Elisabeth Ladwig is an award-winning photographic artist living in the Hudson Valley. Her artistic career began as a graphic artist in the NYC music industry, which presented the opportunity for her to create designs for recording artists like Liza Minnelli, Barry Manilow, Patrick Stewart and more, for Broadway shows, and for major motion pictures. She loved the process of combining all the pieces of the puzzle – graphic elements, typography, and photographs, balancing color, space, and contrast, and presenting them in a single, cohesively designed package. Similarly, experimenting with collage art was an unsurprising source of enjoyment, when from this a much larger branch grew in the form of using her own photographs. 

Elisabeth later moved farther from the City, where she has felt much more at home surrounded by Nature. Abundant woodlands and water sources offer endless inspiration to her multi-layered creative process. Her current work explores modern surrealism, combining multiple photographs for seamlessly blended imagery. 

Once an idea is born in her sketchbook, she gathers the photos needed to create it. Shoots in her studio capture the subject and other staged elements, while other photographs are taken on her travels and dedicated field trips. Elisabeth is always on the lookout for interesting props and vintage costumes, and may handcraft part of a scene when the image calls for it. Elisabeth’s process is variable and spiritually instinctive; often, an image is well on its way or completed before she fully understands its message, and that meaning may vary from one viewing to the next. All of her scenes have a strong natural connection, set completely or partially outdoors, often with an anonymous subject. “Anonymity allows the viewer to take part in writing the story,” she says, “and that story is going to be different for everyone.” Her work has appeared in venues from Scottsdale to Rome, on magazine covers, and on digital displays in Times Square and at the Louvre.

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Q: In each image you work with a composite of dozens of photographs, some of them taken in your studio. Can you take us through how a studio session works? Which elements of a final image would be taken in the studio?

A: The subject is the primary element captured in the studio. Out of sheer convenience, I pose for all of my own work, which means I don’t need to be concerned with scheduling or modeling contracts. I have a small costume rack filled with vintage and secondhand pieces. The setup is very DIY ~ a light and dark bedsheets hang from clips along a curtain rod and I just pull one or the other across for a plain backdrop. This gives me more control in post-processing with placing the subject in different natural settings. My camera is on a tripod and set to take multiple photographs at a time. It’s really hard to get the pose right in a single shot. I often prefer the hair in one shot or the arm position in another shot, so even the subject gets composited together from several photos. Then I take additional shots of dress flips and hair flips in case I want to add movement to the piece. I also use a vintage dress form as a model, especially when other elements need to be photographed that I wouldn’t be able to manage simultaneously.  

Nature objects and everyday objects are also shot in the studio, from shells and feathers to books and suitcases. For Once Upon a Time, I spent a morning tossing ice cubes into a cup of tea to capture it splashing out of my mother’s vintage teacup. For Starpolish, I crafted origami stars and hung them from the ceiling with invisible thread, swaying them as the camera took multiple shots. But I think the most elaborate element I’ve created for a scene is a mini five-circuit labyrinth of pebbles, about four feet in diameter. More recently I’ve also been photographing original painted and mixed media elements and incorporating them into the works, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that continues to develop. 

Q: Do you have a preconceived notion of what the final image will look like when you start photographing the elements that will be included?

A: I do. Many of my artworks begin with a crude, stick-figure sketch, just to get the idea down. Then I’ll make notes about things like color, composition, and theme. Sometimes I need to pay more attention to the angle at which elements are photographed, like the boat and paddle in Her Wildest Designs. Both of these items are miniatures in real life, so I posed with a broom in order to get the subject’s hands wrapping around something comparable to a life-sized paddle, and I made sure to photograph the boat from above and off to the side. Occasionally what I envision doesn’t quite work, or I might go in a different creative direction mid-process, and that’s ok. I never tie myself so strictly to the original concept that it doesn’t allow for play and curiosity. 

Q:  What is your favorite part of your process? Your least favorite part?

A: I love sitting with my sketchbook and brainstorming ideas, but I think my favorite part is the editing, especially after the piece has finally started to come together. I start with very rough-and-ready silhouetting of the elements so that I can judge whether or not I need to reshoot anything. This means that there is a period of time when a new artwork looks, well, pretty bad, like a bunch of clippings placed on a page with inconsistent light and color. Once I’m past that stage, however, I can start to refine and really integrate everything into the scene. When an image finally looks finished, there’s usually another two to four hours of editing left, getting in there at the pixel level. 

My least favorite part is shooting the subject. Truth is, I’ve never been very comfortable in front of a camera. I think as my work evolves, I’ll be experimenting with new levels of anonymity, using fewer human and more animal subjects, and integrating more photos of handcrafted items and mixed media elements in my work. I’m excited.

Q: How does a studio photo shoot differ from a photo shoot outdoors? Do you use different equipment and lenses for example?  Do you have a different approach to shooting outdoors versus indoors?

A: Aside from auto-focus and auto-white balance, I shoot everything on manual, both indoors and outdoors. My studio has large windows so I try to take advantage of as much natural light as possible, but I also have a Godox FV 200, and that’s really all I need. I don’t stage formal outdoor shoots these days; instead, I’ll go out in search of individual elements to bring a sketch to life, like a water lily or a dead tree trunk. I use the same 28-300mm lens for everything (photographers everywhere just cringed), so it’s a portrait, wide-angle, and zoom all at once. The versatility allows me to photograph things like landscapes, clouds, water, and textures for my photo library, and still shoot a raptor flying overhead without having to swap lenses. I’m not a photographer in the traditional sense. I don’t feel pressured to take stunning photographs. The photos are going to be altered, and since my work has a more painterly look to it, I often have to blur my photos to fit this aesthetic. 

Q: What drives you to keep creating as an artist?

A: When I was a kid, I realized how a normal thing ~ a snowfall, a butterfly, a lightning bolt ~ could be perceived as magical to someone observing it without any knowledge of what it is or how it came to be. Of course now we know that it’s science, it’s the Laws of Nature. But I noticed that once something is explained scientifically, people tend to lose their wonderment. The thing is no longer magical. It might even go unnoticed. After all, it’s just a butterfly. I didn’t want that to happen to me. So at age 11, I decided that science, Nature, and magic were one and the same. I didn’t know back then that I would ever be an artist, but it’s that search for fascination and awe that keeps me creating.