Lights, Location, Story

Here at Libra, there’s no stopping to look back on an amazing open week, we’re moving straight onto planning our new lookbook.

You will have seen many of the new themes for autumn/winter at our open day – lots of covetable new furniture and statement lighting for a start – and of course we need to shoot all of these stories. And stories, of course, is the key word here.

If you have a tale to tell with the theme, not only will it have more confidence and impact when presented to customers but it also makes the planning process much easier.

Let’s look at the new ‘Empire’ theme as an example. This theme tells the story of a home that is bold, confident and Avant-garde whilst still maintaining a classic edge. It is monochrome – but warmed by metallics and dark woods. It’s an architects or interior designers home perhaps, someone who has an understanding of interior design history with a nod to the Bauhaus movement, for example, but also knows how to juxtapose this with modern pieces such as the new Zebra print rug and the Turney walnut dining table.

It’s understanding this that makes it much easier to hunt for a location – if you know what your theme is and who could live within that theme then it’s easier not to get distracted by hundreds of beautiful, high ceilinged, architrave Victorian homes and instead to focus on contemporary, light filled homes with dark wooden floors and entire walls filled with windows. We’ve got one such beauty booked in and can’t wait to see some of our new stories shot there for the new lookbook.

Of course, there are many other elements to planning a shoot and successfully creating a story in one picture. It’s working out all of the products we want to include in each shot.

There are some amazing new accessories at Libra and creating that fine balance between clarity and wanting to show you all so much is a tricky one.

The product range is so vast we could never photograph everything! Thumbnail sketches are used at Libra a lot – they are no work of art but are amazing tools to help plot out where in a location you’re using for each shot, what products you want to use and potentially what props you need.

We are very nearly there with our planning, booking and story telling process, we can’t wait to show you the results in our new lookbook. Watch this space for a behind the scenes blog and pictures!