a portrait session with Ilan & her fiddle

On a late foggy morning in January, I picked up my friend Ilan from her house and we drove to the summit of Mount PKOLS (Mount Doug). Ilan’s music project, iLLann, is an experimental exploration of music, vocals, and live looping performance that is dreamlike, ethereal and haunting. She reached out to me to collaborate on creating some images that would match the tone of her music.

When we arrived at the peak on a Wednesday, it has been drizzling all morning but had stopped shortly earlier, leaving the forest blanketed in a thick fog. It was strangely quiet, and there were surprisingly very few other people around. I grabbed my cameras and she brought her fiddle, and we started into the forest. The greens of the ferns and the fog seemed so much brighter than usual, and the distant fog created a haunting glow. We were so lucky to have found this space, on this particular morning, matching Ilan and the spirit of her sound so authentically.