Taking our time - photography at Charley Chau

We’ve had lots of questions recently about the photographs that we post on Facebook and our website of our beds and blankets, and of course our four beautiful little Italian Greyhounds who are invariably in them! There’s been a lot of interest in the last few days in particular because of the photo we posted of the three boys hijacking our photo shoot last week – see the photo on the blog post.

When we started Charley Chau (it’s our third birthday this weekend!) we had no money to pay anyone to do anything for us so we had to do everything ourselves, and that included taking all the photographs of our one and only product at the time – Charley Chau Snuggle Beds.

Photos from the early days snapped on a mobile phone!

Neither of us has ever had any training when it comes to using a camera so the process was a bit hit and miss and mainly involved having a mobile phone or our tiny little pocket digital camera to hand and grabbing a quick picture if one of our guys was tucked up in bed looking cute! While we took some sweet photos - think family album - it would be hard to claim that any of them were any good but it was the best we could do at the time! 

Three years on and we’ve had lots more practice. As I type the office is in turmoil because half of it has been given over to a home-made “photographic studio” (a hi-tech solution of large white muslin sheets) so that we can take some new photos of our beds and blankets with a plain white background; like this:

Theo hanging out on a Faux-fur Fleece Top Day Bed in our makeshift photographic studio in the office!

This little burst of activity has been brought about because we were lucky enough to have the amazingly talented Chris Ashwin (www.chrisashwin.com) take the photographs of our Raised Wooden Dog Bed for the launch in July.

Raised Wooden Dog Bed - photo by Chris Ashwin

When we saw how amazing Chris' photos are and compared them to existing photographs of our products we kind of thought it was time for a refresh so we've set about taking new photos of everything! We’ll be blogging about working with Chris and sharing more of his amazing pictures very soon.

Today is day six of the “photo shoot” in our office and we’re probably only a quarter of the way through if we're lucky!

“Why does it take so long?” I hear you ask! The simple reason is this: we like taking photos of our dogs hanging out, just doing their own thing and completely at ease.

When we need a photograph of one of our dogs in a Snuggle Bed in five fabrics the process is basically (i) put Snuggle Bed in fabric #1 on the floor; (ii) wait for one, two or even three of our little monkeys to claim it as their own; (iii) wait some more to see if they’re just investigating or they want to settle down; (iv) wait some more with camera ready in case something cute happens; (v) take photo; (vi) if whichever dog it is has gone to sleep, wait for him/her to wake up before starting the whole process again with another Snuggle Bed in fabric #2 and so on. As you've probably gathered, there's a lot of waiting involved!

It took two whole days to take these photos of our Snuggle Beds in four of the five fabrics that they are available in. We still don’t have a picture of Dotty Taupe but we will get one eventually!

And it took a whole day to take these photos of our Deeply Dishy Dog Bed! 

Even though they’re still a zillion miles from being professional quality photographs we’re pleased with the style and the light in our new photographs. And we're pleased that we're continuing to add photos (slowly improving photos) of the Charley Chau pack to our family album!  

Taking our own photographs of our own beds, blankets and dogs takes a long time but good things …

Like us on Facebook to keep up with all our latest photos and news: www.facebook.com/charleychau

And do check back on our Blog as we’ll be posting about working with a real photographer who really knows what they're doing!