Teaser for Sundays Secrets from a Stylist

Alright folks, I can't show you pics from Ian's house (although you can see a bit of it above), but I can show you the inspiration pics for his house.  These have been on my mood board (or notebook that i carry around shopping) for Ian's house since I started working on it.  I love how they feel finished, yet not decorated.  Despite co-creating Glee, Ian is a straight dude, so I didn't want it to feel overly designed. Just natural and lived in.

Photo by Mikkel Vang for Vogue Living

In the show I combine three different styles.  Very distinct, from different decades or countries.

photo from Emma's design Blogg

But I keep them coherent with the color palette.  Which looks pretty amazing in person, and I hope looks as good on camera.  I'm learning so much about how things are different on camera.  Being a prop stylist for photography helped me because I already know the rules like: shiny things are annoying to photographers (they prefer matte), small busy patterns screw with the camera and 'amore', and mirrors are always a problem.  But now I have a whole new set of lessons to learn.  Everything from the fact that I HAVE to wear more fitted clothes (my blousey blouses are making me look about 4 months along) to my lipstick should pop more, to TV interiors need a lot of color and even then, the color can look much different in person than on camera.

When shooting interiors for magazines or books, photographers can use natural light with the perfect lens and you don't need color (like above) to make a provocative, beautiful picture.  But for TV, they have to put these films on the window so they don't blow out and get really hot (tv speak for blaringly bright) so natural light isn't really an option.  

Of course I'm slowly trying to revolutionize this process, because set photography is normally so so so so much less beautiful than this kind of editorial (magazine) photography and being the total photo snob, it makes a HUGE difference to me.  BUT, i will say that our set photographer (the guy that takes behind the scenes as well as all the beauty shots) has an editorial background so I have higher hopes.

Ok.  so without giving away any of my secrets  you kinda get the direction that I was going in, right?  Man, I hope you like it.    

I'll break it down next week, room by room and show you my detailed process and give you all the sources.