Three Twisted Knots

So, my Loyal Followers (all three of you!) know that I entered the Create Your Own Tarot Photo Contest last month. When I posted about this last, I included some of the scratch images from my contest entries, but not the actual entries. I don’t know why I did that: I guess I was being precious.

I didn’t win any prizes in this contest, though I had a great time doing it and enjoyed creating all the personae for my tarot cards. I’m pretty sure I don’t have permission to post pictures of the winners here, so I’ll link you to the CYOT Tarot Card Photo Gallery. The winners are listed prominently. For the most part, I agreed with the judges’ choices. All the people I’ve met who are involved with this even, including the other contest participants, have been loads of fun and just generally great people.

The second event, based on Card 1 from the Major Arcana, The Magician, is slated to begin today. Well, it’s already 15 April in this part of the world, anyway! I don’t have any advance information about when the event will open today or even any knowledge of what will be there, but if you follow the first link above, you’ll come to the general CYOT gallery, and some creators have put photos of items that look suspiciously like they’ll be part of this event there.

Anyway, just because I feel kind of stupid about being precious last month, and also because I’m pretty proud of these, even though they were not winners, here are my entries into this photo contest. You could enter five cards using stuff from the event and one card not using stuff from the event. I found my imagination stirred up like crazy and actually invented six separate personae, which I originally intended to follow through the event’s ambitious 21-month course. I will probably change at least one of these this month.

Actually a mistake, this series of photos was taken before I’d read the rules of the event completely, and it doesn’t contain anything featured at the CYOT event. I was kind of gutted, because I love and collect harlequin-themed clothing and outfits in Second Life, so I had so many things to choose from. I finally went with this one, which was featured at Fashion For Life earlier this year. I won’t provide complete style cards for all these looks, since they’re most of a month old now and you don’t want to know about the archaeological dig that is my inventory. If you’re curious about anything, just leave me a comment and I’ll reply with details.

Created in a panic because I am terrible with deadlines and I didn’t want to screw up, Blurry Girl was not enough herself, although by this time I was entranced with the concept of having her step off a city house rooftop. She’s firmly in the tradition of The Witches Tarot, which was one of the first tarot decks I owned as a teenager: the very blunt lines and loud imagery spoke to me as a kid, though in this card I’ve used more muted colours.

Fools 2 and 3 have too much in common, so I’ll be replacing Fool 2 with another persona for the next round of this photo contest. I know you’re all dying to know who I’ll pick (yr). Teenage WasteFool is still teetering on the edge of the roof, but I’m pretty sure she’s doing it because daddy told her not to.

Jongleur might be my favourite fool out of the set. I had this idea for a village fool. Even though I’m not always attracted by Fool concepts that rely too heavily on Harlequin imagery, I like this one. I put her in a latex catsuit (because naturally she’s a contortionist), cropped her hair, and gave her a traditional cap-and-bells attitude I think, even without the cap. She may be a little bet Pierrot in this photo: I imagine she’s somewhat sad because her audience has left her and she’s not sure what to do next.

City Fool appeared when I discovered that someone had made some fun modern-themed clothing around The Fool idea for the event. I actually went back and bought the sneakers specifically for the photoshoot. I imagine her as having only recently come to Dublin. Maybe she’s had a bad night; maybe she’s just reckless, but she might just go into the Liffey here at any point. You can’t see it but the necklace she’s wearing is styled after a Rider-Waite  Magician.

Probably my second favourite of these shots. Seeker Fool was built around the concept of the Fool on a journey. I wish you could see her face: I didn’t want to pose her with her back to the camera, but the view of her looking toward this lighthouse on Frisland (told you I took a lot of pictures there!) really captured my imagination. I dug into my personal wardrobe for this one: only the hat is actually from the event.

I’m already thinking of what to do for this round of the photo contest. I’m going to be maniacally blogging Fantasy Faire after the 23rd of April, so I need to make my personal deadline a week earlier than the actual contest deadline (which I assume will be on 30 April as it was on 31 March last month).

I know my style is simplistic compared to the other entrants, and I can only assume that’s what kept my cards out of the running for any contest awards. Having judged (writing) contests before, I know how nearly impossible it is to give feedback to individual contributors when you’re the judge for a contest. Sometimes because so many people who enter contests just have no clue how far their work has to go and you don’t want to be mean, and sometimes because you aren’t sure what made you go with somebody else, and frankly, sometimes because being a judge is tiring and continuing that role after you’ve already made decisions, with somebody who might disagree with you when you tell her what’s wrong with her entry is just a conversation you don’t want to have. So I didn’t expect to get any feedback, and I haven’t asked for any. That said, if you’re dying to tell me something I could have done to make any of these photographs stupendously wonderful, please get in touch!

More details on CYOT as soon as the event opens and I’ve visited it. 🙂