Bad Influence Series

As a kid, one of my favorite activities to do as a family was to visit museums, and one of my favorite sections to look at were dioramas - especially nature dioramas. To this day, they’re still one of my must-do things to view.

Right before the pandemic hit the Bay Area in the spring of 2020, I visited the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The intention: I knew the dioramas there, and I wanted to use them as backplates for future images. For what? I didn’t quite know yet, but darn it, they will find a use! However, they would be shelved in my unused backplate collection for a couple years before their use would be conceived.

Eventually I met my current girlfriend, and I always joke with her that she is my bad influence. An idea soon popped into my head: what if this girl wasn’t just a bad influence to me, but the entirety of nature! Shooting both my girlfriend and her friend in the studio to model for the bad influencers of these images, I composited them into the dioramas, and the results turned out just as I had wanted. In fact, I may expand upon this series as I visit more museums and photograph more dioramas. So I guess… stay tuned for more bad influences!