As part of my fine art photography services, I often do a series of images on a theme, this theme was for my daughter who wanted to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
So many young girls love Disney Princesses, but the story of Belle, a courageous, unique, clever young girl who sees’s past the superficial is a favourite story of mine, and with the new movie being released we had to do a mini shoot to really celebrate Beauty and the Beast.
The first images I used backdrops I have been using a lot, they are part of my Spring collections and all I needed to do was work out what pose would work best and to a studio photo shoot.
I shot these on a black backdrop instead of the green as the green tint would sparkle in the dress and throw off the white balance. The black background made such a lovely portrait with the Rose that I made this into an image itself.
Beauty and the Beast fairytale photoshoot
The first image was a simple image in bluebells, not really that relevant to the story but made a nice image.
I then decided to create an image that depicted the scary scene where Belle is lost in the woods. I shot this with a little lantern in studio and used a different lighting set up to make this darker and moodier. I added some more glow to make the scene a little more magical for my Princess in the studio.
The next image I wanted to show Belle’s love of books as well as the enchanted castle so we recreated a Spring scene with a fairy tale book we had. The Rose was prominent throughout, mostly because the little Princess loved it and didn’t want to let go in the studio.
The favourite of these images was the swing, although this isn’t much to do with the original Disney cartoon or film it was a lovely image and I took a photograph of our Princess on a chair in the studio and got her to hold a long pole which would depict the vines of the swing.
This was her favourite image of these, the yellow dress really stood out against the green scenery.
The last image used the same portraits but this time I did a more complicated composite, putting together lots of stock images to create a ballroom scene, this was shared with me by a friend and took a while to master. However, it makes a much more impressive image. and finishes off the series well.
