Ebb and Flow Yoga

Mother and daughter team, Jill and Katy contacted me in the midst of setting up a new company. It’s called ‘Ebb and Flow’ a studio based yoga and pilates studio. Their concept was for the studio to be very ‘boutique hotel’, very sophisticated and atmospheric. They needed the images to reflect this. The lighting needed to be very low key, subtle, cosy and atmospheric with warm tones. This is a departure from my usual style of light and bright. I welcomed the opportunity. It’s really refreshing to work to produce a distinctive style.

Jill and Katy had already organised the venue. They hired one of the floors of Lambert’s Yard in Leeds city centre. Parquet flooring, brick walls and lovely old window frames with black blinds. Katy had asked about 10 of her expert yoga friends to come and be the models for the shoot and to wear dark coloured clothes.

Jill and Katy had a list of ideas and each set up would end up illustrating a specific page of their website. I really appreciate it when a client has strong ideas and knows what sort of images they want to achieve. They were also open to the unplanned shots that just happened as the day evolved – the images that no one could have thought of.

I used the daylight coming through the windows to produce the highlights in the images and then used a light to very gently fill in, to achieve a little bit of detail in the shadows. The models were brilliant and really experienced in yoga and so they could hold their poses for me effortlessly. I really enjoyed this shoot, working with ‘yogis’ was a pleasure – everyone was very relaxed but focused.