No Other Author Promotes Their Books Like This! As A Photographer, I’m Speechless.

I have worked with Charissa Ong for some of her projects before when it comes to promoting her poetry books through the means of photography and they do get interesting as we went from one project to the next, but this latest project takes the cake for reaching a new level high. We were already doing photoshoots in a bar café and then a clean-sheet empty apartment back in 2018, but in 2020 we literally recreated a Pre-Raphaelite era scene that resembled a classical painting, and we successfully captured them in photographs.

Planning out this photoshoot took weeks, which inches closer to almost a month, as we sketched and moodboarded how we would anticipate our final outcome to look like. Our close references were definitely classical paintings, but we took quite a lot of inspiration from Pre-Raphaelite looking paintings, as we loved how the sceneries in those paintings often had Celtic-looking women, most, if not all of them, in pale skin, flowing locks and scarlet lips, placed in a detailed yet delicate background filled with floral and grace. What captures the entire essence of the painting were the melancholic expressions from those faces, somewhat serene, somewhat ethereal, but absolutely classical. Put a classically-written book in the subject’s hand, we’d have the perfect painting to tell the story of a maiden and the book she has written. Who else better to be pictured in the photographs than Charissa herself.

This project went into lengths of getting many different types of flowers, an actual throne, a couple of Celtic dresses, as well as drapes that closely resembles similar ones from its rightful era. We as a team have also took care and attention in the details when it comes to the hairstyle and make-up to make that Pre-Raphaelite fantasy more convincing. Put everything together in a studio, match everything up with the perfect lighting, magic began to happen and these images started emerging from the camera. Everything else, as they say, is a beautiful history.

We have spent an awful lot of sweat and tears to present to you these set of images that would easily appear as postcards. My only wish for you the readers (that have read this far) is to consider visiting the Poethree o’Clock page here, and consider buying a boxset and see if the writing is as classical as the photographs we portrayed them to be. Otherwise, we promise it will still make a good gift to anyone who loves a good classical book lying on their bookshelf.