A Dress of Leaves

There’ a tree at the end of a narrow lane near where I live, which for most of the year, I don’t really notice. In autumn last year, I found myself all of a sudden enveloped in a bright yellow glow and realised that I was under that tree!

The sun was beaming through the leaves, creating a world all bright glowing yellow underneath; even the pavement was yellow!

I really love trees, I hate when they get cut down and as a child I used to know all their names and spend a lot around and up and in them.

I still love trees but I guess as an adult I find less time to be close to them. The yellow glowing tree reminded me of all their beauty and magic and I became a bit obsessed with trying to show all that without just taking a photo of the tree; I knew it wouldn’t work out the way I wanted and that I was trying to show more than the tree and trying to explain to other people the magic and beauty and in some way get across a need to protect trees as they protect us..

I had in my mind an image of the leaves as a dress, all glowing from within. It reminded me of the ‘Flower Faries’ books by Mary Cecily Barker and I thought I could create a composite image of a girl in a glowing dress made of leaves with leaves around her, like she was the image of ‘Autumn’ wild hair flying and the dress all fragile like the autumn leaves.

To make the dress, I collected the huge banana-yellow leaves from the tree as they fell over the next few weeks. I patted them dry and then smothered them in vaseline!

I fashioned the shape of a dress; the skirt of it coming out at the waist like a bell, using chicken wire. Over the top of the wire, I draped black net to give me something to attach the leaves to.. and then I sewed each vaseline-covered leaf onto the netting using gold coloured thread. It took days but I was pleased with the result.

When I saw the afternoon sun catch the leaves as I was sewing them on, they glowed gold just like I hoped they would!

I had an image in my head of how the final photo would look but I wasn’t sure how to create it in the flesh, so we did a test shoot at Old Jet, using a big light to replicate the Sun and hopefully get the glowing dress I had in my mind.