The Day It Comes Together

There is always a moment with a new body of work when everything starts to feel real. For me, that moment is usually the shoot.

As an independent artist, a lot of what surrounds the work happens in-house. Beyond making the pieces themselves, I also think about how they will be photographed, styled, shared and eventually experienced through the website and social media. The shoot is where all of those different parts finally converge.

In the weeks leading up to it, I usually put together a mood board to share with the team. It gives us a sense of the light, movement, compositions and overall feeling I want to capture. I also make a shot list, something I've learnt is really important, because three or four hours can disappear incredibly quickly.

We always begin with the essentials. Each piece is photographed individually, from different angles and with enough detail to properly document the work. These are the images that will eventually live on the website, so getting them right is important.

Once we have those, things become a little more playful.

Pieces start moving around the studio and being placed alongside one another. We experiment with compositions, details and more atmospheric images. I jump in and out of frame for portraits and movement shots, while we capture the collection as a whole rather than simply documenting individual works.

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Shoot days are probably some of the most intense few hours in the process. There is a constant feeling of trying to remember everything. Did we photograph that angle? Did we get enough details? Do I have the image I imagined for the homepage? And inevitably, once it's over, I always think of something else I wish we'd done and completely forgot about...

But it is also one of my favourite parts!

After months spent making works individually, suddenly they are all together in one space. After imagining a body of work as whole mostly in my head, it is finally in front of me in it's purest form. I can see the relationships between the pieces , start building the visual world around the collection and, eventually, watch it take shape on the website.

For Mémoire Bleue, that day happened at Studio Tropico. Seeing the blues, the stripes, textures and forms together outside of my own studio felt like another small shift in the life of the work.

Special thanks to the team which help me make this happens

Photographer: https://www.instagram.com/goodevienings/

Content Creator: https://www.instagram.com/thevacationersclub_/

Shooting Studio: https://www.instagram.com/studio_tropico/

Helping hand: https://www.instagram.com/chilly_toes/

Mémoire Bleue at Studio Tropico, 2026