Viva Brighton Issue #58 December 2017
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WE TRY...<br />
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A lesson in Instagram<br />
Styling your Christmas table<br />
Christmas: it’s the most instagrammable time of<br />
the year. But I often find myself scrolling through<br />
other people’s feeds, wondering how they’ve<br />
managed to achieve picture after picture of festive<br />
perfection. What are they doing to make their<br />
photos look so good?<br />
To find out, I’ve asked Emma Harris, a local photographer<br />
and blogger (aquietstyle.co.uk), to come<br />
in and give the <strong>Viva</strong> team a few tips on getting the<br />
perfect shots of our Christmas table settings. It’s a<br />
particularly big ask, because we have limited festive<br />
props available (it’s only early November) and the<br />
fluorescent lighting and wood-effect surfaces of<br />
the <strong>Viva</strong> <strong>Brighton</strong> office are not exactly the ideal<br />
cosy-lifestyle-shot conditions. We each bring in<br />
whatever decorations we can dig up at home and<br />
assemble our contributions in a heap on one of the<br />
desks, awaiting Emma’s arrival.<br />
She walks in and is surprisingly unfazed by the task<br />
at hand. She spreads out a tablecloth one of us has<br />
brought in across a desk and starts work on a centrepiece,<br />
comprising a couple of branches of foliage<br />
I picked up at the florist this morning. She lays the<br />
greenery in a garland across the middle of the table,<br />
placing three candlesticks in between the branches.<br />
Looking for a bit of colour, she spots a bag of easy<br />
peelers on a shelf and these become a part of the<br />
display, along with a couple of apples and an oddly<br />
shaped pear. She lays one place at the table, and our<br />
first ‘look’ is complete.<br />
Then we begin photographing. “It’s always best to<br />
shoot in natural light,” Emma says, switching off the<br />
lights. “If you’re photographing from above, you<br />
want to make sure your phone is flat,” she explains,<br />
demonstrating, before we all join in. The same rule<br />
applies for shooting straight-on: the phone should<br />
be at 90° to the table to get the best results.<br />
As we all snap away she offers lots of helpful advice:<br />
negative space – leaving room around the object of<br />
focus (in this case the plate) – can make for a much<br />
more visually pleasing picture. She teaches us about<br />
the ‘rule of thirds’, and about using filters wisely. By<br />
the end of the hour we each have a gallery of staged<br />
Christmas pics and (some of us more than others)<br />
are ready to get started on the real thing. Not long<br />
to go… Rebecca Cunningham<br />
On <strong>December</strong> 4th, Emma is running a Styling with<br />
Botanicals workshop with AS Apothecary in Lewes.<br />
Spaces are limited. For tickets and info visit her blog.<br />
View her enviable Instagram: @aquietstyle<br />
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