Q: These images are from another world, where did you get your inspiration?

CY: From Nature herself, first and foremost. I'm Irish so I have always believed in faeries from childhood on. You can almost see them in the deepest darkest parts of the fo rest, if you look out of the corner of your eye, a tiny flit, a very fast movement. Faeries really prefer untouche d ancient places so I also fight to save the forests left on the planet for the little people (as well as the rest of us) with my art, donating and my music. I'm a fairly little person myself (5'2) and my Irish grandfather, Red, was a leprechaun, so it's inevitable that I be drawn to this faerie work. And after shooting for 3 years, I decided to create a body of work, first for a calendar (this fall I start sales for Nature Faeries 2010, my second calendar and eventually, a book.

Q: Do you go around and see people through Faerie glasses or what?

CY: I think I see the faerie or magical self in people. I decided long ago to NOT use models for this 3 year project, so I worked with very real and powerful woman who really believe in magic instead. All those I took photographs of had to speak to me artistically with their courageous mythical lives. They were magical to begin with then I seek out the deeper magic within and the major connection to Mother Nature . It's all about collaboration with all three (and the faeries themselves). There is a lot of trust on shoots, they bring their whole being open to being "captured" and I feel you should treat it as the gift it is. I work in the opposite way of many artists, I do not decide what I want beforehand but rather, what have we here and where can we go together? The vision arrives on it's own.

All of the faerie women in my calendar project are truly amazing women, they are dancers, animal rescuers, fortune tellers, and from old to young, they are open minded beautiful strong women. Some, as soon as they put on wings, began to run and leap and laugh and I had to scamper after them with camera clacking against me. Everyone found the childhood faerie inside them!

Q: Your images not only capture this special part of a person, but you are deeply in touch with nature in these images as well, tell me about your connection with nature....

CY:Nature is my mother, she's always been there for me. I grew up in the average middle class semi-suburban American household, not in the country but my yard became my country. Trees were my best friends, I made treehouses, climbed trees, sat in them, lived in them. I hated to come inside, to come in to eat, my mother had to call me in for hours....I'd be outside til dark and still wanted to go back out, drawn to the sounds of the night also, as much as the daytime, I loved animals and bird song..

My father had a lot to do with my love of deep forest spaces, together we camped and explored both the west coast and the east. My dad and I would stand still for hours watching a deer together. My mother was the direct opposite, she'd sit in the car while we camped with gossip mags, she didn't like to get dirty or camp but yet she was the reader, the poet, and an artist and so they are both a part of my vision of art.

Spending my youth in such magical places like Yosemite, Sequoia and other amazing National parks, all those hours in woods, on deserted beaches, around camp-fires, sleeping under redwoods, all made me who I am. My darling father died suddenly when I was still fairly young, later I assisted my mother's departure and both deaths truly broke my heart (the late in life baby pays dearly) So Nature, Mother Earth and Father Sky became my parents, guiding me, watching out for me, and nurturing me. I could not have made it without deep connection to those elemental forces.

Q: How did you blend the nature and your subjects?

CY:The random double exposures are such fun, you lose a lot of film but gain such exciting mistakes! I started doing this in Tikal about 10 years ago, I was there, it was so striking, the pyramids, the temples and I had black and white film so that the photos would be less of "tourist snapshots" but still, I was dissatisfied by what I would end up with, just black and white tourist shots of temples. So I started slightly underexposing my temple shots and when I returned home, shot some nudes of my favorite model-friend against a dark background with wild masks in dramatic poses. When the film came back, many shots were ruined but the ones that came out were totally amazing and completely magical. I remember sucking in my breath with the sight of them!

The form of a wild masked woman dancing nude coming out of the top of an an Aztec Temple....I had a show mounted right after that! They are still some of my favorite images I have ever taken.

Working in color is the faerie's choice for me, I have always been a black and white fine art photographer. But I was up in Oregon in Fall and was brewing the faerie fotos in my mind but had trouble finding someone to pose. But the leaves were falling and I wanted to capture those colors so badly before they were gone, so I finally started shooting the trees and leaves and the Sandy river surrounded by stunning autumn colors. I had rolls and rolls then so begged my girlfriend, who had never modeled, to come over to my house, become a faerie, and I ran the rolls of exposed leaves through the camera again while she posed. When I got the film back (yes, it's a real old school camera and real film!) and saw that she was covered with leaves and some leaves became her wings, well, it blew us both away.

So many folks look at my Faerie Foto images and think "Oh cool, but it's just Photoshop layers" but they are totally wrong! These are real people on real film and the images are real magic. They have come out so mystical that I like to think that the faeries helped me create them.