Many a creative have approached me to help them create designs for their photo shoot. Several years ago I agreed, passionately, blindly and with a sincere curiosity. I feel in love with the process and it allowed me to work and meet other creatives. The day is long but the work is fruitful.
As of late I have reconfigured my approach on photo shoots. After many thousands of dollars spent, hours processing flowers and, days and nights designing, I decided to update the process. First let me tell you what all goes into the shoot even before the day we actually do the shoot.
Concept Design: several hours of sketching and scrolling though inspiration images. Decisions on color, vases, ribbons and many fun details. Even though some creatives bring me their design concept, I still must make them my own.
Floral Selection: deciding what kind of flowers I want that will create the look we decided on. Making sure every flower is in season and available at the local market. Running around town to pick up the flowers, which the markets are unfortunately far apart and then the Houston traffic!
Floral Market: the expensive part!! Going to shop for flowers or ordering flowers from farmers/markets in other states. Typical shoot can cost from $250-$1500 (just for wholesale cost of flowers).
Floral Processing: this might be the least favorite part, but must be done. Several hours of striping roses, cleaning greenery, cleaning buckets, filling water buckets with plant food and fresh water and conditioning the flowers.
Floral Design: the fun part!! 2-5 hrs depending on complexity and design elements it could take a lot longer.
Delivery: most nerve wrecking part. Everything can so wrong here, even with the best of circumstances.
Set Up and Styling: my favorite part. This is where all the creatives are actually together and you can feel all the love that has gone into every single detail.
SO as eagerly as I agreed to create these designs in the past, my pocket book took a hit and I had to make some decisions that have made an impact on what I can agree to. If you happen to be one of those creatives that caught me after this realization, I hope that we will work together in the near future. I love what I do for a living and on the top 5 favorite parts of my job is working with other creatives. I look forward to many more photo shoots and only hope this helps to explain to others why I have taken a bit of a break lately. But I promise to be back soon!