Not on the shot list

Not on the shot list, but I couldn’t leave the location without adding it:

Thorough planning is essential for a shoot.

But… once on set you also have to find time for being ‘in the moment’.

You’re at the location. You’ve got all the props. The crew are all there.
This is THE time to create - by 6 pm on the last day it’s all over. So no time to waste. It’s NEVER an option to afterwards think ‘we could have also done this or that’.

On this recent shoot for La Maison London, experts in French antique furniture, we’d ticked off all the planned shots - using the beautiful upstairs rooms, the landscaped gardens, every angle we needed. And yet…

I’d spent two days in this house and loved that fireplace every time I passed it…
It wasn’t on the list - there was no shot in that room. But the fireplace was just too special to walk away from…

So, to finish off, we combined a few pieces we’d already shot elsewhere and made it work. And the house dog helped us out by showing scale.

I love all the final images from this shoot, but this one feels like a favourite because it was a ‘spontaneous extra’, and I got that fireplace in too 🙂