Last summer I got to create a series of editorial images for Grays Court in York. The hotel is well known for its history and has won many awards. Kings and queens of England have graced that building and you can feel it when you are walking through the rooms.Advertisements
The brief was to keep with the English heritage theme but to sprinkle some magic/fantasy in there as the city of York is known for that. We created five images overall on the day. With some navigation of rooms we couldn’t use and the hotel and restaurant still being in use, the shoot wasn’t the easiest but it is these shoots that push us to develop the skills that will take us further. I also had a wonderful team, which is key to these larger shoots. I had the dress designer who has created outfits for Lady Gaga, the wonderful Kelly Ewing, specifically create costumes for our models. How cool is that!
As you already know, the shoot is only half the battle. The second half is spent in Photoshop as you can see by the two videos in this post. Apart from one image, all the images had various amounts of compositing and photomanipulation to be done. The thing is if you have planned well enough beforehand this should be easy enough. But also let things evolve as you edit, don’t be too rigid with the plan. There is a fine balance. The speed edit below, I had planned a single sunflower rising up from the ground, but as I went along that evolved into the whole room becoming part of the character of the image.
As you can see, the image evolved into a better entity. This can be due to taking breaks between editing and just sitting, staring at the image and letting ideas and thoughts rise to the surface. Again all of these images apart from one probably took over 3 hours easily.
Anyway, I hope that gives you a little insight to the epic project, and if you want to know more feel free to message me on any platform.
