Recent work for C.P Hart Bathrooms in Wales, and Kelling Design in Northamptonshire

Lovely day’s shoot for the fabulously luxurious C.P Hart in west Wales. A really nice house in Pembrokeshire, with a classic bathroom beneath the eaves.

Bathroom in Wales, shot for clients C.P Hart

Day shoot for Kelling Design in Norhamptonshire. Colourful and classic, on a very HOT day!

Best Pub Interior?

Hidden on my website amongst all the fabulous interiors I shoot for magazines, designers, hotels and so on, is my favourite interior of all. Down at the bottom of Devon is the Pigs Nose Inn… Just look at that red snug! I shot my local a few years ago but it hasn’t really changed, and best of all it’s back open after this horrendous year. Thats the table where I drink my cider and eat all the crisps in the pub…

The Pigs Nose Inn

Fear not, I haven’t turned in to a red nosed cider-drinking, croc-wearing old git (or have I?), no, I have been working hard of late, shooting for a couple of hotels, and for some interior designers based in London. And also working on a new project about cottage gardens… images below.

I’m looking for beautiful cottage gardens to photograph, so if you know any, let me know…

Thanks to The Pigs Nose Inn, Kitesgrove Design and to Beth Tarling in deepest Cornwall..

The importance of photography for interior designers

Everyone has a camera now.  It is estimated that ten percent of photographs ever taken were taken in the last year.  More photographs were taken in the last two minutes than in the whole of the 1800’s!  And approximately 140 billion photographs have been uploaded to facebook.  So, with this huge pool of imagery, it’s obviously important that if you want your business to stand out, you need to have decent photography done.

And as an interior designer, great photography is part of your brand.  You have a website, a social media presence and a portfolio of images that you would like to use in magazines and even books.  Those images need to really show off what you do.  It’s no use having a set of pictures that are wonky, badly processed and too small for printing in the best magazines.  You have put huge time and effort to design the space with beautiful furniture, fabulous colour schemes and thoughtful decisions made about height, light and texture.  You have done your side of things, now you need a photographer who can present that in the best light.

Why can’t you do it yourself with your (admittedly excellent) iPhone? An interior photographer has a proper set up of lenses and a camera that can record very high resolution.  The sensor on my camera can record a range of light levels, from they darkest corners to the brightest window highlights, and in post production I can blend images to create natural pictures that show the viewer just what the room looks like to the human eye.  So, the equipment is up to the mark.  What about the rest of the job? An experienced interior photographer will also know how to set up that fantastic camera and position it so that

1. the image is level.  Verticals are vertical (!) and the viewpoint is natural and doesn’t look too fake with overly wide angle distortion (what I call estate agents photography!)

2. The images are properly exposed.  Those high and lowlights need to be properly recorded so that in post production they can all be combined and blended seamlessly to create the perfect exposure.

3. Composition.  A beautifully designed room needs to be shown off.  It should be natural looking, ideally not ‘into a corner’, and it should show the main points of the rooms design… and combined with various ‘details or vignettes’ that compliment the main image the photographer can build up a true impression of your work.  

4. The images are sharp!  As mentioned earlier, the lenses of today are incredible, and a decent interior photographer can ensure that the lens is set up so that the image is sharp from front to back... or NOT!  Sometimes a little soft focus in the right places can look lovely, but a good practitioner should know when to use this technique.

5. Post production is key to a days photography.  It will take nearly as much time on the computer as on the actual shoot to create beautiful work, and a good interior photographer will be fully conversant with various software to ensure that unsightly blemishes are seamlessly removed, colours are correct and balanced, highlights are dealt with and lampshades straightened!

I have been shooting interiors for 25 years, working with every magazine and many of the best designers, hotels and developers.  I shoot with top end digital kit and am expert in photoshop and lightroom software.  I can style the shoots myself, or am very happy working with stylists or designers in creating beautiful images.  I will give you a quote for one day or many, ensuring that you know exactly how much the shoot is going to cost.

Please take a close look at my website and drop ask if you have any queries.  I am happy to send more images if you would like a closer look at what I can do.

with thanks to Kitesgrove, Mandarin Stone, Kelling Design, Sophie Peckett Design and Kitchenhaus for the wonderful shoots I was privileged to do!

Christmas interior magazine photography

Its that time of year again, and I’m on the look out for houses that look great at Christmas time… colourful, cosy, well designed pads that I can shoot for magazines and make features of. So, if you have a nice place and you go to town at yuletide (I’m not sure I have ever used that word before!), or know someone who does, do let me know. We normally photograph in the couple of weeks before christmas, (or sometimes after new year), and its an informal affair, as long as the house is reasonably tidy (!) we can work miracles (christmas miracles!!). Keep in touch and let me know if you have any leads. And happy christmas ;-)…