fairytales 4 // Anamaya
December 15, 2014
I’m so excited to share this story with you guys, as it’s one of my favourite from the Fairytales series!
This time I got inspired from a story I read when I was younger about an Inca princess named Anamaya. It was a SF book, with the events taking place sometime during the Spanish conquest. I honestly don’t remember any other detail, nor how the book ends, I just have in mind, very vividly painted, the image of Anamaya, as I imagined it and have been wanting for a long time to actually picture it through photography. So, finally, here it is!
We used some old accessories, transformed with the help of the MUA, the model and some golden paint and spray to make them look like gold. The feather crown was improvised by myself with some cardboard and black feathers, all golden-sprayed. I looked up the internet for inspiration on how such an inca inspired outfit would look like and the feathers seemed to be a recurrent theme (as well as those circular crowns that I didn’t have the skill to reproduce at that moment). However, there’s a lot of confusion on the internet between Inca, Mayan and Aztec and as I didn’t have other more serious sources of research at hand at that time, I decided to rely more on my imagination for this story.
The dress is actually one of my favourite materials I brought from Spain (and already used it in fairytale no. 2). I love using those flowing materials as dresses (I have 4 different colours), as they’re so easy to transform and turn into a different outfit each and every time, depending on what you need.
We shot on an empty field (I wanted to have a feeling of an arid land) on the outskirts, somewhere at noon. It was in October and I didn’t expect to have such a sunny day after having only clouds before, so the light was quite harsh to deal with but we managed with the help of our assistant, Mihai, and a simple silver reflector. I also spent a lot of time on post processing until I got the look and the colours I was after.
Oh, yes, and I experimented again with the mirrors, trying to obtain some surreal effects. I looove this simple tool and the limitless outcomes you can achieve with it!
And, last but not least (actually, the most important part), the model is the beautiful Manuela (who you’ve already seen before) and the great make-up was done by Cristina Foit. I hope you enjoy the photos at least as much as I do! <3
