Words and photos by Susie Sandford Smith

Last Monday I was lucky enough to be able to take part in one of A Quiet Style’s styling and composition for visual media workshops. I follow Emma (A Quiet Style) on Instagram and had started really noticing her stuff when she posted a Back to School photo and commented on how sad she felt that it was the end of the holidays. I remember always feeling like that and not being able to understand parents who couldn’t wait to get their children from under their feet (course, I realise that I had the luxury of not having to worry about finding childcare for the holidays – I imagine that does make a fair bit of difference) and so when I saw that, I just felt drawn to Emma. Her photos have such a gentleness and calmness about them and at the moment, I’m very much attracted to all that is peaceful and tranquil.

Because the workshop was being held in Brighton and I’m having a few issues with getting up in the morning (ahem), I decided to go down on Sunday night and thought I’d make a little mini break out of it. Unfortunately, the combination of me trying to cram too much into a day and engineering works on the London to Brighton line resulted in my arriving in Brighton quite late (9.20pm to be exact). Throw in an injured foot, a half hour walk to my accommodation (should have taken me ten) and the mini break was fast slipping through my fingers. “Still” I thought, “I’ll get up early, wander down to the seafront and find somewhere to sit and have a lovely breakfast and coffee whilst pondering the world”.

Fast forward to Monday morning and I’m hobbling up away from the seafront, having just caught a precious sideways glimpse of the sea as I left my accommodation, walking as fast as one can walk when able only to stand on the outer edge of one’s foot. I’d been feeling a little too cozy wrapped up in my duvet and got up (significantly) later than I’d intended to. Not wanting to be late I’d had to forego my breakfast, not even managing a slurp of tea or coffee.

Even so, I couldn’t resist taking a quick snap of this pair of phone boxes (making sure to place them in the centre of the frame – something, I was about to learn, that does not make for the most visually pleasing of images!!..Hhmpf).

I might have been on time had I not walked straight past number 84, on past the roundabout, then back again, and then stood in total puzzlement at an empty number 84 which very clearly wasn’t the venue I was looking for. Noticing there was another 84 next to 84, I breathed a sigh of relief, rang the bell, waited and then prepared my most impressive smile for the person who opened the door. We stood in silence, me now holding a horizontal grimace type smile, them looking scared. I was, apparently, not at the right 84!? Eventually, I found the correct 84, which was next to the 84 that was next to the 84 (and in all honesty, I think there may have been another 84 in there somewhere..) and was greeted by a lovely smiling woman. She invited me in and welcomed me to her shop, the rather lovely Kate Langdale Interiors & Floral Design, which turned out to be an absolute treasure trove of photographable objects and flowers with just right light. My hostess explained that Emma was downstairs making cups of tea and I told her how her post keeps ending up a couple of doors down at one of the other 84s (to which I got a slightly confused look). It wasn’t until Emma came back upstairs and we’d begun the workshop that I realised that my hostess was in fact not the owner of this glorious shop but another of the participants. Caroline (the faux hostess) was really sweet, pulling up a stool for me to sit next to her, and I'm now booked onto a workshop that she's hosting at her place, Cherfold Cottage Flowers! Caroline also went on to take one of the loveliest photos of me that I can remember seeing.

The workshop was only four hours long but boy, did my styling skills develop in those four hours! We began by going over some composition ‘rules’, I think I must be an awful student because even though I tend to be well behaved and very much a rule follower, my instinct is always to challenge rules and to ask why they exist (I tried not to do too much of that). After a short 'teaching' session we were let loose on the shop and all the beautiful flowers and props, our only instruction being to take overhead shots bearing in mind what Emma had gone through with us. We each picked a spot and then gathered the items that caught our fancy. I’d brought along a plate I’d bought while at the Manger workshop and chose to style it with some fruit, rather than any of the gorgeous flowers that were available.

Not quite my first attempt but the fruity plate was in my first set of shots. This one has been tweaked slightly to take in some of the rules Emma had spoken about, but there are definitely some broken rules there.

Emma keeps the workshops small so that she’s able to spend a proper amount of time with each participant and I think this really paid off. Certainly with me Emma was quite hands on, moving bits of my composition here and there, taking a photo to see what difference it made, looking at my photos, comparing the befores and afters (both hers and mine) and it was really easy to see what a big difference just moving a piece here or creating a space there made.

We spent a couple of hours working on different compositions and then reconvened for another bit of teaching – before a tea break (we weren’t allowed to eat our cake until we’d styled and photographed it) and then a final session on visual media, etiquette, hashtags, groups etc. After the class Emma emailed us over the class notes and we're encouraged to send her photos we take for her to critique - that's one helluvan afterservice (for the price of the course).

I learnt that I mustn’t be so afraid of doing the wrong thing (hello Oddur Thorrison – this is what he also said about photography) and that whilst my instinct questions all these rules, I do actually like the results. Although..I’ve been paying more attention to the feeds I follow on Instagram and I realise that a lot of them absolutely don’t follow the rules.

I don't really want to do mostly still lifes and I don't necessarily want my photos to all look as though I have styled them so for me, I think it's more about working out an overarching style, perhaps in the edits (that's a whole nother kettle of fish, editing, and one that I need to tackle pronto!). But I do think that by bringing in some of these rules I can improve my pictures, make each of them tell more of a story, make sure that every picture is, of itself, pleasing visually. That's what I hoped to gain out of the workshop and I think that I got that. I was also, for a few hourse, immersed in an incredibly creative and supportive atmosphere - I love workshops like these because you tend to find that the people there are quite serious about what they're doing but also very friendly and ready to share whatever knowledge they have that might be of use to you. We were actually quite a talkative bunch, perhaps even a little unruly at times!

I completely zoned out and forgot about the myriad issues that I've got going on at the moment. I came away feeling refreshed and revitalised and inspired. I actually started work on sorting the photos for Part 2 of my Manger post which is only (almost) a year out of date, when I got home. I'll definitely be looking out for other workshops of Emma's and hope that I'll be able to attend some more.

I was quite glad that I'd not known who was going to be doing the workshop with me when I booked as I might have felt a little intimidated - all of the other three participants, Caroline, Justine, and Holly, have great images on their Instagrams and really beautiful looking blogs/websites. It's fair to say that I haven't got this visual side of things sorted out yet (and possibly not the writing either..haha) and I might have been tempted to think that the workshop would be pitched above my skills level.

PS I was really touched my Emma's post written after she had delivered this workshop. From where I stood there was no sense at all that anything was amiss, I could not have told (though I did wonder about the cake with all of the decadence removed) that Emma was under the weather and I would like to thank her for spending those precious few hours with me where I was able to clear my head and just, enjoy myself - I greatly appreciated it. Thank you Emma. xx