Behind the lens: The duo bringing creative businesses to life on camera
The creative duo behind Holly Booth Studio works with a global client base of independent designers, makers and shops to capture creative and contemporary imagery for their businesses. Holly and Pete share their own story, and what they’ve learned along the way.
Hello, who are you? Can you share a bit about yourselves?
We’re Pete and Holly and we run Holly Booth Studio together. We’ve been a couple for almost 16 years, and we’ve been working together for the last two. Holly’s our founder and is in charge of photography and styling. Pete joined the business in 2020 after leaving the BBC and is responsible for videography and looking after our studio. Away from work, the main things we’re into are music – we love going to gigs and collecting records – and walking our two French bulldogs, Remi and Margot.
How did Holly Booth Studio come about?
Holly founded the business in 2010, after completing a degree in commercial photography and realising she wanted to work for herself and turn her love of photography into a career. Like most photographers, she tried her hand at a few things like fashion and wedding photography, before realising product photography was what she enjoyed the most and wanted to turn into a business.
The social media landscape has changed a lot since you started your business. How have you had to adapt?
When Holly first started the business in 2010, social media was still relatively new, so it was an extra thing to figure out alongside learning to run a business. Over the years, we’ve spent time assessing what works for us – and as our business is so visual, Instagram and Pinterest have proven to be particularly useful. Holly has spent – and continues to spend – a lot of time and effort building our audience and being able to share our work quickly and easily with potential clients is great.
What are the essentials that small business owners need to get their brand out there and loved by customers?
We’re obviously a little bit biased here, but we believe good photography (and videography depending on the business) is essential when it comes to attracting potential customers. If you’re shopping online, you are very unlikely to purchase a product if you can’t get a good idea of things like the size and shape of the product, what materials it’s made of, and what it might look like in your home.
A good, clear brand identity is also very important, and we find the clients that get the most out of shoots with us are the ones that have put a good deal of thought into things like colours, props and styling, so that the images they get are consistent with their brand. We always strive to provide images that represent the client’s brand identity and not our own, and this is something we know our clients really value.
What challenges has Holly Booth Studio faced and how did you overcome it?
Like most businesses, we were challenged quite a bit by Covid. We feel very fortunate that we weren’t as adversely affected as a lot of people in our industry, as most of our work is currently done remotely, but all of our brand shoots and location shoots had to stop. We also had to get used to working a bit more flexibly during the pandemic. We usually have a reasonably strict plan of what work we’ll get done from one week to another, but deliveries were delayed and a lot of our clients experienced issues with suppliers, so we had to be much more adaptable.
What does the future look like for your brand?
We definitely want to become a bit more of a supportive resource for people – whether that’s makers, photographers, or even students. We’ve got a few plans in the pipeline to help us achieve this and they will involve the studio we moved into last year, but we can’t say much more than that at the moment! It has always been important to us that we use the experience and the knowledge we have to help other creatives and professionals, particularly those who are just starting out, and that’s something we really want to do more of in 2022.
What do you love most about creating content for creative people?
This is something we talk about all the time. The best thing, without a doubt, is getting to work with some amazingly talented people and getting to see the amazing things they design and produce. A lot of our clients’ businesses have grown with us and we’ve seen people go from working at their dining tables to running shops and studios and to have been a part of that journey feels really special.
Time for your close-up?
Here’s some advice from Holly and Pete...
It’s always wonderful to see the face behind a brand. But when it comes to actually being your turn to get in front of the camera, it can be a little bit daunting. Even for this creative duo.
“We’ve had to do it too and both of us are incredibly camera shy – there’s a reason we’re usually on the other side of the lens! We found the best way to deal with it was to use a photographer that we trusted and was able to make us laugh and put us at ease.”
If you don’t already know the photograher, they say it is also a good idea to meet in person, or at least have a video call with them to get a sense of whether or not you will feel comfortable working together.
“That’s something we give real consideration to when we work with clients. We understand that for a lot of people, getting in front of the camera can be a really difficult – even anxious – experience.
“We do whatever we can to talk to clients the whole way through the shoot, answer any questions they might have and most importantly, we’ll never ask anyone to do anything that makes them feel awkward or uncomfortable.”
But most of all?
“Try and enjoy it!”
