I worked with Tony for a third time helping out on an interior shoot for a client who produced window stickers imitating frosted glass.
I got to his home for around half 8 in the morning, and we went over to the client’s home where she briefed us on the places we were going to shoot. The first location was on a farm in the owner’s home, we had to negotiate setting up lighting around three dogs, two lambs and a woman baking a cake! It was quite an experience, however after getting the lighting on the window perfect and the surrounding vicinity spotless, Tony was able to get the perfect shot.
After that, we packed up and went to our second location. It was the home of the stylist assisting the client on the job. We needed to light a small area in her home with a single sticker that we needed to style in two ways. The first was to make it look homely, books and statues were placed on the windowsill. It took around 20 mins to light perfectly. Once the shot was taken, we had to change the set to look like a bathroom and a different deckle was placed on the window. It then had to be lit ever so slightly differently so that it had a different mood and everything felt three dimensional.
Once done we were on to the third location. This was by far the trickiest shoot. The deckles were on kitchen cabinet doors, again, in someone’s home. The cabinets had food packets, tins and other miscellaneous kitchen items inside them. There were also single lights inside the cupboards and so this added another difficulty in lighting them from within. With a lot of thought, effort and consideration, we were able to eventually able to rearrange the items within the cupboards to produce a shot that enabled you to view the deckles clearly.
The final location was back at the client’s home where she had four different deckles in different areas around her home. It was my job to set the lights up and hold/ move them to be exactly right for lighting the interior of the image. It was challenging as Tony and myself had to communicate clearly where the light needed to be, and the intensity to have it on. It was extremely useful for me to assist on such a shoot as it enabled me to see what interior shoots are like. Only two lights were needed but the use of a slower shutter speed was needed to compensate balancing the interior light with the light coming in through the gaps of the deckles – it was to see the detail in the designs of the stickers.
Overall it was so insightful to see all that went on in not only the photographing of an interior but the styling of the shoot. I found it extremely fun helping to assist on all parts, both lighting the shoot so that only one or two images were needed per set up and styling the shoots, so that in camera, compositionally it worked.