Fashion

Rustic styled photography shoot in beautiful Surrey village.

Styled fashion photography shoot in Hambledon, Surrey

In order to progress in my business, creativity is the name of the game. This is why I just love organising styled fashion photography shoots. I also love building teams of creatives where the aim is for us all to move forward and to take us out of our comfort zones.

As I have now discovered a really local model Lora, I felt that it would be great to organise a styled shoot involving my regular make up artist. We decided that it would be really fab to base our shoot around the beautiful village of Hambledon in Surrey. This turned out to be much better than I ever hoped for. It was also convenient for Viktoria who lives there and knows all the best locations.

For me it was also the start of assembling a dream team, more of that in a later blog post.

Anatomy of a styled shoot

It all starts with an idea, a little sparkle in your mind that can be developed into something tangible. The idea here was rustic charm because the location was right for this.

The next stage is to gain inspiration. Here Pinterest is really useful for fleshing out ideas. A secret board is set up that can be shared. Here everybody can pin their own ideas and the shape of the shoot can be developed. It is especially useful for the make up artist as she can plan the make up required. The model can choose the style of clothing that would suit. It is also a great method for story-boarding the shoot.

Once the ideas were in place a date was set and we met at Viktoria’s house. For me I always like to try new techniques – something that pushes the boundaries and I would dare not try on a paying shoot. The idea this time was to use one of my studio heads to overpower the sun giving more control over the light.

The shoot

The weather was on our side for the shoot and after around an hour in make-up were ready to venture forth and get some shots. We started in some woodland near the house, where the studio light came into its own as it provided a nice burst of light to lift the shadows and prevent colour casts from the foliage. Disaster struck after 10 shots as the battery gave up, even though it was charged prior to the shoot.

From here we moved to a very large old oak tree in the village. This provided a suitable back drop for some close in shots of the make up. It is always essential when you carry out a styled shoot to provide shots to the others in the team that reflect their work and skill.

Close by we found a wood pile where the texture of the sawn wood caught my eye and provided a stable platform for Lora to sit on. Further on we utilised a nice old wall with some rather autumnal shrubs in the background.

By now everything was falling into place making it a very successful shoot. We finished up in a rustic garden of a property that was open to the public in the village. This was an excellent location and around an hour was spent here bagging some really great images.

Post Production

I wanted this shoot to have a consistent style and feel about it. It needed to be rustic and some suitable actions were utilised in both Lightroom and Photoshop, developing the required style.

With this type of shoot you can really experiment without any risk. This means you can develop actions that could be used on other shoots, cutting down on production time and providing consistency for the whole shoot.

The future

Now that some of the team are in place, there is a need to add to the collaboration. I always felt that to take things to the next level a stylist was required. As I am a bloke, that is not an area where I hold any real skill! It is surprising where you might meet people and finding a stylist at a business exhibition proved to be the start of something very special. More of that later.