Lucy In The Sky
An Ode to The Beatles, Julian Lennon and his old friend Lucy.
The inspiration
The Beatles were apart of a profound and pivotal point in my life and thus have stuck with my soul and me until this very day. Its band and music will probably stick with me for the rest of my life in a cozy and warm space in my heart. In this concept I created, I wanted to share my appreciation in the best way I know how to a band I love. Their song “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” was a great choice in doing this for two reasons; One being that it’s one of their more popular songs and I felt that more people would be able to notice, appreciate and understand the referencing done in the images and two because this song in particular creates such a vivid story to the listener that it felt effortless in creating images inspired by the lyrics. The series of images you’re about to see, I will pair with the lyrics beside them that inspired each image so that you can follow along the story with me.
But first…, Let’s take a moment to talk about what truly inspired this song by The Beatles in the first place.
The Inspiration for the song that topped
US Billboard pop charts for two weeks in
January 1975
Most people contribute the inspiration behind this song to drug use regardless of John Lennon himself publicly disclosing other wise. The inspiration to this song in particular and backed by a number of people around when the song first became a thought or idea was actually inspired by John Lennon’s son Julian.
John says that Julian came home from school one day with a picture he had drawn of his friend from school named Lucy, and when John asks Julian what his drawing was about he nonchalantly says it’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and from that point on the song was born; just like that it sprung an idea into Lennon’s brain and took flight from there.
The image I shared here of a drawing is the actual picture Julian drew so that you could enjoy the origin along side me. I thought it was important to include this for all of the times when discussing this song that I heard someones response chalk it up to drug use when there was so much more there to be heard and known.
Now, let’s get playing
“Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies”
To make this image happen, I bought a decorative boat and some authentic 70’s clothing from a vintage clothing shop I adore; (Called Sweet Lorain’s for any of my Cleveland people out there.) I paper macheed the boat to turn it into my version of a “News Paper Taxi” as per the song later on talks about.
Since the boat is decorative and only about a foot long, I had to composite the model in to the boat in post. For the “Tangerine Trees” I just added faint orange dots because I thought it would be more visually appealing and charismatic to the childlike perspective of Julian rather than turning the trees fully orange.
“Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes”
For this verse and other verses similar or repeated of this nature I chose a pretty simple approach because although through out this series I want you to immerse your self in the child inspired wonders of the song, I also wanted to make this something that made sense to any generation of person as well as fit the 70’s bill of aesthetic in style. I chose to have a simplistic head shot of “Lucy” with psychedelic sunglasses then I added a kaleidoscope feature to them in post.
My personal perspective of the song was that who is being narrated to and who Lucy is, are one in the same.
“Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head”
This image is actually the result of compositing four different things from two photos. I took an image of everyone holding one of the flowers, deleted them out of the frame and then select and masked each flower into the image of her looking up at the flowers that “Tower over her head”. I made my version of real life Cellophane flowers with pool noodles, green/yellow cellophane wrap and tape. I choose pool noodles because instead of compositing her smaller later I thought it would be easier to make the flowers larger than her in real life. I had to tape together two pool noodles once we got to our shoot location to make them taller than her haha. I keep the orange dot patterns through out this shoot on any shot with trees in the background to keep the style going evenly through out.
“Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes
And she's gone
Lucy in the sky with diamonds”
For this shot, I simply had “Lucy” tower over me as I laid on the ground to get a shot of her “In the Clouds” so to speak. I composited her a second time facing the opposite direction because I felt like it was more fitting to the style and aesthetic I was going for in these images than to have just a very simple picture of her with the clouds behind her. Although, I chose not to add some form of “Diamond” because the directions I thought to add that effect just didn’t fit with the style, it felt out of place to me almost. Some may say they would prefer that extra edit and that’s okay, I get it, but my heart told me to go this route and I followed.
“Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies”
This was probably my favorite image to create, because it was the most “off the wall” image out of them all but it took a lot to make what you see here. I never thought it would be hard to find old school rocking horses but man was I wrong.. It took me about a month or two to find these two, originally I wanted three but when another two weeks of looking went by I simply said screw it and I just used two. The yellow smaller one, I simply composited my self on the same rocking horse in to the existing image of “Lucy” and the other Rocking Horse person to make it look like there were three in the moment. I personally painted the horses as well, which took some time. The pies i’m going to tell on my self and say they’re key lime pies, not marshmallow but they looked like they had a marshmallow topping so I said hey why not. Lol
“Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you're gone”
I almost used the boat from earlier for this shot as well, but I thought that since this whole series and song are almost like a dream, a fantasy, that why not add another fun looking form of transportation in to the mix? The taxi I also paper macheed and it was absolutely adorable. It too was decorative size, about 8 inches or so. I took a picture of the taxi first with it slightly out of focus to appear as if it’s off in the distance and then composited a second picture I took of just “Lucy” as if she was walking towards it to get a ride to the next part of the story.
“Picture yourself on a train in a station
With plasticine porters with looking glass ties”
For this shot, I had “Lucy” at a warn down train station with a “Plasticine Porter” conversing together. The choice to make the “Plasticine Porter” the way I did by desaturating him was due to plasticine being a type of modeling clay, so I figured I would mute the coloring of him to give off the idea of that, plus aid to the 70’s styling and aesthetic I was going for. The suitcase she carries is actually a cute little storage box I found at a craft store. I also changed the over head sign to say “Penny Lane” in ode to another song related to The Beatles if anyone happens to notice that minor detail. Just thought it would be fun to include.
“Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile
The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes”
For this shot we once again went to a more simplistic portrait of “Lucy” with the kaleidoscope glasses in nearing the entrance of the train station since we didn’t have an actual turnstile in the area we were shooting at.
All in all, I just wanted to show my love and appreciation to a band and its music that I hold dear to my heart. Being a photographer and that being my driving passion in life, I knew I always wanted to create something inspired by The Beatles through my photography. For the longest time I just felt like I wasn’t good enough or that my technical ability wasn’t up to par to adequately capture them but i’m happy to say I finally took that plunge. I know I am not the only artist out there that has those moments of insecurity so I thought for the artists reading this, it’s important to remind you to always keep improving your talent but to never let your self believe you aren’t good enough to do something. Your passion and motivation will guide you always.
I want to give a very special thank you to the model Olivia for effortlessly bringing this to life with me.
You can follow her on instagram here:
OliviaMarieDempsey
I also want to give credit to my wonderful husband Cody Dimoff who helped bring this to life with me also by helping me prepare props, gather clothing items needed and modeling as one of the “Rocking Horse People” as well as the “Plasticine Porter.”
For those wondering, I did appear in this myself as the second “Rocking Horse People” featured.
Now for some behind the scenes fun
Rocking Horses
Just a mini look at behind the scenes of preparing the rocking horses for this shoot!
News Paper Taxi
Just a quick glimpse of behind the scenes of where I started with the “News Paper Taxi” and where I finished. I did this same method with the boat. Just 1 part water to two parts glue and dunked in my pieces of scrap book paper in to that solution to then apply it to my props! Super easy!