Ideas for shoots quite often start with prop and develop from that. That was certainly the case with my Sharman shoot which started when I was given some pieces of old fur costume that had been used by extras in the television series Xena Warrior Princess.

I knew that I wanted to do something tribal and primitive with them. And that developed into the concept of a witch doctor. The top of the costume was a single piece but for the bottom I glued pieces of the fur onto a nude coloured pantie. I made a headpiece out of dried vines embellished with feathers. In my original design I had antlers as part of it but for these proved to be too difficult to stay on the head so they were used as a prop instead.

I had shot with Casey before on two occasions and I know that she would be willing to play the part. I also recruited a make up artist Erin Gibbons to create the look for me. I used a previous image of Casey that I altered in Photoshop so that she could see what I was going for.

I wanted to create an authentic looking environment for the Sharma so I made the facade of a hut at the bottom of our garden. I used two lightstands with a crossbar to which I attached pieces of hessian that had come from a double mattress. This was sewed to the uprights.

I then used three sticks and sewed them around the doorway closing off the gap with coco sacks that I had. I finally adored the door with three seal skulls that we have found the year before.

I was concerned about wind and so I had the structure both tied to the fence and anchored down. Fortunately wind did not become an issue.

In front of the heart I built a small fire pit using rocks gathered from the river.

As I wanted to control the light, and the set was outside, it was necessary to shoot in the evening. My main light was Godox AD600 in a 1.5m octagonal softbox. In addition I had a small LED constant line that was simply used to assist the camera to focus.

I wanted to have a real fire in the images but I also wanted to ensure the safety of my model. So in the initial shots a small lume cube with an orange gel was placed inside of thefire pit. This created a glow on Casey which I was unable to use in a composite if the actual fire. For this reason the camera was mounted on a tripod so that it would make compositing the images much easier.

As often happens it took nearly an hour to apply the make up and then we move Casey into the garage to apply slip clay to her body relying on a hairdryer to speed up the process.

Casey really got into the character and this really brought my idea to life.

As it turned out Casey did interact with the fire and this added further to the series. Although in some images I also added more of it for effect.

From a technical viewpoint the initial images without the fire we shot at 1/160s f8 ISO 200. When the fire was added the shutter was slowed to 1/100 as the fire was not as bright as the LED.

I was really pleased how the images came out and they were well received when they were posted one was submitted for New Zealand Camera and it appeared in the 2022 edition. This is an annual print publication of the Photographic Society of New Zealand and it is quite difficult to have images selected.