At long last, I’m happy to announce that we’ve officially started renovation work on a beautiful, purpose-designed shoot space for boudoir sessions. It’s an Edwardian/Victorian style property located within each reach of central London, and although it looks pretty rough at the moment, this space has great bones. Really, really great bones:)
Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ve been up to:
I still love working on location and arranging unique, bespoke spaces for shoots. I plan to keep doing so, especially for clients who have a specific vision for their session and for international and destinations shoots. Working on location keeps me on my toes, and it’s constant source of inspiration, challenges, and new ideas.
However, some things become prohibitively difficult and/or expensive without at least a small space to call your own. Advanced lighting setups and detailed sets have been out of reach for me thus far, since lugging any more than two lights and my camera bag around London by myself is basically impossible. Sure, you can always hire a normal photo studio with loads of kit, but I never feel inspired by those spaces. Plain Colorama backgrounds make me die a little inside. Always have, probably always will. Basically, I want the best of both worlds: an amazing location, and all the kit I might need too, without needing to hire an entire team of people to help me pull that off.
Also, sometimes it’s a lot easier to create a particular look or feel inside a studio, rather than try to source/arrange/hire/travel to a location that has it organically. For example, I was so inspired by a setup at commercial photographer Joey L‘s workshop last year. At the workshop, he demonstrated how to re-create an arctic blizzard using a series of lighting techniques, snow machine, haze machine, and painted backdrops. It blew my mind.
Sure, it’s a little complicated. But it’s much, much easier that you and I flying to the Alps, praying for snow, hiring a Sherpa to carry all my equipment, and then trying to create beautiful images with numb fingers and frostbitten toes on the side of some mountain. If you’re a photographer and also inspired by this setup, there’s a great blog post about the full process and resulting images here: http://www.joeyl.com/2013/06/creating-an-indoor-blizzard/
Anyway! All that just to say I’m so excited about this new space we’re creating. It will be a combination of all the things clients and I have loved this past year, including custom built sets, curated details, huge chandeliers, sourced antique pieces, amazing lingerie and shoe, and much more. Plus, room to experiment.
The idea of a dedicated space for shoots has been a long time coming. It took a long time to find a suitable space to house this hideaway of boudoir goodness. Once we found a place, it also took much longer than expected to actually purchase it. So now that we’ve fiiiinnaaallllyyyy got the paperwork sorted, we’re charging ahead at full speed. A collection of the world’s nastiest carpet is already where it belongs (the dump), my husband has spent hours knocking out a tragic 60’s brick fireplace by hand, and I managed to demolish the entire kitchen on my own last weekend.
This weekend we’re making a start on the flooring, bathroom, and maybe painting. If you’d like to see more of this sort of thing, please join me on Instagram: @stormy_rebelandromance
Also, if you’re handy with DIY and want to help reupholster furniture or paint, give me a shout:)
xx
Stormy
