Scattered Innocence
O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hush'd in and curtain'd with a blessed dearth
Of all that irk'd her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her,
Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
And when she wakes she will not think it long.
-- CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
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This one is about that in-between moment — not quite a kid anymore, not fully aware of everything yet either. I shot it moving from wooded, intimate spots into open water, which mirrors the shift the series is trying to get at: starting somewhere enclosed and private, ending up somewhere more exposed.
White lace and blue flowers carry most of the visual weight here. The lace ties back to that untouched, unfiltered version of childhood, and the blue flowers scattered throughout work as a quieter symbol of change happening gradually rather than all at once. I didn't want this to feel like a loss. Growing up isn't really a tragedy, it's just a shift, so I tried to keep the mood soft and a little wistful instead of heavy.
I paired it with the Christina Rossetti poem because of that same stillness — there's a version of rest in it that isn't sad, just quiet and inevitable. That felt right for a series about outgrowing something without mourning it.
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Shot entirely on Kodak Gold 200, entirely in natural light. This film handles white lace really well without blowing it out, and it holds onto the small variations in spring foliage instead of flattening everything into one green. The warm undertone also does a lot of favors for skin tone, which mattered since a lot of these are close, intimate portraits.
I timed most of the shoot around golden hour, letting the light filter through the tree canopy so it created natural spotlighting on its own instead of me having to fake it. Shooting wide open, mostly f/2.8 to f/4, separated the subject from the background and let Gold 200's grain give the out-of-focus areas a slightly painterly look, while keeping the subject itself sharp. The film's moderate speed also let me shoot slightly slower shutter speeds, which picked up small movement in the fabric and in falling petals without losing sharpness where it counted.
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Model | Madeline Ford
HMUA | Andie Peirce -
Philocaly Magazine (2016)
