THE STYLIST SAVES THE DAY
THE STYLIST SAVES THE DAY
May 2023
There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes of a hotel shoot, and one of the most important, yet often overlooked, is the styling of the hotel and resort. I can’t stress the importance of having a stylist help fine tune everything in a room or space to make for better images! This includes many tasks, like steaming the bedding and plumping the pillows to perfection, straightening every pleat in the curtains, editing and adjusting furniture and accessory placement, finessing plants/flowers, and so much more. These little things add up to a much “cleaner and refined” image that will entice the viewer to want to see and experience the hotel for themselves.
Quite often, the stylist is a step or two ahead of the photographer’s shot list, preparing the spaces for when the photographer and photo assistant arrive in that area. It makes for a more efficient shoot as the photographer can move through the shot list much faster when everything is prepped, styled and ready.
In many situations, the photography team is photographing a brand new hotel that is in the very last stages of construction and staging. When this happens, there is a choreographed dance with all the teams to work around the moving parts...so everyone can get their job completed before the grand opening.
For the above images, you can see the “before” and “after” looks of a recent hotel shoot as it was a few days from opening. Much of the furniture still hadn’t arrived, and only a handful of the plants were on site at the property. I had to frame up this shot to show only half of the bar and lounge...because that’s all the stylist could stage with the materials that was around the resort at the time. The other half of the bar and lounge was pretty bare. We all collaborated as a team to make this one shot work, but the stylist deserves a lot of the credit for pulling it together under very stressful circumstances.