Interior Photography for Interior Reflections

Having successfully completed a large three-property interior photography photo-shoot for Pavilion Broadway in January 2015, I was delighted to hear from my designer contact, Elspeth Rose again.  Having decided to take the plunge and set up Interior Reflections, her own London-based interior design business, she needed images of her work for her new website and marketing.

So I packed up the gear and headed off to the west country again. With the address of the property and a sat-nav location programmed in I was confident I’d get there with no issues, but once I found the village I needed to hail-down a local for the insider knowledge to track down the actual address. Once I arrived safely I was almost convinced that Elspeth’s optimistic forecast that “it will only take a couple of hours” might be right. It looked like a typical tiny quaint Cotswold cottage. But once the door opened and I was ushered inside I realised this was an absolute Tardis – it’s diminutive frontage belied a huge interior which spread out on several floors and expanded out the back with a fantastically modern and stylish extension.

Eternal optimism doesn't make time pass slower

Suffice to say, no matter how quick I worked, Elspeth’s target of leaving mid-afternoon to be back in London for the evening was always going to slip – I think we finally finished, exhausted, at about seven-thirty that evening. It was a great day – all hands to the deck – with Elspeth working one room ahead of me, flat-out cleaning, polishing and styling the rooms so the pictures would look their best. I'm happy to say that missing the evening in London was not only down to me… the final room wasn't peppered more than half an hour ahead of me.

My worry had been the light (again!) and the challenge lived up to my expectations. The décor was a mixture of light and airy (hurrah!) to darker, cosy rooms with luxurious furnishings that look superb to the eye but suck up the light from the camera. Even though we had showers through the day, the contrast between the exterior and interior light was huge, and getting the results I desired without complex artificial lighting was a tough call. Although I had the lights with me, with the size of the property and the number of rooms to shoot “in a couple of hours” I elected to work with available light, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Next time, more time

I'm pleased to hear that enquiries are brisk and Interior Reflections have some great projects on the horizon; next time I'm invited to shoot I’ll remind Elspeth of our previous experience and plead for a little more time into the budget!