Styled shoots - Introduction

As most of you may (or may not) know, I've been finding myself in two places a lot over the past two years.  I call them both home.  One of these places are Port Elizabeth, the other a small town in the Northern Cape called De Aar.  When I'm in the latter I find myself void of inspiration.  You see, De Aar is an extremely dry and colourless karoo town.  Great for rest, but bit poor for creative productivity.

I've been planning to do a few styled shoots for a while now.  Obviously I was planning to do it back in PE.  And then it hit me, the main reason I wanted to do the styled shoots was to boost my creativity, challenge myself a bit.  And what better place is there to challenge myself than a small karoo town with no wedding vendors to bring in as part of my team.  That's right, NO WEDDING VENDORS! Most people here around who plan their weddings go to Bloemfontein, Kimberly or PE - all of which are more than 300k's out of town. To me that's just hectic.  No one to collaborate down here with in anyway.

Since I'll only be here for the next 4 months (and hopefully not soon again after that), I decided on De Aar.  You know, go out with a bang :-D But I decided to shoot in all the places I always wanted to shoot down here (a very small handful of places), so I started planning.

Due to the fact that there are no dress hire places down here, I put together all the dresses myself.  I also did the hair and make-up and styled the shoots myself.  I decided to keep the decor minimal (since I was doing that myself too), and work with what I had.  I then asked the few people I knew around here to be my models and they were kind enough to agree, thanks guys.

So over the past two weeks I put together 4 styled shoots.  I completed the last one Friday night. Even though it was super challenging, it was so so so awesome.  I did a Boho inspired shoot, a Snow White inspired shoot, a Sleeping beauty inspired shoot and what was supposed to be an Alice in wonderland inspired shoot turned into something else, which I don't have a name or a specific source of inspiration for.

I think it was Christine Meintjes that said, "never stop shooting for yourself".   I super agree with this.  Especially when you feel like you're void of inspiration.  Pick up you camera and take lots of photo's!

Doing these styled shoots has been a beyond awesome experience for me.  I learnt so much more about myself, my style of shooting, my camera and how my clients experienced being on the other side of the camera and how I could make their experience more AWESOME.   I also realized, that as awesome as doing everything myself is, I'm definitely getting help next time!

A huge thank you to Franci for letting me some of her stuff from her shop, Susan for borrowing me her bed, all my models; Lizaan, Danielle, Chantelle, Eric and Liandre.  Julle was super awesome!  And the biggest thank you to my hubby, Neal, for carrying all the heavy stuff, for helping me set up and for having all the patients with me while I was preoccupied with nothing other than these shoots over the past two weeks. Thanks Love.

I am so excited to blog these photo's! Do keep an eye out for them :)