Shooting the catalogue of images for our brand new collection, "The Bright Side", involved a million different moving parts.
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Beautiful location? ✔️
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Plentiful props? ✔️
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Photographer? ✔️
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Perfect light? ✔️
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Blood, sweat and tears? ✔️
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Bucketloads of Jones & Co brand new handmade ceramics? ✔️
It's all in the preparation...
Jones & Co photo shoots are organised chaos! A broken box of samples, a missed delivery or dreaded rain can upend every single moment spent planning and agonising over each shot on a spreadsheet before the big day.
But we know we can always rely on our team to prep and deliver when it counts. It's always a mammoth effort to bump in hundreds of ceramics and shoot a catalogue in just one day. But we pulled it off (again!)
Why only one day? Are we crazy? Yes, and no. We are design perfectionists. We spend month and months designing our product ranges, so it's super important that we get all the details right every time.
Location, location, location!
We spent hours searching for the perfect location to showcase our diverse collection of handmade ceramics. We fell in love with one particular house instantly. The catch? It was only available to us for one day. We knew the task ahead of us was monumental, but the house was so unbelievably perfect to use as a backdrop for our collection, we just went for it. Eek!
Time to get to work
Arranging flowers, planting plants and the un-packing and re-packing (ugh) of hundreds of products is all in a day's work. Not to mention the actual "making magic in front of the camera" element of the photo shoot!
We were so lucky that the house had the most beautiful bespoke joinery in the kitchen and living areas, including a set of book shelves that was just made for showing off our beloved face vases. Each room was bursting with so many curves and layers, it provided endless inspiration. We had so much fun working in this stunning space to style our products and create perfect vignettes.
It's all in the details
We work hard in the lead up to each photo shoot to source an amazing array of props. We know the power of styling! This time, we had napery, spoons and glassware (sourced from prop specialists Major & Tom) and hand-picked plants from our favourite nurseries, plus flowers, fruit, candles, loaves of bread, a dozen eggs. You name it. We had it on hand.
So many tiny decisions get made on shoot day. Is it better to place three pears or two oranges on that kitchen counter? Should we use purple flowers or red flowers in our boobies vase? Can we hang our capiz shell wall art higher or lower? It is possible to make our Happy Mug collection look even happier? Does the Chino sugar bowl look as sweet as it can be? Will anyone notice if I steal a grape from that fruit bowl and feed my famished body? :) It's exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure. But we wouldn't have it any other way.
Lucky for us, we had the dream team on site to make it all come together.
Team Jones & Co:
Chris, our Photographer
Jen, our Creative Director
Suzanne, our Designer
JJ, our Director
Leah, our Florist
John, our Man Friday
Heather, Photographers Assistant
