Shawan Na saw this image on the wall of my studio and immediately wanted to do a Dexter themed session.
This session was photographed a year and a half ago. Right after I did it, I had a crisis of conscience about it. I truly could not bring myself to edit it and share it. I am fairly certain only a single image was released at the time.
It's not that I hate the session. I had no problem doing the session for Jenna Syde's album cover, but this one was different to me.
The album cover was more of a comic book vibe. You know from the images that it's meant for shock value and is even a bit comedic. It was not about violence, despite depicting murder, if that makes any sense.
This session was different. Once I looked at the images I felt like I was breaking all of my personal rules. I want to capture and present beauty, and this did not do that. I found it ugly and stepped away from it.
I explained it to the people in the session, and they had access to the images for their own use, but it never saw the light of day. The only image we released was one that was more about scary, rather than sheer violence.
So why am I releasing these images now? First, it keeps coming up when I talk to the model. She liked it, and as a photographer, I owe them to her.
Second, my feelings about the violent nature of the images has changed. I finally pushed myself to look through them and I saw several images where the model was clowning, and I was reminded that this was meant to be fun.
So I got over myself and cleaned up the images and here they are.
I have no intention of doing more images like this. I have to see beauty in the images, and while some may see it in these, I do not. I love working with Shawan Na, and she is great in the photos, but this just isn't my cup of tea.
See the images below.