One of our main objectives of our new business is to celebrate the places where our products are made and the artisans who made them.  We are having some furniture produced in Jodhpur, India and this will officially be our first photo shoot location.  This turned out to be quite  a challenge to pull off with just the two of us.

To capture the essence of Rajasthan, we decided to have two main shoot locations; a rural location in the desert and a more urban setting showcasing Jodhpur’s famous blue walls.  We started with the rural shoot by hiring a guide and his brother we used last year.  Deepak and Raj were life savers, without them we’d probably still be lost in the Rajasthani desert somewhere.

Our guides took us out into remote areas in their vintage army jeeps.  We visited several villages, introduced us to the families and found some great locations to photograph nearby.  Even with translators, it was tricky to explain that we planned to lug furniture into the middle of the desert, set up lights and photograph.

Within minutes of settling on our first location, locals seemed to appear out of nowhere.  People on foot, motorcycles, camels and bikes continued to stream in.  All of them eager to find out what we were doing out there.

We shot in several locations within a few miles of each other for the next two days.  This crowd materialized wherever we set up.  It was pretty funny, by the time we said, “no one will find us out here” we’d hear one of the local girls call out, “Hal-o Maggi!”  I call Meggan, “Meggie” which the kids picked up on pretty quickly.  Mostly because they thought I was saying Maggi , which is equivalent to dry ramen noodles in the USA.  How crazy are these westerners?  Setting up a living room in the dirt and calling each other noodles, crazy.Our local audience over the days became more and more involved, learning how to break down the lighting and  where to stand so their shadows didn’t get into the frame.  We also ended up with many of them in our photos.  We hired the local camel cart and driver to be in a few shots.  Typically these carts are to haul heavy loads like rock and timbers.  Although this job was out of the norm, he caught on like a professional model.  He is a handsome guy, and it turns out he also has a beautiful wife and a good looking extended family, which he recruited as well.

We are really happy the way everything turned out.  We’re especially excited to show you all of our final photographs of our line handmade furniture.  We will be revealing all of this when we launch our online store, stay tuned!

Come back tomorrow to see behind the scenes from our urban photo location in the blue city of Jodhpur.

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