Like the time she was dressed as a winged butterfly forest spirit for a photoshoot in the woods near her home.
Wearing large butterfly wings, a crown she fashioned out of sticks and a butterfly print dress she purchased from Triad Goodwill, she must find a way to pose for her camera that she operates with a remote control while simultaneously keeping this billowy ensemble from touching poison ivy.
“I am very allergic,” Kelley says. “So I am trying not to get the dress in it or the wings.”
She managed to get the shots that she needed without getting poison ivy on her skin or clothes, and the end result was worth it.
With ensembles she produces almost entirely of Goodwill finds, Kelley creates fashion photography that is iconic, surreal, otherworldly and yes, beautiful. She takes the random, ‘luck of the draw’ experience of thrift shopping at Goodwill and transforms it into art using both thoughtful curation and a precise vision for style.
You can see her work online at her portfolio website (ciarakelleyphotography.pixieset.com) and on Instagram (@ciarakelleyphotography).
Always Curated
If there is one word that defines Kelley above all others, perhaps it is ‘curated.’
Even for the Zoom meeting for this interview, everything in front of her webcam is carefully selected as if she were directing a movie.
Her outfit, a shiny teal vintage blouse and bright pink tassel earrings were selected to both contrast with a floral print backdrop.
“This was a floral backdrop and I knew it was going to be pretty loud and I didn’t want to wear something pink that it would blend in,” Kelley says.
A homeschool kid growing up in a small town near the Blue Ridge parkway of Virginia, Kelley discovered a love for thrift shopping in general and Goodwill stores specifically at a very early age.
“My dad was the son of an auctioneer, so we would always go thrifting and to auctions and things like that,” Kelley says. “And I’ve always gone to Goodwill and other thrift stores.”
Required by her parents to pick an artistic hobby when she was a teen, Kelley tried music and dabbled in crafts, but when she picked up a camera, she immediately knew she had discovered her passion.
“I started doing it, and I never stopped,” Kelley said. “It’s one of those things that I never thought was a hobby.
“I never didn’t want to do it at one point.”
“I love mixing up, especially since I style my photographs myself,” Kelley says. “I try mixing clothing style and hair and make up and location and how I shoot it in general.”
An avid Triad Goodwill shopper, Kelley is a regular at our Buy The Pound Outlet Store, which she refers to as ‘The Bins,’ after the blue wheeled bins that allow customers one final chance to shop for clothing that was left unpurchased at our standard Retail Stores.
“I try not to look for anything specific because if you are looking for anything specific, you miss a lot of the unique items that you wouldn’t be looking for,” Kelley says.
Kelley currently owns more than 700 dresses, most of which she bought at Goodwill. When Kelley shops at Goodwill, she looks for the clothing that puts a very specific image in her mind.
“Sometimes I get an immediate idea,” Kelley says. “And sometimes I will find something that’s really unique and I won’t know what to do with it but I get it anyways, and then eventually I will have an idea for it.”
Kelley has worked with professional runway models, but prefers to photograph her friends.
In part because it’s easier to make friends feel more comfortable in front of a camera, but also because they are more open to Kelley’s desire for experimentation.
“They don’t have an expectation of what they need to look like,” Kelley says. “They don’t have that ‘oh I must look this way or do this to be a model!’ – they are more free spirited.”
“I love shooting people who haven’t modeled for very long.”
All of this changed of course when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in early 2020.
“Me and my friends were very excited for 2020 — the possibilities!” Kelley says, laughing. “And then 2020 just went raining down on us.”
With photography no longer being an ‘essential’ business, Kelley could not rationalize a way to photograph models or even her friends, if doing so might compromise their health and safety.
So the next logical step, of course, was to simply do everything herself. This includes the styling, the photography and now even the modeling. Sometimes this is easy. Other times, she must recruit her husband Michael in order to get the job done.
The process required Kelley, who looks relaxed and serene in the photos, to run back and forth climbing onto the tree before going back to her camera below.
And if the back and forth from the camera to the tree wasn’t challenging enough, Kelley had to complete this entire photoshoot right before it was about to rain.
Taking the photos using the remote control in her hand, the process required rapid fire trial and error.
“It was more awkward than what it looked like,” Kelley says. “Most of the time, I’ll just take a bunch of pictures and scootch back into the framing and hope I get something right, and then I’ll go check and and then go back to where I was if I really liked it.”
Five Looks Under 50 Dollars
As part of a joint collaboration between Triad Goodwill and Ciara Kelley Photography, we tasked Kelley with putting together five amazing, different looks using primarily the clothes she could purchase at Triad Goodwill for less than 50 dollars.
The result is the following series of photographs, which are a continuation of Kelley’s 2020 Self-Portrait series.
Pink Dress with Beret
Kelley: “I got the dress and the beret at ‘The Goodwill Bins.’ That is actually something I would wear. I’ve actually worn that dress before to go grocery shopping. It definitely looks more wearable than a lot of my other looks.”
Blue Dress with Cloche
Kelley: “The hat, the purse and the boots came from Goodwill, but I had the leather piece already. I found things like it, but I don’t think I found that specific one there. I bought that dress and it reminded me of the Gucci Fall 2020 runway show. Gucci had really soft things paired with leather purses and shiny patent leather…. The dress itself is a vintage Jovani, and it had a 700 dollar price tag in the sleeve. The whole dress is made of silk. It was the first thing that drew me to it. That’s how I find things, if it feels nice, I pull it out.”
Red Dress with Straw Hat
Kelley: “When I found that red dress, I just knew that I wanted dark hair, a straw hat, something summery but not too summery. I found that purse in the bins. I was super surprised to see it was still there after the store was ransacked basically. The outlet store had just reopened after it had been closed. People were just pulling stuff out of the bins and not even looking at it. I stayed for a while, but I mainly just watched people. It’s much easier to let them dig for me.”
Blue Dress and Hat
Kelley: “That was actually a 1980s bridesmaids dress. You probably wouldn’t know that by looking at it now because bridesmaids dresses have changed completely. But ruffles and lace were very popular and thankfully for me they used to be popular because I find them at goodwill and I love them a lot…. It was actually about to rain so I slapped on lipgloss and eyebrows and ran out to this park to go shoot it.”
Butterfly Dress
Kelley: “I purchased that dress at the Market Street location. It was my ‘splurge’ purchase at $20! They have suits on one wall, and on the end they have a fancy dress section. They had just put it out. I’m just walking around the store holding it, and people are looking at it, and I am like, don’t even look at it, it’s mine! I wasn’t even able to try it on, and was worried it wouldn’t fit, but I am thankful that it did. The look was inspired by the dress itself, as I had the butterfly wings already, the vision came together beautifully when I got the dress.