One of the things we most enjoy at H&G is our Christmas photo shoot so we thought we’d take you behind the scenes of our most recent shoot.

The photo shoots always take place in our home which doubles up as a location hire so we’re used to having film crews taking over every inch of the house.

The advantage of using our own home means that we can pre-prepare the house in advance. For a week before the photo shoot, every single room has a Christmas sack or stocking with presents spilling out of it. Even in the middle of a heatwave, if you get all your Christmas decorations out, believe me, you will feel festive!

Our photographer is the fabulous Andrew Boyd. We’ve worked with him for years and he totally understands the look we need for our products and brand. He also keeps me in check because I absolutely love a prop and am guilty of over styling! If I could get away with it I would smother our Christmas sacks with beautifully wrapped presents!

That said, props do matter and each year I plan a different look for the presents I’ll be using to style the Christmas sacks. For Christmas 2018 I chose to wrap the presents in Liberty print fabric with velvet ribbon - the ultimate in luxurious overkill.

In addition to wrapped gifts, we give Cuthbert (the monkey) or Henry (my childhood teddy bear) starring roles. Cuthbert is quite partial to stylish festive headwear and throughout the year I’m always on the lookout for new pieces for his wardrobe! It’s not easy this styling thing!

For Christmas 2018 we’re introducing a Christmas dog stocking to our collection and so for the first time we had a live model - Flo the Labrador. They say never work with children and animals but Flo was so well behaved. She was photographed in a bedroom on the third floor of our house so she was slightly out of breath and we had to time the photographs between her pants!

Photo shoots are so much fun but they’re long days so we are sustained with endless cups of tea and biscuits. Not great for the diet but vital for the creative process.

The preparation, mess and hard work are all worth it though because nothing beats the thrill of a successful photo shoot.

Words and photos by Tanya Taylor © 2018