Shooting for Glory

Image of map of Charlottes folly overlaid on a Eden Plate

Ever since Faye and I started Chase and Wonder, we've talked about hiring a special space where we could photograph our products, to showcase them in a setting that allows you to imagine how they'd look in your home.

Think of one of those glossy home magazine shoots - (House & Garden, The English Home, World of Interiors etc) - the ones where your dream interior unveils itself as you turn the page, and you unwittingly let out a small gasp of approval...

In other words, inspirational.

Up until now, we've always spent our photography budget directly with the photographer - creating beautiful shots in the confines of their studio, and building elaborate, artistic sets to showcase our designs. These have been GREAT, and we're very proud of them, and yet the allure of a lifestlye shoot was always hovering in the background.

We'd spent an age on some very special designs (I'll write about these in a future post), and because we believe in them so much, wanted to find a suitably remarkable location - and jump in with both feet.

So we invested in a (fairly expensive) shoot, finding a beautiful house and a wonderful photographer - Liam Crawley (more on him later).

And this is the house we choose - Charlotte's Folly, Weston under Lizard in Staffordshire... Recently re-designed by Emma Ainscough.

image of Charlotte's folly - a pink house

It is such a lovely spot and as part of the Bradford Estate (Weston Park), is surrounded by peaceful countryside. It has a magical quality that I think comes across even in the images.... These qualities match perfectly with our designs too. And the interior design is somehow both relatable and aspriational. And we loved it. Bravo Emma.

Image of photographer taking photos of our products.

We only had 10 hours to get all of our shots, so it was full on, especially since we'd not managed a shoot like this before. Thankfully Liam, our photographer was calm personified.

We knew he would be, as 9 years earlier he'd been our wedding photographer - dealing with the wettest wedding on record (I've not fact checked this).

We liked him then, and liked him even more now, and after an hour we were working in sync. Any worries evaporated and in the end it was a relatively stress free day.

Here are some behind the scenes shots of the shoot...