If you haven’t seen Part 1, go check it out to better understand where I’ve been going with this. Progress is happening very slowly on it, but it’s happening.

So here is Part 2. It was inspired by another one of Regina Spektor’s songs, on the same album as Part 1. The song is called “Lady”.

It started as a simple idea to show a performer getting ready, then performing. Pretty boring now that I’ve had some distance from the original plan, but as I listened to the song from time to time, I started seeing much darker images in my head. Anger, hurt and just overall self-loathing.

Once that happened, I immediately realized that it would be much more interesting to marry her wildly contrasting character facets into the same shoot and turn the subject of my study into a successful but self-loathing artist, something I’m sure many artists can relate to.

On one side, her impeccable, performing self, then on the other, the day to day agony that feeds her inspiration to create the kind of music her audience loves her for.

I worked once again with the wonderfully talented Shanda Palmer (makeup), Ashlen Saunders-Duke (hair) and for the first time, the absolutely gorgeous Cosette Jarrett, who incidentally had a really hard time with the character I threw her into.

Cosette is such a joyful and sweet woman… Asking her to smoke, smash a guitar, violently throw booze at a brick wall and generally appear very hurt, angry and troubled was a stretch and very much the opposite of what she’s like in real life, but she pulled it off incredibly well.

Last but not least, many thanks to Suzanne Walker for allowing us to shoot backstage and on stage.

Oh and speaking of which, yes, it was snowing HARD at the end of our shoot! It was an amazing experience and gave the images a different feel than I’d expected. One that I think helped us in the end.

Hope you enjoy!