Inspirational Photo of the Day: Photography Talk

My fantasy image of a young girl exploring the dark woods was recently featured by the online photography forum Photography Talk as the Inspirational Photo of the Day. Recently I’ve been exploring ways to tell stories with my images and it has been such a rewarding experience and enabled me to express so much more with my photography. Photography Talk is an amazing resource for photographers around the world that helps photographers tell amazing stories with their cameras. Followed by over 3 million photographers around the world, they are the “everything” resource for photographers and it is such an honor to be featured on their website.

The editors at Photography Talk said “If you’re a fan of innovative and unique portraits, look no further than this stunning shot by Alana Lee Photography. The dark moodiness of the shot is immediately eye-catching, as is the way that the tree’s branches frame the young lady, almost as if the branches are reaching out to grab her. Photography is all about telling a story, and this shot certainly does that!”

When creating the concept for this image I wanted to tell a story about a journey and exploration. Often our path is unknown, but in order to live life to the fullest we must have courage to explore new things even though we are unsure of the end results. I find it interesting that the editors at Photography Talk mentioned the branches surrounding the girl – are they reaching out to grab her to try to hold her back from exploring what might be beyond the comfort of her woodland cave? Will she step further into the woods to explore what might be waiting in the darkness? Would you move forward, or retreat back into safety?

If you are curious about how this image was shot read more about it in my blog post that includes behind the scenes insight into how I created the lighting in this image.