Sleepy Baby – 可愛寶貝的扮裝寫真

Sioin Queenie Liao is a free-lance artist living in California, USA. As a mother of three boys, she enjoys involving her children in her artworks, resulting in beautiful, delicately balanced and artistic photos.

What inspired you to take photos involving your children?

Photography has always been my hobby. At first my interest was on natural scenery – the beauty of nature has never ceased to fascinate me. After the birth of my first child in 2002, my attention shifted to my precious little baby. I began to take pictures of my baby boy, frequently drawing inspiration from the beautiful works of Anne Geddes. And in 2010, after seeing the work of Ms. Adele Enersen on her sleeping daughter, I began to experiment similar idea with my then three-month-old son Wengenn.

Where did you get the ideas for decorating the backdrops of the photos?

Well, I grew up indulging myself in fairy tales. In particular, as I read the beloved stories over and over again, my eyes would often be fixated at the beautiful illustrations, immersing myself completely with the stories. Those fairy tales from my childhood gave me a multitude of ideas to try out. Everyday just before Wengenn’s nap, I would imagine him being the main character in one of my favorite episodes, and “paint” a background setting with plain clothes, stuffed animals, and other common household materials, just like how an artist would with her paint brushes. After Wengenn fell asleep, I would place him at the center of the theme I’d created and start taking pictures. My vision was to create a series of photos portraying him exploring his imaginary, enchanting fairytale-like world.

What’s the next step do you have in mid for these artistic photos?

Today, with well over one hundred photographs, each portraying a cute little story of Wengenn in his journey of adventure, I have combined them into an album called “Wengenn in Wonderland.” A Chinese version of my book “Sleepy Baby – 可愛寶貝的扮裝寫真,” was published in Taiwan in July, 2012. The book provides step-by-step details of how some of those pictures were taken, as well as how other art crafts can be made out of baby pictures. An English version of the book is currently underway.