I was very proud when I saw this image displayed with a bronze banner at the 2017 NZIPP Iris awards. This image had been entered in illustrative and had many amazing entries. I wasn’t confident that I would get a placing because this image is mostly constructed on Photoshop. However, the category, illustrative, is for photo manipulation.

In this image I wanted to portray that even when the model was still. She was still dancing.

My niece, Meno, modelled for this shoot. Her shadows are different shots of her dancing. I cut them out using channels in photoshop and added them to her main picture. For the lighting, I used a 50% grey overlay and colour dodged the highlights with the dodge tool.

When I was looking through the images to choose which one. I was struck by her cheek bones and her chiseled features. When I edited the image I enhanced those features with the dodge tool.

I am very happy that this image placed well.