Floral Portrait Photo Shoot | Resilience
Floral Portraits
by Yuliya Panchenko
Inside all of us is a version that is blooming with inspiration and a desire to express everything we love and everything that we are. While the outside world can feel sheltering at times, there is a power in staying true to yourself despite outside forces. Working with this concept, me and a team of creatives came together to visually capture this idea and bring it to life through a series of photographs. We experimented with body paint, wearable flowers, different lighting hues, and of course body posing, to convey the story and feelings behind the concept. The end result turned out incredible and everything that all of us hoped for.
Commercial Floral Portrait Photography
Our inspiration was to use body paint to create the illusion of an exterior that was marbled like a sculpture with the person’s spirit coming through. Floral pieces were used to represent growth blooming through the cracks of the “sculpture” and to contrast the hard shell with a softer look. For this reason, we started with the body paint and the artist worked on portraying cracks and added depth by using black outlines for the areas that had broken off. This added a three-dimensional illusion that would later work beautifully in images.
Commercial Floral Portrait Photography
After the body paint was done, the florist worked to add florals to the body in a way that represented roots and branches reaching up towards the sky to represent growth. Some of the florals extended past the inner parts and moved over the marbled areas. This was used to represent the idea that what is on the inside was shining through and expanding to the outside. Visually the body paint and wearable flowers came together to bring the original concept to life.
Commercial Floral Portrait Photography
When the moment came to capture the images, we focused on posing the body in ways that would show off the composition of the paint and florals while also using movement to convey a sense of breaking free. For one of the poses the model placed one hand over her heart while lifting her chest forward as if taking a step in that direction. Even though photographs are still moments in time, you can use posing to show movement, and that was my goal when photographing this concept. Another shot was posed from the front and truly captured the majority of the artwork while the model pulled her shoulders back as if leaning forward. This pose reminded me of a phoenix breaking free. I opted to keep the background color neutral for the majority of the shoot to not take away from the artwork, but I did decide to use different lighting towards the end to add color.
Commercial Floral Portrait Photography
The change in lighting added a dramatic effect for some shots that were quite different then the rest. The story that was captured was everything the creative team and I had pictured, and more. For me it's important to photograph not only high end one-of-a-kind images but also inspire those seeing the images. To capture a message with artwork adds a deeper meaning behind the frame and I want to offer that to my clients as well. Sometimes we need to break free of our marbled exterior and let our spirit shine through.
Commercial Floral Portrait Photography
Photographer: Yuliya Panchenko
Studio: Yuliya Panchenko Photography
Florist: Iryna Schulzhenko
BodyArt/hair stylist: Nadejda Olina
Filmmaker: Eliar Tabrizy @ Captive Emotions