EVA – Dafne Fernández

Well, here I have the last pictures I did with Dafne Fernández. Because it was a nude picture we didn’t record a behind the scenes video, but I’ll tell you a bit about the shoot and how the image was built in my head.

Dafne needed some pictures being Eve (Adam and Eve) and she asked me to make them. By then I was in Ibiza enjoying summer, and the photo had to be the day after my arrival to Madrid, so I was pretty short in time to construct the scenery and all that stuff. From the first minute I knew I wanted a snake on the picture, so from Ibiza I started making calls to get it.

But I was mostly worried about the fact that Dafne had to be Eve, and the truth is that she’s physically not a lot like Eve. We all imagine Eve as a blonde, chubby, rounded features woman and Dafne is rather the opposite.
I started to see classical paintings of Adam and Eve. These pictures are the most important visual references we have of Adam and Eve. I wanted to get Dafne closer to the character through the scenery, her posture, acting and light, and these paintings were going to tell me how to do it. I love to get inspired by paintings. Here you have some of the paintings that helped me in this shoot, being perhaps the most representative Durero’s Eve (the first one)

When I saw some of these pictures I quickly realized that many elements were recurrent. Even the range of colors, light and composition were very similar in all these paintings. The characters stand out against a black background (or very dark), the scene is dominated by brown colour (their skin, sand on the ground, the apple tree…) and there are some symbols that always appear, as the apple and the snake. The snake is always rolled over the tree and looks towards Eve.

It was also very important to me the position of the body of Eve, I noticed how it distributes the weight, the fall of the arms and shoulders, legs slightly crossed, the position of the hands … The position of the hands is a nuance but for me it was important, although I do not know anything about paints, is a feature I can see in many paintings of the Renaissance. Take a look to such important works as “The Creation” or “Last supper”, and observe the positions of the hands. They are very expressive delicate and natural in a fake and particular way, and I wanted that in the photo. I think it makes the photo more pictorial.

The light in the paintings of Eve is always very smooth and uniform, and comes from the left. I wanted to make a similar light, but giving it a more photographic look so I introduced the lens flare. This lens flare isn’t there only for aesthetic reasons, but also could represent the presence of God. I’ve put a CTO gel on the flash that makes the lens flare to warm up light, and a CTB on the fill light I had on the right side, to cool it down. I wanted a colder light on the snake’s side and a warmer one on God’s side

Well, here’s the picture! I also did a close-up, which fits well with the general, but doesn’t have that much of a pictorial background on it

It was great to count with Anaiu Blair’s snake, which is beautiful and behaved pretty well in the session. I never had a snake around my neck before, and it feels strangely well. Thanks

I also want to thank my friend Durbán, because he got involved and he came with me to a forest to search the tree. We found the perfect one!! It was hard to get it in my car

And of course thanks to Dafne, she is an amazing actress and it was a pleasure to work with her again. I loved that she trusted me to take this pictures. Marta Martinez Palmero did makeup and hair, and as always, the result was perfect. THANKS!