What a shoot!

The cosmic love inspired celestial shoot has hands down got to be my favourite shoot having seen both the videos and the photos. I am absolutely in love.

Dee from Pixel Punk the photographer came to me with a vision. It was a simple photo taken from a Florence and the Machine concert she went to a few years back. During the concert, the band was singing their song Cosmic Love and Florence descended from above floating on a 3D moon shape swing. Dee decided there and then that one day she wanted to do a styled shoot around this.

Fast forward and she was bringing this vision to me to help bring to life. We were set from the start on how we wanted the moon to look and that it would act as the arbour for the couple to stand in front of and sit on for a few shots.

This one I have to admit was a tough one to style, it wasn’t your typical wedding style that relied heavily on florals to bring the vision together. This one took a lot more research and tossing ideas back and forth before I landed on a vision. Which was actually exciting and interesting! It isn’t often in the wedding world that something so different style wise comes along that really does challenge you. Every now and then there are elements of a style plan that challenge you, but it is not often the whole concept is a challenging one.

We were aiming for a more modern edgy vibe for this shoot. The usual wedding doesn’t involve a moon arbour and dark and moody features. We decided it was time to embrace the modern and go as edgy as we could. Break the moulds of a typical wedding simply because we could.

The shoot was originally going to feature heavy accents of navy as the pop of colour. However, the more that we discussed it and the more I thought about it, I moved it away from this to focus on the metal colours; rose gold, gold, copper and silver with accents of black. This colour palette instantly added a modern edge to the shoot.

The dress was a big factor in this shoot. For the longest time whilst planning at the beginning we had our hearts set on a sheer fabric dress covered in silver stars, lots of flowing material and a plunging neckline. This was the only dress we were going to use. Until we came across the hi-low crop number from Bloom Australia and we instantly fell in love. The sheer nature of the top and the fun playful cut on the skirt converted us instantly. Then combined with the fun bomber jacket saying ‘wifey’ we couldn’t look anywhere else.

The moon was the first element we decided on and it formed the basis for a lot of decisions moving forward. We wanted it to act as a seat as well for some photos of the couple sitting down on it. The first process was to consider the size of it, how tall did we want it, how wide was the seat to be, how thick did we want the crest to be and what angle was it going to come in at. There was a lot of back and forth drawing the scale of the moon to make sure it was right. It was still a bit of a gamble in the end as seeing something on a drawing of A4 paper and thinking it is to scale is incredibly different to seeing something in a life size 180cm tall structure. It was made out of ply and put together over the course of a few weeks and thankfully we got the dimensions spot on and it all looked in ratio. The next step was to decide on how to paint it. This was a trip to bunnings and about an hour in the paint aisle for Dee and I to decide what was best. It was incredibly hard to picture not only how the paint would work on the material we had chosen to build it from, but then how it would look in a jumbo scale. Some silvers and chromes looked great in little patch tests when we tried them in store, but the concern was a reflective surface 1.8m tall would be a bit much and would also interfere with the photos meaning we would get more pictures of the photographers reflection than anyone else.

One of the hardest elements of this shoot once I had landed on a styling vision in my head was actually sourcing everything. I definitely struggled finding what I needed for this shoot and ended up driving all the way around Brisbane from North Lakes and down to the Gold Coast to pick up supplies. Picking 2-3 things from each supplier because no one had enough to make it a complete vision.

I found styling things in the most random of places. The charger plates are actually from the trusty Kmart, the stars hanging from the hanging installation are painted from Big W. It really shows that you can find inspiration in any place and on any budget.

This shoot really focused on clustering and fullness. Making sure we had enough of the smaller elements to bring together to make a big impact. For the one table setup alone we had 36 candles, 6 chrome pots, 4 gold pots, 3 black pots, 6 wire copper diamonds, 2 ‘U’ shaped candle holders and 2 ‘C’ shaped candle holders. This is the ‘fullest’ table centrepiece I have ever done. The volume combined with the place settings and glassware filled out the table perfectly so at every section there was something visual and intriguing for a guest to look at. The scattered nature of the design meant at each angle you looked from, the design was slightly different.

We had a few dramas on the actual shoot day. The hanging installation above was set to be a cloud of baby’s breath. However, the baby’s breath didn’t arrive in time for the shoot so instead was a combination of dried elements that gave off more of a cream tone than a white tone. In the end I think this actually worked much better for the shoot than it would have with white. Sometimes things not working out, actually work out in your favour!

The table arrived and it was missing it’s mirror top that we were desperately hoping for. The moon arbour and the mirror top were the 2 must have elements of the shoot. This meant it was a quick trip to bunnings for us to buy an assortment of bathroom mirrors to use to place over the top of the table to give us the mirror top we so desperately wanted.

The mirror was a perfect addition styling wise as it gave off a reflection to everything on the table which meant it ended up looking like there was twice the amount of styling things on the table than what there really was. It also reflected the candle light glow which absolutely made the table shine.

In the end the shoot ended up being a perfect success. It was a real ‘shoot day’ in that everything was falling apart around us and behind the camera is an absolute mess. But in front of the lens is absolute beauty. Calm and chaos free beauty letting the models and the styling speak for themselves.