The Journey to Oz

I am so thrilled to be able to share this story with everyone.  It was a whirlwind 6 days!  It started with a old friend from high school giving me a call to see if I was available to be in North Carolina in 1 week because her best friend was flying out from California to have her engagement photos taken at an abandoned Wizard of Oz theme park. She knew I would be the perfect fit for them. For those that know me well, that movie is my absolute favorite and I had no idea such a place existed.  I researched it and it looked all run down and abandoned.  In the next 24 hours, I was put in touch with Jane and her fiance Jay and we collaborated and talked about our vision for the shoot and the next thing I knew 6 days later I was on my way to the mountains of North Carolina to meet some strangers who were crazier than I was and I was going to spend the weekend in a house in the woods with them! We both landed within 10 minutes from each other and they met me at my gate, we said our hellos, grabbed our rental car and spent the next 2.5 hours driving into the mountains to meet the woman who maintained the property.  It was a great opportunity to get to know each other, and get excited.  Once we reached the very top of the mountain, we were given the only set of keys to this very magical place.  So around this winding path we went until we reached OZ.  We spent an hour running around all excited like children and of course I began to prep how and where I wanted to photograph .Just seeing it I knew we had to recreate some scenes and tell our tale of “The Journey to Oz.”  The next morning Alyssa our hair and makeup artist arrived from South Carolina (a three hour ride)and began to transform Jane into our modern day Dorothy. And the rest is history.We were running about 2 hours behind because prep took longer than expected and we still had to drive to the location which was 45 mins from our little cottage in the middle of nowhere!  There was no heat on the property so we needed to prepare for the very cold temps, no working water and be sure we had food and drink with us.  Of course the day before we didn’t see another person or animal, and wouldn’t you know it, a black cat who we affectionately called Toto, walked right up to Jane and became her BFF and followed us the entire day!  We didn’t plan to take 4 hours shooting and prepping but we ended up shooting into sunset which was spectacular.  Our Journey to Oz truly was magical.

Behind the scenes……

Photography by Veronica L. Yankowski/VeroLuce Photography

www.verolucephotography.com

Hair and makeup by Alyssa Green

www.alyssa-makeup.com

Styling and concept by Jane Bloom