Remember our sweet, never-hurt-a-fly ram, Ramsey, who watched over us from above the bed? He was one of those small, sentimental finds that made the house feel a little more like ours and even inspired Burger to strike a yoga pose on occasion.
We’re sad to say Ramsey is gone. He somehow popped off the kitchen wall where he’d been temporarily hanging for a book vignette above the fireplace and landed on the floor. No one was nearby to catch him. It’s silly to feel this attached to a ceramic animal, but he truly felt like part of the family. We loved sleeping under his watchful gaze and now there’s a hole both in our hearts and on the wall.
These past three weeks have been a whirlwind of book photography, and the house has felt like a maze of cameras, lights, props, borrowed furniture, and people. Staging our home for a book turned into a full-on production: equipment everywhere, secret projects in progress, and frequent furniture migrations—think of Catherine Zeta-Jones weaving through red lasers in Entrapment, but clumsier and much more lurchy. On our second-to-last shoot day, Ramsey became our first casualty. Poor little ram.
We’ve spent the last 21 days transforming a pile of paper into a real book. The photography is finished; next come layout, design, and sending everything off to the printer. The book will be available for preorder this summer and should be out this fall. During the marathon we shot over 2,000 photos and expect about 200 of them to make the final cut. We took dozens of angles and variations to get every project just right, often keeping roughly one out of every ten shots. Yesterday we even photographed three different cover concepts. They all looked great—even without our awkward faces—so we’re excited to see which design wins.
As much as we want to share everything right now, we have to hold back until the book launches. Still, here’s a peek at the chaos that defined our days: the playroom got repainted countless times to create different backdrops for various shots; parts of the house became temporary storage for staged items; and rooms swapped purposes depending on the day’s theme. By about the eighth or ninth repaint it felt almost routine. We even stenciled one wall for a special image taken later in the shoot.
Between the painting there was a lot of hands-on work—gluing, taping, spray painting, dyeing, stenciling, staining, and other secret DIY preparations. To keep the process shots authentic without looking messy, I hid paint under dark nail polish and John wore Dexter-ish rubber gloves for some scenes. Clara found the whole thing fascinating. She loved following the photographer, Kip Dawkins, around the house and waving hello to everyone. She learned the crew’s names and even recognized their cars when they pulled into the driveway. We’re grateful to John’s parents for stepping in when things got hectic; their help meant a lot.
Many of the process shots were arranged on the floor and photographed from a distance against a seamless white background so the before-and-after photos read clearly. The finished images are usually styled in situ—on tables, on walls, next to windows, or out in the yard—so they feel like real parts of our home even though arrangements, colors, and accessories changed throughout the shoot. We used reflectors to keep lighting consistent; I liked to pretend it was a sail and daydream about being somewhere tropical while we worked.
Burger was a great sport amid the upheaval. We featured him in a few shots, and he handled the extra people and props with his usual calm. The guest bed became a traveling prop and seemed to show off just how big our living room really is; sometimes it felt like we were shooting in a gymnasium. We borrowed a few pieces of furniture from local shops to achieve the right look for certain table and sofa vignettes, which helped give the book a variety of room layouts.
To the crew who felt like family after spending nearly a month with us: thank you. And to our readers: thank you for bearing with us while we juggled this intense project alongside a kitchen redo, some unexpected household mishaps, and travel prep. We ran on dark chocolate instead of coffee at times—small perks help when you need a quick energy boost.
Have you ever completely turned your house upside down for a project? Broken something irreplaceable? Or gotten to know a group of strangers so well they feel like family by the end? This last stretch has been wild, exhausting, and exhilarating all at once. We can’t wait to share the finished book with you this fall.
Psst—You can find our other book-related posts from the past year here, here, and here.