About 4 years ago photographer Ted Mishima and I talked about doing a photo shoot with botanical wings. Over the years the conversation came up many times, we imagined several concepts and gathered many pictures. A couple of years ago my friend Sheryl Tynes told me that she would love to collaborate on that idea. As she lives  in a different state, it took us a while to move forward. Two weeks ago she came to Portland and we simply had a blast! We learned a lot in the process and used so many tubes of cold glue from Oasis to cover 3 sets of wings with gorgeous spring flowers and textures. Sheryl chose to use a lot of wispy tree ferns and  and decorated the back with yellow, orange and white blooms. The 9′ wing span for Aidan’s wings were covered with chocolate brown ti leaves and my favorite burgundy spring flowers and textures. We decided to also do a woodland set – 6 foot long moss covered branches made for perfect wings and were attached to bark shoulder pads.

Models Aidan Burns and Azelle Chang, who both are accomplished ballet dancers, were the perfect models. Ted Mishima did his usual magic with the camera and we were so appreciative that Jamie Bosworth took behind the scenes images while we were setting up.

And a huge thank you to Sheryl – I could not have done this project without you. This was collaboration at it’s best and we plan on teaming up for more ideas in the future!