Anita De Bauch

I’ve shot with Anita several times over a few years, and whilst she’s recently moved away from London, she was touring a couple of months ago, including a short stop off in London. I was more than happy to jump at the chance to work with her again. I wanted to avoid a straightforward studio shoot, instead wanting to find a shooting space with a little more character than you’d find in the normal white walls, white paper, grey paper rolls studio…

I’ve nothing against these kind of studios-indeed probably use this kind more than any other, to be honest, but for this shoot I wanted to be away from a traditional studio.

I looked around at a couple of places, and, when my preferred option fell through three days before the shoot, I was scrambling to find a suitable replacement. Cue a crazy afternoon searching and mailing, and then hoping that somewhere suitable would come up. If you’re looking for ‘interesting’ spaces, one of the things you’ll come up against is that the ones which come up most readily in a google search tend to be the kind of places that you’ll see in tv dramas or movies, and tend to have a budget to match. So, not surprisingly, I received a couple of mails saying, yes, the space is available, and at just £250 an hour.

Wow. I wish…

Fortunately, a fantastic shooting space at a very reasonable price did become available. I think I’ll struggle to find a more interesting and distinctive shooting space. The quick tour that Bella, the owner gave us, gave me a million ideas, and by the time Anita and I started to think about what to shoot first, I was bursting with ideas. Lots of distinctive shooting spaces, packed with lots of little corners to shoot in and incredible fixtures and fittings. It featured great natural light, as well as all the studio lights and modifiers you could wish for. I hope I’ve gone some way here to demonstrating the versatility of this shooting space. And of course, it helps an absolute ton when you’ve got such an experienced and accomplished model to collaborate with. 

Anyway, back to the shoot day. Despite shooting in October, the weather was particularly clement in London, and-much to my surprise-we even managed to use the roof terrace at the shoot location. This required some particularly tricky ladder manoeuvres to start the shoot, but was worth it to add yet more variety to what was clearly going to be a shoot packed with variety. As it was, I think we ended up shooting in at least five different locations within the studio over the course of the afternoon, and have created a number of very distinctive images, which I have to say I’m very pleased with. 

A quick note on the studio. Whilst on the one hand I’m almost reluctant to give away all of (well any of…) my more interesting shoot locations, I think it’s only fair that I give a quick shout out and high five to Bella, and the Shoreditch Home Studio. As you might guess, this is pretty much a Studio which is also a home, where pretty much all the rooms are available to shoot in, and which is fully equipped with all the lighting you might need. I know that I’ll be heading back there again sooner rather than later. I didn’t use all the opportunities it offers by any stretch, and I’m looking forward to shooting there again.