If you’ve ever lived in the UAE, you know how the transition from winter to summer can be. Or not really. No one ever knows because it’s so random and unpredictable. It could be all sunshine and butterflies one day, and stormy the next. And the sandstorms.. Oh, the sandstorms. I love them. I don’t enjoy getting sand in my eyes and hair but I absolutely love how it makes everything look. Everything has a very apocalyptic feel, so of course I exaggerate that by driving super slow and listening to creepy/dark music (like Amy Lee’s Voice In My Head) and pretending I’m in a movie.

So I decided to leave work a little early and do a shoot, because.. LOOK AT THAT. I was worried about ruining my camera though so a friend of mine suggested that I put it in a plastic bag and put a rubber band on the lens, and also get a filter for my lens so the sand doesn’t scratch it.

These pictures aren’t edited by the way. EVERYTHING looked like it had a filter on it. So awesome.

And this is the image I created:

Inspiration for this image came from a bunch of different places. Sometimes when I’m going through.. a dark phase (I don’t know what else to call it). I write down how I feel in my ideas book and then exaggerate it and make it very dramatic (as if it wasn’t dramatic enough already lolol) and think of how I can turn it into an image. For this one, I wrote about how I sometimes feel like my depression is some kind of poison to everyone I care about. So I turned that into a story (this is where the exaggeration begins) of a girl who brings pain and destruction to everyone including the people she cares about, so she decides to live a life of solitude and leave everyone behind to save them from herself.

I was also inspired by scarecrows (keeping birds from feeding on crops/”protecting what she cares about”) and ravens (omens of death and destruction). So I knew I wanted to add a tree or tree branches, and while I was making the tree on photoshop (out of a bunch of twigs that I photographed the same day), I was getting frustrated with the image and started doodling on it. For those who don’t know, I’m a huge Tim Burton fan and I love all the little swirls in his trees (and pretty much everywhere). So I was all YESSS that’s what I want. I got excited. I used to draw swirls (or swirlies, as I always called them) everywhere. On my hands and arms, on my notebooks, on exam papers.. the list is endless.
And that is how this image came to be.

I usually don’t explain my images so much so that whoever sees them can interpret them however they want, but I really wanted to share my thought process for this one 🙂 I also thought, why not make a short editing process video too!

I hope you’re all having a lovely week ❤

2014-2017 Thoughts amani alshaali fears fine art photographer fine art photography insecurities inspiration photography photoshop photoshop edit sandstorm thoughts Tim Burton UAE