Hello March - Goodbye February!
“Looking Back” Series
As we’re already in a new month, we find it important to look back at the past one. Last year really flew by and we did not really take the time to appreciate the moments that had already passed or the projects we had concluded. We just moved on to the next one. This year, we want to stand still and look back at the things we’ve done and achieved! So, to start the first in our “looking back” series, let’s take a look back into the beginning of this year!
January
The year started with event photography, capturing the band The Sleeves at Bonitas at mambo on January first. With a perfect sunset, it was a lot of fun to capture this impressive band! It’s always a debate whether you take on a photoshoot on January first, but we celebrated New Years calmly with the family and had the entire morning and early afternoon to recuperate from all of the festivities.
The first two weeks of the year were pretty calm, mainly getting back on track after the holidays with our monthly clients. Having meetings for upcoming projects, and also trying to set things up for the new year. With family on the island, looking forward towards Fuikdag, and Juan’s birthday on January 12th, we really tried to keep our calendars a bit calm to enjoy those moments.
Although we tried to keep it calm, work does always seem to enter our calendars - we shot new menu items for Joey’s Smokehouse, Juan shot BTS for Alaïa’s photobook project “Backstories,” we captured an Airbnb in Kura Hulanda, shot a surprise birthday party at St. Tropez, captured hotel rooms for Atelier Skalo Boutique Hotel, had 2 family shoots, shot a reel for Diadora, shot real estate, had a full content day for Coral Estate & Coral Estate Holidays, finished our project with IrieTours, along with countless meetings.
But our favorite shoot of January was for BEHR. This was a project we had already started in November, where the owner had asked me to stand in as a model and we shot the first half of the gallery in our apartment. Now, the idea was to shoot outdoors with other models. We picked the location of Director’s Bay and just fell in love with the results. We don’t want to share too much from this shoot as the launch of the website is soon - but here’s a sneak peak….
And then it was time for our trip to The Netherlands, which was the best decision we’ve made this year. But, before we left, we got one last-minute request to shoot for The Niffo Huts - which was also a very fun shoot!
February
The month started in The Netherlands in a cozy studio in Amsterdam. Being away from the island really allowed us to disconnect completely, set goals for 2024, and get inspired by all the art and photo exhibitions. Check out our previous blog to see what we did while we were there (including the photoshoots)!
As soon as we got back to the island, we had a real estate photoshoot with Sotheby’s. As it was for a silent listing, we can’t share the photos yet, but we can promise it was one of the most impressive houses we’ve seen on the island! We started the weekend finishing a video project for FBTT Travel and kept the rest of the weekend calm. Taking the time to get inspired by the magazines and photo books we bought while we were in The Netherlands.
The next week, it was straight back into it. Starting the week with calls for potential interns who might be joining our team, meetings with monthly clients, shooting story content, and launching our ITL Mobile Studio (more on this in a future blog). We had a full-day content shoot for the marketing agency, Social Lemons where we tested out our newest purchase: the Profoto A10. We had a photoshoot for Uptown & Changes, and finished the month with a big photoshoot for Kura Hulanda: the faces of Kura Hulanda! Not all of these photos are edited yet, so we you’ll just have to keep their pages in check for the results!
All in all, a very productive start to 2024. We are really doing our best this year to balance our commissioned work with our own creative projects. When you work for yourself, it is often difficult to find that balance, but this blog is a good start for us. So, thank you if you’ve made it this far! It was a lot to catch up on, but we’re excited that you’re here on this journey with us!
We are working on quite a few things behind the scenes, which we’ll tell launch in the near future! So stay tuned!
All the best,
Ashley & Juan
