Tara Mapes is a renowned fine art photography expert, composite photographer, and digital art creator. Regardless of whether she’s working with children or couples in love, she transforms each photoshoot into an entire story with a unique plot.
The key distinguishing feature of Tara Mapes photography is that whether you’re looking at her composite images, classic fine art shots, or surreal caricature photos, you instantly notice adventurous, moody, fun, and thoughtful artist behind them.
Tara Mapes isn’t just a terrific photographer and writer but also the founder of Enchanted Eye Creations and Tara Mapes Fine Art Photography. An interesting fact about her is that Tara has a twin sister and is also a mother. Additionally, she has authored three published books and illustrated two publications for children.
As a photographer, her goal is to tell an interesting story or capture the raw emotions of the model to help the viewer come up with their own narrative when viewing her photos. Her interests include everything from fine art painterly portraiture to classic horror. Interestingly, Tara didn’t receive any formal education and has learned everything from scratch relying solely on her own experience.
For her first photo shoot, which took her two months to get everything she needed and prepare, Tara was inspired by a magazine article. The main purpose behind her work was to make people stop scrolling when they see her photo, click on it, and come up with a story in their heads to make sense of the scene they're witnessing.
Tara's editing style can be defined as dramatic, painterly, and eye-tickling. Even though she didn’t have the final image in her head when taking the shot, she still managed to create a dark and moody masterpiece with a hint of creepiness that signified the start of her artistic career.
Tara Mapes is a master of traditional and family portrait photography as well as the fashion and fine art genres. That said, she refuses to limit herself to a certain number of styles and treats each genre as one of her “multiple personalities.”
When viewing her photos, you’ll see extravagant outfits with complex accessories, active poses that feature a lot of motion, and raw emotions. In this review, I’ll provide a detailed overview of the key services offered by this photographer.
Couture photoshoots are among the most complex and responsible types of fashion photography. If you hire Tara Mapes, you can be certain that the lighting will be chosen perfectly to suit the style of the clothes, accentuate its most appealing details, and highlight the fabric.
Regardless of whether the photo shoot is held in a studio or outdoors, you're guaranteed to receive unique, exclusive photos that are reminiscent of vintage fashion photography.
Fine art portrait photography from Tara Mapes always conveys an innovative idea or a certain meaning that was born in the artist’s creative mind. Instead of aiming to produce successful commercial projects, she focuses on implementing a unique idea that expresses a part of her artistic vision.
This style can be applied to a variety of photography genres including family portraiture. When you look at a photo like this one, you instantly understand what kind of people are in front of you, what kind of relationship this family has, and what message they are trying to convey.
When speaking of the fine art photography services that Tara offers couples, you can’t help but mention her outside-the-box approach. Her photos stand out because of their unconventional composition, interesting perspectives, and heavy narrative elements that tie the entire scene together.
Conceptual photography is one of the genres that Tara enjoys doing the most given how it allows her to experiment with various photoshoot themes. Mapes implements various ideas with the help of symbolic imagery, hidden meanings, and associations. It’s impossible to ignore the photographer’s talent for exploring different concepts in unique ways while employing creative techniques that add a sense of surrealism to her works.
The name of this type of photography speaks for itself, as such photos heavily feature hyperbolized emotions, funny attires and accessories, and comedic situations. Tara shows her talent here by creating a cartoon style caricature.
It looks funny but doesn't come across as ridiculous, which can be off-putting to many viewers. Such images can be incredibly useful for promoting products and brands in any industry.
Tara Mapes edits each photo manually to ensure her clients are always happy with the result. She puts diligent care and attention into each shot while predominantly infusing her work with a dark moody atmosphere.
Other than dramatic photoshoots, Tara also loves ideas that involve a note of humor and comedy, which is why her portfolio also often features caricatures and fun conceptual shots. Some photos are even reminiscent of fairytale scenes that look like they were taken from a magic fantasy world.
Tara Mapes has an active social media presence. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Her Instagram page is an endless source of inspiration. Here you’ll find plenty of examples of her work as well as some secrets about how she took this or that particular photo.
On LinkedIn, you can find the photographer’s posts about her thoughts and worries. Lately, Tara’s social media feeds have witnessed an influx of caricature photos. To create them, Mapes organizes stylized photoshoots and transforms the received results into characters by using Photoshop.
Tara Mapes covers an array of different topics in her offline and online courses. Her workshops are designed to help you study the art of painterly editing while developing a unique style of your own.
She offers a very popular painterly masterclass, a themed photography masterclass, a caricature masterclass and a compositing course. Each of these courses cover her signature styles and educate the students on lighting in studio, outdoor, posing, editing and go behind the scenes to share the experience with the virtual students.
She also invites you to participate in themed photography workshops to produce stunning themed photos and props. You'll learn the ins and outs of posing, lighting, behind-the-scenes magic, and proper use of Photoshop actions while having a ton of fun in the process.
If you get the Composite Bundle Course, you’ll study the art of compositing in Photoshop and learn how to merge individual parts of various images to create a work of art with a coherent color palette and textures. This course is equally relevant for experienced Photoshop artists and beginners who are still getting their feet wet in the industry.
