Life can be full of strange coincidences.

Thats how these pictures came to be. I recently changed jobs, and when I did took the chance to reach out to all the people I had worked with thru my facebook profile. A coworker of mine, Christine Szymanski was in a delightful state of shock when she realized that she and I had so much in common. Lamenting the fact that we didnt have the time to get to know each other better, we started to reminisce about our sordid club days, and found out that we had traveled in the same social circles some years ago, and had just never run into each other.

Then one day there is this picture from Christine in my inbox of Echo and Daredevil by artist David Mackfrom the upcoming End of Days.... along with a message about how strange it was that my name was Echo, since she had planned to name her daughter Echo Seven (but sadly, it was not meant to be) ... all this was indeed strange, as my birthday is 7/7, so of course that is my lucky number as well....

but this image struck me so deeply, for so many reasons..... it is an image that needs no words, no story, no knowledge of wither of the characters to be evocative... the emotion comes through clear and strikes the viewer directly int eh heart. The lighting is both strange, and effective. it speaks to both individuals in the picture, and yet is a unique and subtle way to sway the viewers emotion. I could go on and on about how much I liked it, but, I decided to give a shot at recreating it instead.

Yes, I'm a cosplayer, but mostly by accident, so I didn't have an Echo costume, or a DD costume.... I had a bag full of club clothes, and some red bodypaint.

so I did what I could with what I had. I painted my gracious DD model and by accident photographer Miguel M Melendez red, slapped on a few bandages, found a red lightbulb and an led flashlight, and we had this makeshift photoshoot. I wanted to post the pics right away, but I sent one to Christine, who fist alerted me to its existence, and one to the artist to ask for permission to post it, since it was his image.

What happened next was totally freakin AWESOME!!! David Mack actually replied to my message, was super nice, and told me that he had had a friend take a picture of himself and a lady friend of his in that pose to use as a reference for the painting.

and so it goes... life echoes art, echoes life echoes art... endlessly....till the end of days.