My inspiration came from Rembrandt’s Saskia Wearing a Veil (1634), which naturally led me to use Rembrandt lighting, something I have come to rely on in almost all of my portrait work. As I set up for the shot, I had La Solitude by Joshua Kyan Alampour playing in the background. The composition somehow created the scene: intimate and a little suspended in time. The lace veil became a central element. I wanted to explore how light and fabric can conceal and reveal at once.

I kept it simple: a curtain as a backdrop, a lace scarf over my head, and a single torch (my flashlight) positioned at a 45-degree angle above and to the side, just enough to form that signature triangle of light on my cheek. I used my phone on a tripod with a timer to take the shot. 

I deepened the shadows to carve out the form and added a soft vignette. That was all the edit I did for this portrait. Alone in a quiet room, I felt like I was living in another time. The world outside faded into silence, and in its place came a stillness that felt sacred, almost ceremonial. 

This portrait grew out of a feeling more than a plan. I had been thinking a lot about The Soul of the Rose (1903) by John William Waterhouse, a woman suspended in a private moment. That painting is not loud nor dramatic, but it lingers. I knew I wanted to create something that carried that same quiet weight. 

I have always been drawn to solitude and the sense of story that can exist in a single frame.  I wore a forest-green hooded dress that felt a little otherworldly, and I set up beneath a wooden pergola tangled with vines. It was late, and the garden had fallen into shadow. I used a direct flash from my phone, not because it was ideal, but because it gave the image a strange kind of sharpness, like catching yourself in the middle of a memory. My pose was not overly designed; I let myself be there.

I think that is something that runs through all my work: an interest in emotional texture, in layering light and setting and feeling until it says something quietly true. Unlike Waterhouse’s subject, who closes her eyes, I looked outward. I did not want to play a character so much as find a version of myself in that moment. No mimicry, just me.