Deep love creates deep fear. It looks like death because the I disappears, the you disappears - and it is a sort of death. And when you die, only then do you enter into the divine.
After I discovered my degree in photojournalism would only get me a job in a camera store, I taught myself lighting. I read tons of magazines and books and studied the photos trying to figure out how they were done. I bought some flash equipment and played around until I figured out how to make a subject look as I envisioned it should look.