cottage style out takes...

last year i was contacted by fifi about doing a second photo shoot of sea dream. she has her own magazine romantic prairie style and two beautiful books, romantic prairie style and the romantic prairie cookbook.

in june she sent stylist sunday hendrickson and photographer mark lohman for a quick day of shooting. they were high energy, funny, fast and furious. they arrived on a typical cold windy june day and instantly began shooting before they even got in the front door. i was mesmerised, earlier in the year i had had another group shoot sea dream for the holidays, that team of 5 shot with film, it took 3 days to set up perhaps 8 shots, to have these 2 pop in the door all smiles and laughs and shoot at least 50 vignettes was fabulous. it was carefree, free and easy, totally organic, nothing felt staged, or striped down to meet their purpose, it was just about the way i lived, enhanced quickly by them.

its awkward to know what to do with yourself when they are working, i wanted to watch, but not be intrusive... i am only sorry i didn't take more pics of things as they moved along, i missed many of their vignettes that didn't make the magazine, but just enjoyed seeing them shoot around with fresh eyes. here are a few that didn't make the magazine...

they wanted a simple picnic scene, fresh lemons from my country garden with a mustard bouquet growing wild in the hills. only problem was it was blowing a gale and the plants kept tumbling before the shot... away with the plants, how about the lemonade... and that too kept blowing over, staining the table. the pics were not used, but i did enjoy seeing my table upfront.

after dressing them in more layers of down coats and scarves from my closet they tried to bring in a shot of my cute aqua bike. it too kept getting blown off its kick stand. i was too late to get their same shot, but got a side view before it tumbled again...

how about some cozy chairs... yep air borne again, but i got this before the glass tumbled and the pillows flew off...

sometimes i think my house is just in the jet stream, the beach can be calm, but my house, just on the crest of the hill, will be blowing like mad and bitter cold...

here is a cute shot of them both after they sparked up the deck with touches of orange, a bucket of blood oranges from my home and little snipping of poppies arrived with sunday.

a care free hall shot...

in the living room i loved how they did so little styling, she just grabbed a sweater from my closet and draped it over the arm of the chair and misted 2 wine glasses with water. easy peasy, so it feels and looks like my house~

she arrived with a bag of props, just so happened to have the perfect throw for my chair...

he rarely used the tripod, he shot so fast i think he covered every square inch of our tiny house. they stripped down my table, that is one place i do believe in excess, but i completely understood the bare minimum view~

the bedroom took scant minutes to shoot, just a quick pop of hot pink flowers, and bing bam boom they were done. no ironing, steaming, pressing, vacuuming, light meters, polaroids, computers, cords, screens, window blocks, just honest to goodness quick ole digital shooting like we all love to do :-)

cottage style is out now and available thru june~