I was looking for spooky photoshoot ideas for my birthday this year. I love nature, mountains and forests. So, let us look at my thought process and how I have been using stock photos to help me come up with a concept.
I have been using Pinterest, Unsplash and Pixabay to help me get that creative photoshoot.

Have a bunch of photos showcasing what you want.

The photos can be general. Go to Pinterest, Flickr, Google Images, Unsplash and Pixabay and look for as many photos as you wish.
Essentially, for my ideas, I collect photos that look like this.

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Create a Folder and Start Narrowing Down.

Your heart and mind will gravitate towards your idea and what you want.
For my idea, I want something like this but the dress has to be heavy and flowy. I feel like if the dress was black and my hair was long and flowy, this would look better.

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Narrow Down Some More

The best thing about Moodboarding is that it is more like a funnel. You have many ideas at the beginning but you narrow down to what you want exactly. By looking at these photos, I begin to see what I want the dress, hair and surroundings to look like. That way, when I meet with a photographer, they can know what we will do. I now know that I want a black dress after looking at this photo.

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Decide on the attire, props, location & makeup

The hunt for the dress. After looking at photos of what I want, I now begin to look for a sample of a dress that I want so that I can have an idea whether what I want is practical. Since I want this to be spooky/ goth I use those words to come up with a concept for a dress.

Create the moodboard

Ths is what you will present th photographer or any team you will be working with. You can make it on pinterest and screenshot or on Photoshop.

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What do you think of this?