Locations For Hire
Welcome to another new week on decor8! I have so much to share with you, including a video and a new recipe that will appear tomorrow, but first I want to talk about locations. Locations? Why yes. Locations are a big thing in the UK yet still not that popular in Germany though I hope that will change because I believe locations-to-hire is great business that could do exceptionally well in Germany given the number of magazines and stylists here looking for fresh spaces to shot in for their stories and books.
I personally love surfing location websites - there seems to be a high concentration of them in England and the spaces give me lots of interior inspiration. However, being in the world of interiors, I don't just peruse them for fun - I also look at them for potential locations that I could potentially hire for a job. I recent shot and styled a job for Canon Europe and wanted to hire a location in Germany to do it, but unable to find any here I decided to just use my home. It worked out beautifully, but often I want to shoot and style spaces other than my personal home. For my next book, we are shooting and styling stuff here in my home which is fine but now I'm thinking I may want to grab a few homes to shoot in to add diversity to the book. Staying fresh is really needed these days. You have to show your audience something new, always. It's a fun challenge, but a challenge still! You cannot rehash stuff people have seen before and try to pass that off as your best work, can you? My challenge has been to do new things to my home so that when you see it again in my next book, it will look fresh to you and be interesting to look at. It's also fun to compare spaces as they were to how they are today.
Currently, I'm scouting in Germany, Denmark and England. Possibly Belgium and the Netherlands, too. Ideally, England because it's super easy for me to get up there and I have plenty of friends to see and enjoy there while shooting. Problem is, I have nearly no money left in our tiny budget, money is always the problem when you are doing a book. Most people don't think about that when they are looking at magazines and books - the sheer productions costs - but it can be enormous just to put together a single story in a magazine, even if you are leasing the props! I just need one or two beautiful homes to work in for a day to set up a few things. So my search begins... Here are some homes I found and loved over at Light Locations.
When I look at these properties from Light Locations, I imagine how I'd style each room. Where I'd place that chair, this vase, that table. Where I would add things to the walls, or take away... What I would put on the mantle, what I would place on the countertops, what I would remove. It's fun to consider the options and play a little. I would love to work in any of these homes for a day... Wouldn't you? Stunners!
(images: light locations)