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.
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:
“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.”
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.
…genuine copper leaf. Because we can, basically. And also because I have a Pinterest addiction.
