Missy's Trash the Dress Session

Missy and I got up to what is becoming some very familiar photography antics this past weekend, this time to trash her old wedding dress. Not only was this an opportunity for me to get some time in with one of my closest friends and most favorite people, but I also got to finally do a TTD. Right on!

As it turned out, we literally DID trash this dress. If you're thinking to yourself, "wait...I saw her wedding pictures and that's not the dress she wore...." What you need to know is that Missy has an ex, and this was the dress from her prior. No animosity between them, but this was a symbolic ritual of closure, I suppose you could say. Official closure. It was also fun, laid back, and a little emotional (for me, not for her!).

This might be my favorite one!

I gotta say I love trains, railroads, and most things that are of an industrial nature. That is not to say that I love earth abuse - I mention this because I feel like people associate 'industrial' with 'factory' and 'factory' with giant plumes of sooty smoke rising into our atmosphere, miles of barrels buried in obscure fields grown over with radioactive flowers, trash-plugged streams and oil-slicked rivers. And while that may be some of the by-product of industry (and the media), I am still admitting I love industrial things. Trains. Railroads. Dams. Pipes. Wires. Solder. Huge machines that make things, that turn several small seemingly unrelated items into a new, functional and desirable object. Or turning a hunk of metal into a precision-machined object. That is all very fascinating to me, the processes and procedures associated with 'industry' - with making or building something. (I'm also fascinated with Mother Nature's processes and procedures, but this digression is long enough.)

Missy is Rock and Roll!

My father was a machinist, so perhaps that is why, but I know exactly how a machine shop smells and I love it. Metallic, greasy. That's a smell that I relish, that clicks something inside me to ON. I am instantly interested. Geez did I fall out of the movie "Flashdance" or what? (Subtract 'dancer' and add 'photographer'.)

And that's just a really long and distracted 'explanation' (even though it isn't) as to why I wanted Missy on the tracks to do this Trash the Dress thing. All selfish reasons, really. I would have photographed her only in locations like that - car shops, railroads, pretty much anything mildly-to-severely dangerous and greasy - but we had limited time and limited options.

And, when you need 'dirty'...you needn't really look farther than your own backyard. Or a local river.

I haven't edited these much, and several are straight out of the camera. I loved them so I left them alone. I do have this photoshop filter that I kept gravitating to here, but it makes the photos look green, and that's not what I had in mind. So I nixed it. I really want to do another Trash the Dress if I can find some willing participants. I'm trying to come up with some different ideas to make this concept more unique.

Thanks so much to Missy for being my guinea pig! You were great as always! xo

This is my other favorite!

Best Laugh. EVER.