I’m four days back in London, and I’ve got some great stuff cooking from the trip. In the meantime, here’s some behind the scenes sneaks and some general randomness from the trip.
Our Idaho boudoir set. I’m so happy we’ve finally made this idea come to life. I honestly forgot how incredible the late afternoon sun can be when it isn’t hidden by miserable clouds. It made for easy easy easy shooting.
Things are not always as they seem. After some last minute schedule changes, we ended up shooting in my client’s backyard and her neighbour’s pasture. That’s me perched atop a fence. Idaho style.
I hired my little sister as my assistant since I was so close to home. She schlepped all my bags, and then I gave her my camera set to auto and gave her about thirty seconds of guidance. She still managed to get some really great stuff! Love this shot she got of me photographing Miss. S and black beauty.
My sister Autumn. You can call her “Horse Whisperer” for short.
RZRs, our transportation to shoot location number two in Swan Valley. I really dislike these things (imagine a 4 wheeler on steroids and you’re on the right track), but there’s no other way to the top of the mountain.
A few behind the scenes prep shots with makeup artist and hairstylist Tia (who is amazing) and Miss S.
Tia and Thena at the crack of dawn, on top of the world, freezing. Neither of them were in the mood to be photographed.
Bwah…look at my sister’s face! She soooo loving her new job right now.
I was lucky to spend a few days with my family before heading home. We made a day trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If you’re not familiar with it, this is the place you go to get your cowboy on. Or, to buy a giant bronze otter. Or, the tackiest, most blingtastic belt you’ve ever seen.
Or, maybe you just need a very large bear chair in your life?
Also, food is different in this part of America. For one, the fish counter workers are more creative (props to you, lemon crab/octopus maker), and people apparently eat a lot more corn dogs than I ever realised, since they now get their own section in WinCo. Did you know you can actually buy a corn dog that is made of a sausage wrapped in a pancake with maple syrup already applied? I mean…I don’t even know what to say about that except the obvious, “MURICA!”
And, I ate some really dirty gas station food. It was terrible. I remember it being waaaay better.
Then there were the flights. The very long, no good, why is there only ONE customer service centre in the entire airport open, most-of-the-way-around-the-world-flights. I would like to thank everyone in middle America who looked at me like I was an alien for doing a teensy bit of yoga on the airport floor. I would also like to commend United for failing to get me to anywhere on time, “upgrading me” to a middle seat on my redeye home to London, and making me wait in the longest customer service line known to man. Honestly – just as I got to the front of this 55 minute line, United was kind enough to send me a text to say that my delayed flight had just been delayed a further three hours because of “no aircraft.”
I thought maybe I was on that “Boiling Point” show and that I was going to win a car or something if I didn’t lose my sh*% at the customer service lady, or maybe I’d stumbled into a non-celebrity version of “Punked.” Buuuut no. No car, no Ashton Kutcher popping up from behind the counter. Just a seat far worse than the one I booked originally.
As many of you know, I’m working in America until the first part of October. It’s been really nice to be back, and to see some familiar and friendly faces. Yesterday, I bought a Little Debbie lemon pie and a giant pop from the gas station on my way home. I put the window down, the country music (which I don’t even like) up, and sped down the dirt roads to my parent’s house dodging potato trucks and farmers. I felt 17 all over again:)
I wanted to share a few images with you straight away. One of my clients has an incredible cabin in Swan Valley, Idaho, which just might be the prettiest place on earth. We spent the night under the stars, took a stomach turning ride to the top of the mountain before daybreak, and photographed her on the edge of the world at sunrise.
It took our breath away.
I’ve photographed her at least ten times over the years, and I’ve never seen her looking more beautiful than she did in this place. I can’t wait to share the final images with you. Until then, enjoy the scenery:)
Today…a little behind the scenes look at the studio.
We’re seriously making progress now. The bedroom, as you’ll see below, is basically done!
There’s still a lot to do for soft furnishings, but construction wise we’re mostly done – just some trim and plumbing in the the claw foot tub. After testing about seven hundred different colours on the walls (some very ambitious ones too) we ended up going for a neural cream, and it was definitely the right choice. The floors came up great, and the moulding turned out so nice in this room too, even better than the front room I think.
Proper antique side tables with plenty of character. I’m still looking for coordinating lamps, but I love these little guys.
The bedroom chandelier, by day and by night. This photo on the right is really misleading though, because it’s actually SO INCREDIBLY BRIGHT that you can probably see it from around the block. We’re going to get dimmer switches soon. Or sunglasses. One or the other is definitely necessary.
The bedroom fireplace, and antique fire screen. I of course spent 6 or 7 hours painting it a bright, glossy white, but then we decided the black was more elegant and fitting for the room, so I painted over it all. At least I can be grateful it wasn’t the other way around:)
My favourite chandelier of the bunch is this 100 year old French beauty in the hallway. As you can see, it’s a little beat up at the moment, but it’s going to be incredible with a little TLC.
Our one lightbulb wiring test. How great is that shadow?!
These old church pews will serve as a table and seating area in the hallway. They’ve lived the last ten years in some sort of preschool, and arrived covered in sparkle glue, magic marker, and chewed up gum, but they are a nice distressed white now (gum free).
Antique candlesticks, and details on the main room’s fireplace.
