Once Upon A Time…. { Little Red Riding Hood }

I took an awesome classthis past spring and one of my very favorite ideas that was brought up was the idea of shooting for yourself.  Not only do I know that I need to do that for myself every once in awhile (see the Harry Potter shoot that I did just for me here) to keep myself inspired and excited about my camera, BUT I was totally inspired by this Mary Poppins shoot and knew immediately what I wanted to try.  That was a long time back and it has been cooking in my brain since then.  The fact that there have been 2 aspiring photographers hanging around our house this summer gave me the motivation to actually make it happen.  Soooo, this weekend I finally made the red cape and yesterday morning we rounded up all the other props we wanted, and we headed out to the woods.  (We did a little research before the shoot, reading several different versions of the story, and then came up with our own version and we will be making a book out of these, so I’ll be sure to show you the finished product!  Also, be forewarned, should you choose to research “Little Red Riding Hood themed shoots”, you will find mostly super sultry and sexy Little Reds….really?)

Brace yourself, I had way too much fun and I love these images so much that this is going to be a loooong post….here are just a few of my favorites….

Here is out sweet Little Red, heading out to granny’s house.  (The Brothers Grimm version has Little Red bringing cake and a bottle of wine to her ailing granny…that’s the kind of thinking I like!)

(Cape instructions here.  Thank you Martha!  Though I will tell you, this one is made of polar fleece, not corduroy, and is super comfy, albeit awesomely hot for photos in the middle of summer!)

 

Oh no, Little Red, watch out behind you….

(A photographer’s side note:  When I origianlly scouted this location it was a super sunny day and the light in the woods was gorgeous.  But on the morning of the shoot it was super cloudy and dim which made for a pretty dark forest and you will know that when you are working with kids, you are on borrowed time anyway, so we did the best we could and now I wish I had had more time/patience and had spent more time and energy finding a better lit spot in the woods but as it was, I was already testing the patience of my models.  Oh well.  Next time.)

 

 

It’s the dapper and dashing wolf, surely he’s not to be trusted!

 

(Awesomely, we already owned the wolf mask and hand-thingys.  That and the fact that the little miss is the perfect Little Red are what got this whole thing going.)

 

 

(Ha, ha, ha!  That one just cracks me up!  What a fine pair of actors they are!)

Don’t be frightened Little Red, I think I hear someone coming to help you….

 

Ah yes, the trusty woodman.  Thank goodness!

(I spent most of our adventure sure that someone would see my teenage son walking around with a giant ax and call the police.  That would have been fun.)

After we were sure we had all the story photos for our book that we wanted (and yes we had a shot list!), we took a bunch just for fun.

 

No boring old patent leather Mary Janes for our Little Red.

 

 

 

The victorious woodsman (you’ll note he has bested the wolf and relieved him of his dashing hat).

 

 

Little Red breaks character and gives us the real, patented, Annie smile!!

A big thanks to my fellow photographers and for our super-duper character actors!