15 years ago I was just starting out in the product styling business (it’s still my “day job”). “What’s a product stylist?” you ask… well, I basically make stuff look good so people want to buy it. When you flip through a catalog and see a stack of sweaters, a dining room table decked out for the holidays, a super comfy-looking bed, or even just a few pairs of artfully arranged shoes — I’m the person who sets that up.
We work hand-in-hand with a photographer and one of the things we’ll occasionally do is something we call “testing”. In a nut shell, we’re doing a “fake” shot (meaning there isn’t a client paying for it). A lot of times you do test shots to show a prospective client that you know how to do a certain kind of styling/shooting and sometimes you do testing just for fun.
When the photographer that I was working for asked if I wanted to do a few tests shot with him, I knew exactly what I wanted to shoot. An altar. I’d never set up an altar before and I really didn’t have a reason for wanting to shoot one — I just wanted to. In the end I was really happy with my decision. I loved how the shots turned out (and it started the obsession that is now the Altar Project).
Altared Places, the altar project 