Nocturne is one of my favorite shoots of Toxic Goddess Leila. It was funny that we had all sorts of outfits and stuff available and settled on a relatively simple concept. Leila has a classical beauty and it’s easy to place her in a shoot like this. The down-side to her is she gives you so many great moments and you have to choose between so many great photos. That’s good problem to have. Leila really worked well within the sort of mystical/goddess/neo-classical idea that I was trying to put across.

The set-up actually reminds me of the work of artist Virgil Finlay. My initial title for this set was going to somehow incorporate his name into it but decided to keep it simple instead. He was an artist who specialized in pen and ink illustration. His work was featured mostly in the pulp magazines of the thirties and forties. The pattern in the cloth reminds me of the stippling effect that Finlay use to use in his work. If you’re unfamiliar with him, check out his work.

As a final thought, sometimes in photography you get what we call “happy accidents.” In this shoot I actually have one of those. Near the end I’m shooting into the light and there are some dust spots on my lens and it creates some really interesting spots on the lens. At one point it even looks like a small flame has appeared over her head. I felt the spots actually kind of enhanced the mood I was going for so I left them in.

- Robert Henry