Behind the scenes shooting a book
In the 15 years I was an interiors and lifestyle photographer, I shot a lot of books. But the experience of shooting my own was wildly different.
On the books I worked on over the years (mostly interiors and craft), I was always the ‘hired gun’ so to speak. I had almost no involvement in the project outside of the shoot days. I had no say in image selection, no say on layouts and no say on the cover. I would simply hand everything over (and get paid).
So when I wrote the proposal for HOME MATTERS as both the author and photographer, I was excited to see a book project all the way from inception to publication, and be involved in every decision made along the way. As the writer, I was essentially my own client. The book includes conversations with 13 designers, writers and artists and each of those would be illustrated with images of their homes, the conversations and the shoots would happening simultaneously.
I included many examples of the people who I wanted to interview in the proposal for HOME MATTERS, having no idea if they would agree. Having a conversation for a book is one thing, but having that person spend time in your home and photograph it, is quite another. Believe me when I say - I am a massive hassle. So I knew that whatever list I began with, it was likely to change.
In the proposal, I included sample images of the look I wanted, taken from previous shoots of mine. The book has chapters on objects, art, space, colour and compromise, so I used images that reflected how I envisioned those ideas.
When the book was commissioned, one of my first jobs was to start securing and booking the interviews and shoots. My editor, Sarah Thickett, and I agreed that we wanted to leave a bit of wiggle room, to allow the book to evolve as I was researching and writing it. That meant that I didn’t just go ahead and contact every person right away. I started with a few who felt essential to the project.
Some were people I already knew, whose homes I had already visited. Some I contacted completely cold, whose homes I had seen snippets of on social media or in articles and who I knew would have an interesting perspective. It was far less about what each home looked like, and far more about the interplay between the homeowner (or renter/social tenant) and the home that they had created for themselves.
Over a period of six months, I pieced together the book, working around the schedules of interviewees (as well as my own ability to trek around the country). Some of the shoots fell through because we just couldn’t get schedules to sync. But mostly the people I contacted were excited to take part, itching to have in depth conversations about how their home evolved, how their values have shaped it and why they care so deeply about them.
I would visit each interviewee for a day, having long conversations with them inside their homes. I would decide, during the course of these conversations, what I would shoot and often kept chatting while I was shooting.
I have always loved to chat while I shoot. It is one of the greatest joys of photographing peoples homes, and the inspiration behind the book. I wanted to bring the reader along for the journey with me. Because of this, I couldn’t write a single word of any chapter until I had visited the homes featured in them. And because of everyone’s conflicting schedules, this meant I was writing and shooting simultaneously, back and forth, in order to get the book done on schedule.
This is a little different to how an illustrated book is usually produced. Often the writer has all the images when they sit down to write. Or else they have all the words written before the shoot begins. HOME MATTERS necessarily was a lot messier than that. But that meant it was able to be fluid and reactive. A conversation at one home would lead to a chapter switch around. I would arrive imagining I would have a conversation about one thing and it would turn out to be something totally different, and far more interesting.
A decade and a half of experience producing shoots really came in handy here. I was constantly flexing and changing my schedule and the book itself, around the kinds of things that were coming up in each conversation.
During this process, I began drip feeding some of the shoots and chapters to my editor Sarah and our in house designer Alicia House. Usually a photographer is either shooting absolutely every possible option to give as much flexibility, or else working to quite a strict remit in order to fit the photographs into the design (such as specific crop proportions, certain numbers of portrait versus landscape, a particular mix of details versus whole room shots, for example). We also had the unusual situation of needing to include old photographs in the book. I write a great deal about my childhood home in Melbourne and we needed to incorporate original images from the 1980s seamlessly in to the design. I hand carried stacks of old photo albums to the Quadrille offices to have them scanned for Alicia to start playing around with them.
Because each home and each conversation was so unique, we had all agreed we would base the design around the shoots and words. Once I had two chapters written and photographed, Alicia got to work on the layouts, something she usually does when she has a complete manuscript and set of images. For the first time in my career as a photographer, I had a full say over both the image selection and the layouts.
This collaborative process was a total dream as both a writer and a photographer. It also meant that the book evolved hugely from proposal form, to the finished book (something I wrote about here). This is due largely to my editor and designer’s amazing communication and complete openness to respond to the project as it was being written.
Because I was writing and shooting simultaneously, the day the manuscript was handed in, Quadrille also had all the images and Alicia was able to immediately to get to work on finishing the layouts while I went through edits and copy edits. During the design process, we had decided against captioning the images on the page. It felt unnecessary and would interrupt the narrative. So instead, we have picture credits at the back, where the reader can flip to get a little more detail about each image. This painfully annoying job had to be done at the very end, once we had confirmed the image selection and layouts.
Last minute changes also had to be made after the legal team at Quadrille had taken a look at the final version. There were a few visible pieces of art work that would require lengthy licensing delays and so reluctantly, we had to remove a few much loved images and substitute them for others.
On a practical level, for those interested, my contract specified writing and shooting as two separately paid jobs. This worked in my favour for a number of reasons. Firstly, an author has to out earn their advance before they start receiving royalties. So I didn’t want my photography fee to be lumped in as part of my advance. And secondly, as a photographer, I invoice as soon as I deliver the work. This meant that I was able to invoice for the photography immediately, which helped me financially through the long period between the first advance (on signing the contract), to the second advance (manuscript approved for publication) which were about ten months apart.
A large part of what motivated me to write HOME MATTERS was to share with readers what it’s like to be invited in to strangers homes and the kinds of conversations that happen in them. It felt like a project for Penny the author, rather than Penny the photographer (the photographer part of me just felt necessary to bring along for the ride). But in the end, shooting HOME MATTERS turned out to be one of my favourite jobs in my whole career.
After giving up my career as an interiors photographer due to my unpaid caring responsibilities, shooting HOME MATTERS turned out to be unexpectedly healing. I had control over where I would shoot and when. I was able to make the shoots work around my sons needs. I had complete say over what images were included in the book, weaving both the visual and written storytelling together. After having a career taken away from me, as so many mothers of disabled children do, it feels incredibly powerful to hold the finished book in my hands, knowing that every part of it is mine. That I created something, where there was nothing before.
This sounds really interesting Penny. As a designer mostly working on food packaging my experience of working with photographers is likely very different but similar at the same time. So interesting to see the process.
I have always been interested in the topic of home when it comes to being a social housing tenant, as I grew up and my parents/sister still are. The idea of making a house a home when it isn’t “yours” and can be taken away and interfered with at any moment. Along with the show of identity when the base house is identical in a neighbourhood. I wrote something about my mum painting the door over a brighter colour when the council painted it their standard blue; she’s never been one to accept their presence. 😂
So beautiful to read about your process and I can't wait to receive and read your book. I've just pre-ordered ✨🏡✨