Could this be one of my favourite images EVER?! Behind the scenes and the decisions I made to get there.

It happens way less than you think that I get in the creative flow and ride the wave to creative brilliance. Creative flow is a magical state that I have experienced a few times and some of my best work has been produced in those moments.

I am happy to report that I have kicked off the year with a bang and have felt super inspired and so into the projects I have been working on. The image that I am discussing today is one of my favourites EVER! Given that I have taken a few photos in my 7 years as a photographer that is quite a big call to make so let me explain how it all came together.

It all started with flowers as it so often does and I had the idea for a little garden that the wine bottle would sit in surrounded by flowers. I have done something sort of similar before but never created the actual base/garden like I did here…..things got messy but I never let that stop me.

It pays to mention that I had the most beautiful selection of flowers as well which I was very inspired by, not just any old flowers would have been able to make this shot so beautiful.

I originally had the flower garden sitting on a gold plinth and I was going to change the colour of the tray in post so that the garden would be gold and that would be fab, THEN as I was about to pack up actually, I was sure I already had the shot but my curiosity got the better of me and I thought “what if I turned the bottle upside down?” I have come to learn that when I hear these questions in my head it is key to follow that train of thought and follow my curiosity, so I did.

I love the playful element of the bottle being upside down but then I thought I could flip the image so the it was actually hanging the right way up and the flowers would be upside down. This looks pretty cool as well but the plinth looked kind of awkward in that scenario so the final key moment was when I decided that I would remove the plinth in post then I would just be left with an entire floating garden which is what you see here.

Don’t get me wrong I love the other shots too but it is the magic of the floating garden that really had me excited. I genuinely didn’t want this process to end as I just kept coming up with more inspired ideas but sometimes you have to know where to draw the line and I wanted to go out on a high with this one and not take it a step too far which is so easily done.

This is the perfect example of why creating to a timeframe often doesn’t work, I spent SO long getting to that first stage of getting the flowers in the right place and setting up the garden that I was well over the timeframe of what I should spend on a single image. So, when your creative brain is trying to encourage you to take it a step even further it is so easy to say ‘’I have spent enough time on this already” and move on but I am so glad that I chose to follow that creative flow and go where it was taking me. The excitement of creating something that I consider to be some of my best work NEVER gets old and as a creative that is what you strive for on a daily basis.

In the end the client that I shot this for didn’t even select the upside-down image (they took another in the series) and usually this would be heartbreaking to me but in this case, I honestly didn’t care, I love this shot so much and even thinking about it now I can still feel that excitement. I will happily share this myself knowing that I did everything I could to make this a stand out image. Also, regardless of client briefs I will always follow my creativity as it is so important to me to build that trust in myself and my ideas.

Thank you for taking the time to read today, I am looking forward to many more inspiring projects this year.