Queen of Hearts Photo Shoot: The Queen Cometh

Check out Part One Here.

After we grabbed a fast sandwich, we made our way to the Glass House downtown, which is the the most amazing apartment building in all of Denver.  I'm not kidding.  It's called the Glass House for a reason - because it's an ALL glass highrise.   I've always wanted to go inside, and so visiting Laura M. for our photography shoot was the perfect excuse.   After the security guard at the front stared at the very real sword I was carrying for a few minutes, and at Erin, with her warrior make-up, they finally called to let us up.  Why doesn't MY house have a security guard?



Her apartment was to die for. I won't go into details because who wants their house written about online, but I will go ahead and say that it was the nicest apartment I've ever been in.  Erin and I were having a hard time not geeking out over it.   Not that we had time to.  From the second we got in, we were racing.  Getting Erin's costume on took a long time.  First, the petticoat. Then the corset, the top, the coat. The coat had to be cinched. There were a few issues that we weren't able to see ahead of time that had to be adjusted.   The crown was heavy and at first we bobby-pinned it, but then ended up (Laura's brilliant idea) to just rest it on Erin' head because it was messing with her hair.

  Love this one!

Finally, we were ready.  I knew what I wanted, but as we all know, sometimes vocalizing what you want is hard.  I'm sure I confused Laura at times, but she totally rolled with the punches.  It's funny - sometimes you forget to trust professoinals to do their job.   I had all these ideas (which looked terrible) and then Laura had all these awesome ideas (that looked amazing.)

 Surprise, the amazing pro photographer is better at you at staging a fantasy photo shoot!    Check out her website: http://lauramurrayphotography.com/



First of all, I am so happy with the photos.  And the ones I'm going to share on here are maybe NOT the ones that will end up on the cover. Trust me, I have my favorites and I'm holding them back.  And these photos are UN-EDITED.  They aren't even perfected yet!



Erin did amazing. She WAS my Queen. Before the shoot, Erin had asked me for one word, one perfect word to describe the character that she was portraying. I thought about it for a few days, and just before the shoot, I whispered to her "Unflinching."   And then I watched her go.

The most incredible thing is that Erin is maybe the happiest human I've ever met.  And she looked...well, wicked.  What you don't see is that in between shots that she was laughing and goofy as I repeatedly tucked her er, bust back into the coat, and that the whole shoot was chaotic but fun.  She was perfectly unflinching.  My Queen isn't evil per say, but if you get in her way, she will run you over with her giant death horse.



More on that later.

Laura did such a great job.  I can't recommend her enough. If you are getting married anytime soon, or need a fashion photographer, USE HER. She is so talented, and so wonderfully kind.    I'm proud to recommend her on a personal level, and I can't wait to see her work on the cover of my new book.   Thank you to everyone who worked on this shoot:  Terri, Jenn, Erin, Katie, Laura, and Natosha.  Your work was excellent!  Now the pictures pass to an excellent cover designer, Chris, who will come up with something brilliant, I just know it. I can't WAIT to see it. He did a stunning job on Emily's cover, and I know he will do the same with mine.

I hope you enjoyed the photos, and I can't wait to share Queen of Hearts with you soon.

*I hope it will make you lose your head*

I'm happy to announce that, according to my own timeline, Queen of Hearts has a tentative arrival date of  June 2013.  Hooray!

*All images are copyrighted.*