behind the scenes of a photoshoot

If you’ve been following along on instagram, perhaps you’ve noticed we’ve been doing lots and lots of cleaning, purging, painting and polishing all in preparation for our kitchen’s big day: a photo shoot for Better Homes & Gardens Kitchen & Bath Makeover magazine.

We’ve pinched ourselves a few times … our diy kitchen in a real magazine? Now that’s crazy.

We’re completely flattered and it was just the motivation we needed to finish all of the almost finished projects in this space.  You know, those lingering things like touch-up paint and deep cleaning and a new bench slipcover. And while you’re at it, you might as well clean out the pantry and reorganize your cupboards and paint the back door. Needless to say, we’re exhausted. But our kitchen has never looked better.

Since this whole magazine-photo-shoot thing is new to me, I thought I’d show you behind the scenes and share how it works.

The crew {Linda the stylist, John the photographer and Mark the assistant} arrived bright and early and got right to work setting up equipment and adding props. Linda wanted the shelves to be organized with mostly our things so I had them set up ahead of time and was so surprised that she pretty much left them as I styled them. She did switch out our clear glasses for pink goblets {clear glass does not read in photos – who knew!} and added flowers, produce and a few counter top props. The art director asked for accents in pink and green which makes the space look so pretty and springy.

Linda set everything as she wanted and then John and Mark went to work snapping photos.

Another thing I never knew about photoshoots: all of the lights are turned off.  John explained that the difference in tone between artificial and natural light is hard to merge and so he only shoots with natural light.  His camera is set up on a tripod with a remote and he views everything from his computer, making adjustments to his camera settings via the computer. That was fascinating to watch.

We did a total of seven shots and it was an all day process. If you do the math, that’s about one hour per photo. John is a true artist who pays very close attention to every detail to get the shot just right. They would take a photo, test the color, make little adjustments to props {move a pear, smooth the curtain, turn the cake} until the photo was composed perfectly.  I think that’s why I love magazine photos so much: they are very intentional and meticulously styled.

The day went very smoothly and the photos turned out beautifully. It will be such fun to see our well-used kitchen grace the pages of a real magazine.

And when all was said and done, a celebratory toast was in order.

We will keep you posted on the exact issue but it’s looking like spring/summer 2014.