Where does inspiration come from?

If you're a blog follower you'll know I recently photographed a big shoot for myself. I thought of a plan, got a whole bunch of ridiculously talented people involved and I went for it. Actually, WE went for it. We were very much a team and the results from the shoot were bcause of everyone involved. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty scary at first being the boss of my own shoot, but the feeling I got on Tuesday evening when it was all over and I knew I had some stunning shots in the black box that hung around my shoulders all day, was pretty amazing.

Obviously you don't build a team to work with unless you have a plan... So where did my inspiration come from?

Originally I had a whole other shoot planned. I had been to Chloe's house, we had picked out outfits from her wardrobe and I was happy. But the day before the shoot I came across a photo and it changed my thoughts on how the shoot was going to start.

The photo in question was this classic taken of Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold in 1955.

I also knew that Chloe had a dress pretty similar to that in her wardrobe and that was it. I packed a duvet in a big black bag and I was set. But here's the best bit... for the rest of the shoot we had planned that Chloe was to have curly hair but before she'd finished taking her hair out of rollers Dyanne called me over and said she was going to try to style Chloe's hair like that in the photo. At the same time Deborah was doing the make up and instead of going down the route of 'I'm going to turn her into a Marilyn Monroe impersonator' she went for simple yet stunning effective make up and made the best of Chloe's features and when I saw their combined result I was blown away.

Here is a behind the scenes photo taken by the lovely Janine who was also shooting a shoot of her own in the same studio. Would you believe we shot ours on a floor under a window on a doubled up duvet ;)

Obviously they aren't the same and they aren't an exact copy but this was how one simple black and white photo inspired something for us all that day. Be sure to check out the rest of the shoot in my earlier blog posts if you want to see what else we got up to during the shoot.

:)