The main room’s chandelier. It came from America, but the crystal hanging instructions were quite clearly from a factory in China – one where attention to detail is in no way required to get a job – because it was a joke. The instructions referred to sets of crystals that either weren’t there at all, or were labeled with the wrong letters (N? R? basically the same thing right? just make a squiggle and ship it to the stupid Americans). My father in law spend all day helping us wire and hang it, and then took us from 6PM to 1:30AM to get it to this point. There’s still a whole box of crystals to be hung too!
Chairs for days:)
Yeah…this thing still isn’t done…
The rest of the floors and these stairs are our next project. Everything is going white, and I can’t wait to see how they turn out.
The bannister is staying like this though – rustic and distressed to match the chandelier.
This room will be my office when we’re finished. To the shock and horror of everyone that has seen it so far, we’re leaving that back wall unfinished. I like it. Can I also draw you attention to that stack of antique frames and mirrors? There’s so much goodness hiding in that pile, you just wait and see.
Gunna learn to sew sooner or later!
This is the bathtub for the bedroom. It’s this shocking teal colour now, but will soon be covered with…
…genuine copper leaf. Because we can, basically. And also because I have a Pinterest addiction.
She looks totally different than she did for our first shoot together about two years ago, and I feel like a vastly improved photographer since then, so I thought I’d have a (fun? for you maybe?) look back at our original images.
It’s given me such a weird feeling to go through these again. I’m relieved to find things I still like about this original set of images, although the pile of things I don’t like is obviously much larger. Funnily enough, I remember doing this shoot quite clearly, and I remember being really happy with the resulting images…
I’ve since raised my standards.
At the time, Emma was doing a lot of hair modelling and had a Fifth Element sort of thing going on. Since then, Emma’s traded her red hair and pale skin for a more natural ombre hairstyle and a beachy tan. I think this new look suits her a bit better, although I will always be impressed that she can pull off both looks so well.
I’ve tried to pair these images so the old and new examples are roughly similar. These backlit window images seem the most telling:
A little moodier.
An early vs. recent attempt at a great over the shoulder shot.
I don’t know what I was doing here. Why didn’t I fix the creepy claw hand? Why is she so red?
It took me way too long to realise that nobody looks good with their face directly on the bed.
The far left pose has certainly improved.
Trying to be cool with colour.
I know these are small, so I’ve also added a gallery that expands to full screen below. Y’know, so you can see them in all their horror/glory:)
Meh. It’s a good problem to have I guess.
I hope the next few years bring an even bigger jump up:) If you’re a photographer, it may also be of interest to you to know that my gear hasn’t changed. My post work is better, but my camera and lenses are still basically the same.
I’ve spend the entire afternoon writing up a blog post featuring one of my recent shoots in NYC. Images, commentary, the usual.
This is actually quite a time consuming process, which includes picking and formatting the images for the blog, creating the post, proofing, etc. Then it’s resizing, sharpening, renaming, re-saving, etc. so those same images don’t get munched up by social media compression algorithms. I wrote and published this post, and proceeded to methodically push the images out to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Vimeo, etc. It’s the drudgery and boredom of being a photographer these days – with no agent, you have to make your own noise and hustle your own work.
I also sent the images to my lovely subject, and upon seeing her reaction, immediately decided I was an idiot and should have been working to get this shoot properly published.
Cue me furiously deleting everything I’d done in the last few hours. Funny how it takes hours to put this stuff up, but only about 15 minutes to pull it all back down. #funnynotfunny
If you’re not familiar with how this all works, it’s pretty simple. Magazines and the best online platforms like exclusivity. That means they want to be the first and only outlet to release your images or story, and if they aren’t, they just won’t choose your work. Hence me pulling everything down:)
So my apologies for a non-post post today. Hopefully we’ll have some sexy tearsheets to show you in the future.
Until then, here’s a great video I was planning on sharing with you next week:
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:)
“We have lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us – he belongs to the ages. …
We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again.
So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.
For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived – a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. May God Bless his memory and keep him in peace.”
“There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
Oh blogland, it’s been so long! Sorry for disappearing on you.
I’ve spent the last few weeks photographing a whole bunch of amazing women. I’d love to share their images with you all, but most of my recent clients are keeping their images under wraps, to be seen only by their lucky partners (or…at least not to be seen the whole wide world via the internet). Totally understandable.
So in lieu of a boudoir shoot, I thought I’d share a few images from other things I’ve been working on recently. Cue my first trip to Florence, where the sun always shines and everyone is better looking than you. Also, everyone is cooler than you and proves it by vrooming around on mopeds exactly the way Eddie Izzard described. It’s an amazing place.
It was a truly humbling and momentous experience to photography my first Florentine wedding. As some of you know, I take a select number of weddings each year, mostly previous clients that are now tying the knot:) I’m going to hold off posting too many details for now since this wedding is bound for publication, but suffice it to say that I spent the whole weekend feeling like I’d dropped into some magical alternate universe where I get to be friends with the Kennedy family.
Just one little sneak peek of the bride and groom. Love these two. If you’d like to see more of my wedding work, or get first view of the full wedding when it goes live, I’d invite you to hop over to my wedding website. It’s under massive construction at the moment, so please excuse the mess – I’ve been too busy shooting boudoir to get it all cleaned up:)
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