A very good but wet Monday morning to you. It looks like Hurricane Patricia did not want us to feel left out and after hitting the west coast has brought her leftovers to the southeast.
As a child, I cannot think of a day that I looked forward to more then Halloween except if that day was a holiday called Christmas. Halloween was the one-day that allowed us to live out our childhood fantasies and become our favorite superhero, goblin or Disney character. It was the one day that we could go out and terrorize the neighborhood with all the other ghouls and goblins and not get in trouble for our unruly actions. Of course, what we looked most to on that evening every year was the payoff, the bag of candy that we came home with.
Halloween is no longer a day just for children but has become one of the most favored days for adults to dress up and play. Projections list Halloween as the 4th most popular spending holiday of the year with people spending over $ 2.6 billion on costumes and over $ 330 million on pet costumes. We can only guesstimate how much is spent on candy and then on dental bills!
I have had the luxury over my many years of photography to create images that represent the many holidays and Halloween has become one of my favorites to do so. I have been fortunate enough to work with some great make-up artists and talented models to bring Halloween visions to fruition. One such shoot was with Makeup Artist, Sylvia Smith and model April Thomas. Starting out with a creative face design the concept grew into a full blown Halloween set.
As most of you know I have been on the road for the past two months. One of the things I looked forward to while I was in Venice was visiting the Venetian mask shops. I have been a collector of masks for quite sometime and I could not wait to experience first hand the history and making of these masks. I was fortunate enough to find two new masks, out of the thousands of designs, while I was there that ended up coming home with me.
I was not home alone for long before I was back on an airplane heading off to Las Vegas and then on to Houston. While in Vegas we visited Old Vegas and the many galleries and stores outside the glitz and glam of the Strip. While there we came across a shop selling Day of the Dead masks that evolved from the Hispanic celebration of the holiday. Browsing through the store, I found another mask I was unable to leave with out. While shooting in Houston I found a wonderful location and asked one of the models to poise with the mask. As much as I hated to cover the face of the very lovely, Bayley Marie, she was most willing to participate. So back we went into a small alley and captured the image below.
My wish for you this week is that you find the inner child again and enjoy a most wonderful Halloween weekend.
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Best regards ……..
dK
