One of my favorite things about photography is how absurd some ideas sound before they work.

This one started because I saw my friend’s ceiling. With a little floof and lights, she had made a cloud room for her kids, and the idea stuck with me. Around the same time, I had seen a video of product photography where if you make one side of glass black, it starts reflecting like a mirror. So naturally, I decided I needed to find something made of glass big enough to hold a person.

That is how I ended up buying an old display case off Facebook Marketplace.

That is also how I ended up at a biker club in Kokomo with my buddy, Drew, to pick it up. Everybody was nice, everybody was helpful, but I kept my eyes down when I went in the club and somehow that giant glass box ended up in the back of my truck on its way to become a photo set.

Once I got it home, I built the scene out with black fabric, polyfill, and LED lights. A bunch of ordinary stuff turned into something that felt like it belonged somewhere else entirely.

When Alyssa Fenolio got in, I knew from the first shot we were onto something.

She is one of those people who does not blink when I throw some weird idea at her. She just hops in and goes. That kind of trust means a lot to me. Photography asks people to be vulnerable in all kinds of ways, and in this case I was asking her to climb into a strange setup in a garage and trust that it was all leading somewhere good. I do not take that lightly.

I have seen enough sketchy, self-important photographers to know exactly what I do not want to be. Making cool photos matters to me, but so does being the kind of person people feel safe creating with. If someone gives me their trust, I want to honor it.

Alyssa made that easy. She was a goofball in between shots, messing around and keeping things light, then the second it was time to make a frame, she could drop into something serious and beautiful. Then right back to joking around again. I love that balance. It makes shoots more fun, but it also reminds me how much skill goes into making something feel effortless.

The posing here is all her. The only thing I really asked for was the fetal position, which is something we have come back to in a lot of shoots together. I think it keeps showing up because it feels tied to youth, trust, and innocence. It has a softness to it, but also a kind of emotional weight that I am always drawn to.

Getting the shots was fun. While Alyssa was curled up peacefully in the clouds, I was balancing above the set trying not to fall onto her or off the cabinets, so we were both contributing in our own ways.

I am constantly drawn back to the color blue, and this day would be no different. The cool tones gave the whole set a dreamlike feeling that fit exactly what I hoped it could be. A little world of its own. That being said, we tried a few other colors and it changed the vibe immediately. From dreamlike to stormy. These photos feel unique to me, but more than that, they feel like one of those rare moments where an idea comes together with the right person and becomes more than you thought it would.

Life gets mundane. Work gets repetitive. Then every once in a while, you get to disappear into something strange and creative for a while with someone who gets lost with you. A display case from a biker club in Kokomo, some fake clouds, a lot of trust, and a model who knew exactly how to bring it all to life.

That still feels pretty cool to me.