Dystopia - Continuing the Theme : Christine Widdall

I’ve always liked to play around with Photoshop, since I got my hands on my first copy of Photoshop 4, back in 1997. This introduced me to adjustment layers and I’ve been besotted with what the programme can do ever since. There have been many improvements along the way, but I tend to stick with the features I know, working quickly but non-destructively, and I prefer to design my own “look”. Nevertheless, in achieving my own style, I have unashamedly exploited soft focus effects, liquefy filters and the recently improved masking features of the programme, to name but a few.

It seems ages since I decided on creating a dystopian theme and posted my first images back in November. Before Christmas, Eddie came over to model for me with his god-daughter Brianna…and Alaine, from my Pre-Raphaelite shoot of last autumn, was putting together her own ideas for a costume, which we agreed to shoot in the New Year. By mid-January it was all starting to come together and the first of the new year images took shape. Many apologies to the very beautiful country of Wales, because most of my wasteland and urbexing pictures seem to have come from there, so Welsh slate backgounds were chosen again.

Remember the lovely Alaine, who looked so pretty and demure in flowers and lace? Now we have the dramatic transformation to a post-apocalyptic survivor. In both cases, Alaine was able to interpret what I asked for…still relatively new to modelling, she is really showing her versatility and is so good to work with.