The entire shoot took 13 hours!! We started at 5pm knowing that this was an experiment and we had no idea how long a stopmotion of this nature would take to impliment. By the time everything was said & done, we had approx. 1200 photos! We completed the stopmotion part of the process at 5:20am, and then did approx. 40 minutes of regular photography. Right now I am working on the stopmotion, but I have the photography portion of the shoot finished with regards to selection & editing.
 
More photos to come!