DECODE: Ephemeral Love

"Ephemeral Love"

Ephemeral Love, at its most basic level, is a simple portrait. The idea behind the photograph wasn't much of an elaborate one. I knew I wanted to create a character that wore a scarf as a sort of head-dress; to create a character that was beautiful, yet somewhat mysterious. When I shot this I was actually out on another type of shoot, but I saw the setting and conditions were perfect for this photograph that I had dwelling in the back of my mind. I think part of the spontaneity of this shot is what makes it that much better. I like to pair this photograph with this quote:

"In art as in love, instinct is enough."

The setting was the least important factor to me. I wanted the focus of the shot to be all about the emotion and intrigue in the subject and the scarf. With all that said though, I purposely chose a blurry background full of bokeh; I felt it added to the mystique of the photograph, almost fairy-tale like - not to mention it complemented the colors of the scarf.

The title "Ephemeral Love" is a double entendre, or double meaning. I don't like to get too personal, but this project is all about getting personal so in order to explain this meaning I'll have to. Ephemeral Love can be simply but as "a short-lived love." At the time I took this photograph my personal relationships were very "short lived." There was a lot of on and off going on and I wasn't really in a happy mindset. But that little tidbit was only a small fraction of why I gave this photograph its title.

The title is more of a comment on the short time and relationship a viewer spends with a photograph. For most people they only spend seconds with a photograph, maybe minutes. In this case in particular the subject of the photograph is a beautiful girl, something that can be easily fallen in love with. Yet the time spent with this subject is ephemeral.

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Stay tuned for Part III, read Part I here. Share this post!

James Elliott