I flew back to Sydney in August to shoot this summer bbq story for the launch issue of Home Basics, a new magazine put out by Shannon Lush and Jen Fleming (writers of ‘Spotless’). August is winter in Australia and I can tell you, it was hotter and sunnier than it was here in Europe for Summer! The story brief was to create a table setting that was loose, real and simple. The colour palette was to be yellows, blues with a backdrop of craft-paper brown. So this is what I came up with, taking the craft-paper brown as a literal background and using it as a tablerunner. I was inspired by these beautiful wattle branches I saw in a florist and dotted them around the table in little glass vases. Gayna Murphy, the art director, had found these fab old plates of all sorts of colours so I set the table with these mix-matches of plates and old cutlery. I made these little paper flower centre pieces from coloured cupcake cups, beads and ribbon. And I used fabric swatches that I have picked up over the years from designers and printmakers. The beautiful blue fabric swatch (called ‘The Cranes’) is from the Florence Broadhurst collection at Signature Prints.
It was alot of fun shooting with Chris Chen – we were challenged with the weather as a rain cloud decided to hover directly above the setting (seriously, the rest of the sky was blue!) and it started pouring while I was setting up the table. So the 3 of us girls pulled the rather heavy glass table undercover until we saw a moment of sunshine. I continued to set the table up inside and as soon as we saw a break in the cloud we pulled it back into position very carefully and fired away! We didn’t get much time with it, it started pouring again after 15 minutes!
The ice bucket here is actually from a set of recycled tin jars sent up for me from a very special store in Victoria which I will be posting about in the New Year (it’s one of my secret treasure troves that I source my props from and it is in my line up of secret boutiques that I will be revealing in time, stay tuned!). And the cushion is from one of my all time favourite hand screen printed fabric makers and designers: Perry and Fowles.
stunning, stunning, stunning
December 18th, 2007 | #
Wow – I love everything about this! The colors, the styling, just beautiful. I’m so glad to have found your blog, through Blush, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us!
December 19th, 2007 | #
beautiful work and i love your photography style! do you have any advice for someone who is just getting into photography?
December 19th, 2007 | #
you girls are so sweet, i am loving being a part of the blogging world with you!
brittany – it depends on what type of photography you are into, but if you’d like to get into commercial photography my best suggestion would be to look into assisting some professional photographers – this is the best way to learn and also to see if it is something you would like to do or not as you can get a feel for the whole business. hope this helps, let me know.
December 20th, 2007 | #
do yo uknow what i love about you and this site??? its just very calming and serene. It is one of the things that really calms me down.
April 3rd, 2008 | #