When Beth Beard decided to lose 150 pounds (68 kg), she and her friend, Toronto-based photographer Blake Morrow, came up with a fun idea: to create a before and after photo series juxtaposing the old Beth with the new. The resulting playful photo series, conceived of and directed by Morrow, was called the Beth Project.
Their dedication to the weight loss journey is impressive and inspiring – Morrow took the photos of Beard just a few weeks before her gastric bypass surgery. After the surgery and sticking to her newfound healthy diet and an exercise program, it took her two more years to lose the weight. Once she reached her weight loss goal, she was able to step back into the photos and interact with her old self thanks to Morrow's Photoshop work.
Thought digital editing was necessary to combine the new photos with the old, Morrow insists that he didn't alter her body at all. Her body transformation does the talking for her!
"My aim with 'The Beth Project' was to celebrate my friend Beth’s spirit and celebrate her weight-loss journey visually in a fun way that could encourage others," Blake Morrow told Bored Panda
"We shot “before Beth” a few weeks before her surgery. I had already planned out all of the concepts we wanted to capture her doing"
"2 years and 150 pounds lost later, we took her into my studio and photographed her 'after' self"
"I then took about 4-5 months to work on the selection and compositing process, pulling the 24 Beth’s I chose from the shoot into 12 interactive portraits"
"We shot in my studio for both “before” and “after”, and then I added the environments in Photoshop during my compositing process. I hired some awesomely talented friends of mine to do the clothing styling and make-up and hair styling based on the concepts I had developed"
"I then took about 4-5 months to edit the project- from choosing the best images of each shoot, to which combination of Beth’s would tell more of her story - it was a very exciting and cumbersome task"
"I’m a fulltime photographer, digital artist, and art director. A lot of my current work is in the publishing industry (book covers) as well as advertising and magazines"
Thank you, Blake Morrow, for talking to Bored Panda about your wonderful project with Beth!