I haven’t been writing anything on this blog for a while, life gets busy at times, between taking care of my two year old daughter and trying to run my photography business at Idear Photography, I had to take a step back from my personal projects.

It’s a beautiful, chilly morning in Rome. Christmas is in just a few days and I have managed to travel home once again.

All my family is involved in helping with the preparation of a  photoshoot that I have been carefully planning for the past few days.

We all sit near the fire in the evening, chatting and drinking tea, while trying to assemble two costumes for the characters that are going to be in my next photographs.

Travelling more then an couple of miles from home is prohibited at the moment, luckily just around the corner on a small countryside road, we have discovered the ruins of a villa built by the Cardinal Flavio Chigi in the 1600’s, the interesting thing about this place is it’s name: Villa Versaglia, because it was built as a miniature copy of the famous French palace of Versaille.

After nearly 400 years, most of the structures have collapsed and all that is left is a magnificent tour that was used as home for the pigeons and is still occupied by many birds today. The frontal wall of the main building still stands and some of the original decorations are visible.

The best part of this site, is a beautiful little chapel with a gigantic wooden door.

I have chosen the chapel as a setting for my first image.

The character for this shoot is inspired by the Alice in Wonderland character the Mad Hatter.

This has no doubt been a difficult and at times terrifying year for all of us.

Lately I have been feeling that we could all use a bit of magic and mystery in our lives right now.

That’s where the idea of using a character from a fairy tale came from.

I am really looking forward to shooting this photo.

More updates soon..