FAMILY PROPERTY PHOTOSHOOT
When Paige first contacted me she told me she wanted to arrange a secret photoshoot with her siblings. The plan was to gift the images to her amazing Mum for Christmas. I was so impressed that at just 19 year of age she was looking to give such a significant and thoughtful gift and I couldn’t wait to work with her. My excitement only grew when she told me where she wanted the session to be held. Her proposal was to use a property on the southern outskirts of the Dandenongs outside Melbourne that her parents had bought and plan to build a family home on.
Our session took place on their property at dusk on a Thursday night in mid-December. While we still had plenty of light we started by taking images with two of the family’s horses before moving on to images on the farm post-and-rail fence and seated in the paddock. We then moved into the long grass with the distant hills in the background where I got some especially stunning portraits of Paige. We then walked over to a grassed area with hay bales behind for some fun action shots, giving Paige’s 10 year old sister Lily a chance to run around. I knew that as the sun dipped I wanted to utilise the long farm driveway for walking shots with Paige’s favourite hill behind, lit up by the setting sun. I was having so much fun with the family that I asked if I could stay and shoot into blue hour as the moon rose and they agreed.
While shooting the session I was mindful that, as I usually do, I wanted to include a range of the images in black and white to really drill down on the emotion of the shoot. I also knew immediately, upon meeting Lily, that I would want to create some multi-exposure images in post to highlight her self-proclaimed ‘tomboy’ personality.
Prior to the session Paige had shared some inspiration images with me. They were all bold and vibrant, as is my usual style but they all also showed desaturated greens. At the shoot we reviewed the inspiration pics and I pointed out to Paige that half were cool in temperature and the remainder were quite warm and I asked which she was more drawn to and she answered the later.
Because Paige had such a clear idea of how she wanted the final product to look I added an additional consultation step in after the shoot. I chose my favourite image and edited it in five different ways including my usual edit with true to life greens and several variations with different temperatures and desaturation levels. I then sent the samples to Paige so she could select the style she was most drawn to. With this decided I then edited the remainder of her gallery.
This is the result of Paige’s vision, I only hope I did it justice. It was an absolute joy to collaborate with her.
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