Idea. Shoot. Edit. The Hunger Games Photo Shoot

It is said that “great minds think alike”, this was confirmed when Sarah and Cody came to me with the idea to take Hunger Games inspired couple pictures, an idea I had been sitting on but with no one to shoot.

A couple of weeks ago we started the creative process: rereading the books, looking at behind-the-scenes photos of the upcoming film, finding the right outfits, props, and locations.

The Outfits

For Sarah’s “Katniss” outfit we found some green cargos at Target, boots she owns, a belt from the Army Surplus store, my brown leather jacket, and we modified a Mockingjay necklace to be a pin.

Cody’s outfit started with the black t-shirt and the rest took a while to locate. After visiting a half dozen stores we finally found the right style and color cargos, but Cody had to do some tailoring to get them to not look like “JNCO’s”. After finding some desert boots on clearance we were all set on outfits.

The Props

In the story, Katniss uses both a hand carved wooden bow in the woods and a modern silver bow in the arena, we wanted both. The silver bow was simple, Duncan and Sarah’s grandpa had a bow Duncan played with as a kid, after some silver spray paint, we were good to go. Arrows seemed as easy as a trip to Bass Pro Shops but after visiting four different sporting goods stores, we came to the conclusion we had to make one. A $3 arrow from wal-mart, fly fishing feathers, and super glue made our “Arena Arrow”. As for the “woods” bow and arrow we had all but given up, when a visit to the Tulsa Flea Market produced a bow better than we could have asked for! A wooden bow, hand carved over 30 years ago. Perfect. We were content with using the same arrow for both bows until Cody’s father found a genuine indian arrow in New Mexico. Now we are ready to shoot!

Location

We are kind of obsessed with going to the park so we already knew the exact location, Chandler Park.

Shooting

We took well over 1500 photos over a few days of shooting. We would rush to the park as soon as we could during the week and rise super early to get there with the sun. Cody and Sarah had some of the hardest parts. They had to climb trees and run the same path avoiding getting smacked in the face by branches over and over. Sarah is not naturally stern and hard so between shots she would be laughing. Duncan would be off on his own until I needed help down, because I was so focused on getting the shot, I didn’t consider the rough terrain I would have to descend. Sarah had a hard time keeping the bow pulled back, but gained some arm muscle doing so. Everything we did, we did for a reason. From their facial expressions to how sarah’s belt hung, we were very meticulous. We hiked, and climbed rocks and trees, trying to steer clear of thorny vines and poison ivy, which we did a poor job of. We have been treating poison ivy ever since. It was quite the adventure.

Editing

With over 1500 photos to go through and edit, it became a group effort. I narrowed down the photos to about 250, which I thought was a great accomplishment, but we still had a long way to go. Since I had grown quite attached to my work, Cody, Sarah, and Duncan went through the photos and cut it down to 70. After editing, I presented them to Cody. He sat in silence as I went through them, one by one. Scared that he hated them, and thinking that all my time editing was a waste, I was getting nervous. After I showed him the last photo he paused and said, ” It’s going to be hard to narrow those down.” Whew! While I felt proud of my work, we still had to find the best of the best. So the four of us went through them again and again until we all were happy.

As you can see this was quite an experience. So much of ourselves went into these photos and it is great to look back and see that.

Check out all of the photos on my website

How excited are you for “The Hunger Games” movie?

Pin It