Hey, I am Vanessa

Hi everyone, my name is Vanessa and I am from Germany. I’m going to do my internship at The Light Studios until December this year. I hope to learn as much as possible in photography and video making.

This week we, the interns, shot our first fashion video. Mara plays a girl who isn’t able to find the perfect dress for their second anniversary.

Charlotte plays her best friend who tries to help her but fails.

I have the responsibility for the camera and the editing.

The shoot was during 2 days and we had a really good make-up artist, Shelly Feldman, a talented actor, Diego Barbosa, who played the boyfriend and Thamizh Thendral who played a Clown in our video.

The filming was trouble-free and incredible funny with all that people together.

We shot at Holland Park, Fulham Palace and Oxford Circus.

Here are some expressions:

This and next week I am going to edit the video and upload it as soon as possible.

All the best to you,

Vanessa

Gucci, Versace, etc.

As the week goes on I find myself more and more occupied with preparing clothes for the shoot. It takes quite a while to get them ready though… What makes it even worse is the fact that they are all vintage clothes so it’s really hard to get rid of all the creases. Steaming the clothes can take ages. It’s quite cool though being able to deal with all these designer clothes. We have so many great brands like Chanel, Gucci, Dior, Versace, Burberry and many more. Seeing as all these pieces of clothing are vintage, they are even more worth. I would never be able to say from which decade the clothes are but our clients are very good informed and can tell which brand and which decade they are from in just a split second. That is impressive! It’s not all just clothes though. We have a few bags and many scarves as well. It’s quite interesting that all these things are in fashion again. Who knows maybe in about 30 years today’s clothes will be trendy again? I don’t know about you but I will definitely keep mine.

Even though we’re quite busy with the vintage shoot, we still get a few opportunities to do some events for clients. The other day we were at “The Strand” hotel in central London. It was a 12-year-old girl’s Bar Mitzvah in an amazing location. The reception was in a smaller room and it was our job to take pictures of the guest when they were arriving. The whole room was decorated beautifully and waiter were handing out cocktails and mocktails to the guests. After a while the room got very crowded and it started to get a bit hectic. The reception only lasted one hour so it didn’t get too stressful for us. After all of the guests have arrived, they started going to the big ballroom where they could take a seat and have dinner. There was a big stage with dancers waiting for the girl of the evening. Everything was really spectacular and we had a good time.

A little girl’s dream

Every girl dreams about the perfect wedding. There have to be an amazing dress, a beautiful ceremony, the perfect (diamond) ring, helpful bridesmaids, an entertaining and perfectly organised reception but most of all a partner that you adore with all of your heart. This day is supposed to be the highlight of every relationship. A wedding strengthens not only the bond between the couple, it also connects two families.

So what happens if you’re not the little girl dreaming about their wedding any longer but you’re an engaged grown-up woman, completely overwhelmed by all the possibilities for your wedding? Well let me help you with this. I’ve done a bit of research about this year’s wedding trends for a good friend of mine so maybe I can inspire you a bit.

For a perfect wedding you should have a kind of theme or topic for the decoration, the playlist, the food as well as for the entertainment. The most popular theme of 2013 and 2014 is “The Great Gatsby”. Basically the whole wedding is inspired by the glamorous age of the 20s. The task is to keep it very classic and romantic but entertaining and fun. The main colours involved are white, gold, pastel and light pink. Weddings have gone much softer these days, focusing on more romantic kind of colours. The location definitely include these for a great extend. The flower arrangements are very classic as well. They usually include anemones, garden roses, poppies, lilac with greens in it like leaves, grass or vines. These keep it retro but modern at the same time. Not only the flowers but also the invitations tend to be more retro. Going with the topic “The Great Gatsby”, the invitations  can be customised with handwriting, lace or gold foil stamping. Whatever you dream of can come true. Another big topic is the food. Of course the cake is the main thing at celebrations like that. Today’s wedding cakes are really classic, which goes great with the topic “The Great Gatsby”. They can include many different colours, glitter, gold or whatever suits the bride and the groom. The food can be specified to the attending guests but a big trend for this year are spicy food as well as small late night snacks.These snacks can include food like, churros, pretzels, nuts, etc.. Another big thing about 2014’s weddings is the so-called “social food”. There you don’t have waiters bringing you the food. The guests get their food by themselves. This encourages the socializing of the guests. When it comes to music the biggest trend for 2014 is playing your favourite songs in the style of your wedding, e.g. playing songs like “Without You” by David Guetta in the style of the 20s or a string quartet playing “Flaws” by Bastille.

The ultimate goal is to make it the perfect wedding that nobody will ever forget. So in order to do so, hiring a photographer and/or a videographer is a must! Imagine planning the most beautiful wedding ever and not having anyone to capture these special moments with a (video) camera? Weddings can get really expensive but you should never save money on not hiring a photographer (team)! We at The Light Studios in London offer really good and competitive prices for wedding photography. With our pictures no important detail will ever be forgotten. Talking to the bride as well as to the groom and the families is an important part of our work. We give them advice from our own experiences and help them as much as possible. Every loving glance exchanged between bride and groom will be in our pictures because in the end it’s all about love isn’t it; and this is exactly what we do at weddings: Capturing the love.

stressed, well dressed and boy band obsessed

Well this title sums it up perfectly… Yesterday we had a very big shoot going on in our studio! It was the first big shoot this week. The next one will be tomorrow. We had a quite well-known boy band in our studio: drumrolls… Union J! It was all very exiting. I’m actually not such a really big fan of Union J. I’ve listened to their music before and I really liked it but it’s not like I know all the lyrics. Although the thought of meeting the boys was very cool! I’ve watched them on the X Factor in 2012 so knew who they were. It’s always kind of cool if you meet celebrities that you usually just know from TV screens or magazines. The shoot was supposed to start at 12 but all of us came in at about 9.30 to set up the studio and to make sure that everything was clean and tidy. When my boss got the call that the boys were in front of the studio it was my job to go outside and to show them the way to our studio. I met them in front of the building and I got a hug and a kiss from everyone. They are much taller than I thought I have to admit! On the screens they looked much smaller. All of them were very nice. They are not putting up some kind of act for the cameras, they are all very kind, caring and just hilarious. There was also a little girl in a wheelchair who had won a meet and greet with the boys. She was overwhelmed with her feelings and her favourite member (George) took some time for comforting her and talking to her. He was very sweet and really cared a lot about her! Union J is not a band made up for the public! They are really nice and most important not fake! The shoot itself was for their new photo app. It went quite well. At first there were way too many people in the studio so that filming was more or less impossible! Eventually we figured out a good way of handling this situation: We created a small seating area outside the studio so that their management as well as their make-up artists could change from being inside and outside the studio whenever they were needed. The shoot was finished a bit earlier than expected but when the guys wanted to leave we had a problem: The amount of fans outside the studio was quite big! Seeing all the girls outside the studio was kind of cool! I have never seen something like that before. It was a long but exiting day… It reminded me again that this internship is an awesome experience! Meeting such a nice band really was one of my highlights of this internship so far! Let’s see what Thursday has in stock for me…

weekend shooting