Twisted Cycle — William Henry Photography

For my next shoot I found someone completely different to my previous shoot with Annemieke, this time I wanted someone who had never done anything like this as with Werewolf’s most of the time this curse has been unwontedly thrust upon them, I reached out to a few models but in the end the person I ended up shooting with was a model called Alexandra. Alexandra admitted that this shoot was the weirdest thing she had ever done which was great because I feel that came across in the images adding to the shock, pain and trauma of changing into a beast before waking in a forest covered in blood surrounded by limbs and a dead body not remembering what had happened and how you had got there.

Georgina really put the work in here doing the makeup including false nails and teeth. We started by shooting the changing scene.

For this scene I pictured Alexandra walking along normally before seeing the full moon appear, triggering her werewolf transformation. I had to think of a way to show the pain of changing in a still image. So I decided to photograph Alexandra in one place having her go through various poses knowing that I would later combine them in post. For this setup I used one strobe with a medium size octabank off to camera right, high up and at a downward angle.

See below the location and final images below:

I then wanted to capture Alexandra on the ground in pain as the change continued, for this image I worked through various angles and compositions but in the end decided on this one as it felt more cinematic and pained:

Next it was onto the scene that I was very excited about, was the most tricky and required the most time, the waking scene. For this image I wanted the forest to still be dark yet show sunrise creeping into the scene, we came across a great spot while scouting that looks perfect for the shot, see below:

And here is the final image:

In order to create this I used three lights, one Profoto b10 with a CTO gel on the front to help simulate sunlight and Two broncolor Siros 800L lights one with a deep octa to act as the main light placed off camera left and one with a gridded beauty dish for the rim light placed off camera right.

**Lighting Setup**

In order to create this I used three lights, one Profoto b10 with a CTO gel on the front to help simulate sunlight and Two broncolor Siros 800L lights one with a deep octa to act as the main light placed off camera left and one with a gridded beauty dish for the rim light placed off camera right.

**Props**

For this image I really wanted to capture everything in camera, here you can see the fake limbs used in the image above along with the other accessories for the shoot. For the legs we stuffed towels into a pair of jeans and rolled up socks into the shoes making sure to splatter them with blood.
Shooting the image this way not only gave me artistic satisfaction but it also helped Alexandra get into character as she had something to work off of, something that I think really helps when creating an image like this.

Overall I was really impressed with the results and believe I was able to create the image I had envisioned when planning this shoot.

Next we then shot another setup which was to be a follow on from the wake scene above, this time having Alexandra run out into the middle of the forest panic stricken at what she had done. For this set up I continued to use the profoto b10 with CTO gel to blast warm light across the scene and used the large octabank off camera left, slightly feathered away from the model and towards me as the key light.

Here is the final image below, click on the right arrow to see a location image taken while scouting.

If you look at the location image above you can see that the way the trees are situated it creates beautiful dappled light across the ground when the sunlight shines through, I was losing a lot of that with the close up image so I started looking back through the images I took for a wider shot and came across one that didn’t look shocked as I had intended but instead fierce, Alexandra looked like she was far from a victim of her affliction but rather someone who had embraced it and that’s when I had the idea to implement some wolves into the scene as it goes without saying that every wolf needs a pack.

I worked at the image tirelessly till it felt right and what I ended up with was the image of a female alpha with two members of her pack. I am happier with this image then what I originally used for this scene and I feel it really drives home the concept. See below: