Viva Brighton Issue #58 December 2017

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