My clients often become friends. When you spend time getting to know someone’s business, their story and what makes them tick, it tends to happen naturally – and it’s one of my favourite parts of the job.
Victoria is a perfect example.
Victoria runs From Victoria (@fromvictoriashop), a gorgeous independent shop in Lewes. I’ve photographed it every season for three years now – 12 seasonal shoots and counting, plus a few bonus ones along the way. She’s a big part of the reason my Chroma package exists, and somewhere in between all those shoots she became a proper friend.
How It Started
Victoria and I go back much further than the shop shoots. In March 2019 I ran Hello Yellow, my first charity project for YoungMinds, offering branding photos to small businesses in exchange for donations. I asked Victoria if she’d like to take part and she very nearly said no. She hates having her photo taken!
Luckily she said yes, and her review afterwards still makes me smile. She was genuinely shocked: “within seconds came this lovely photo which – I can’t believe I’m saying this – I love it.”
Fast forward to September 2023 and she came back for my Rainbow Trust headshot fundraiser. She asked me to create a bespoke package to cover the seasons. So in November 2023 we did our first proper paid shoot, a winter one, and we’ve shot every single season since.
The Shop
From Victoria sells plants, homewares, women’s clothes and accessories, gifts and cards, and lots of other pretty things you didn’t know you needed until you saw them. I rarely leave without some new little treasure! The miso chocolate is to die for!
What makes it such a joy to shoot is that it’s never the same twice. Victoria is brilliant at curating and displaying everything, which honestly makes my job easy. Each season she creates new dried flower arrangements, so the colours shift with the year. Spring brings big paper flowers to the windows. Last summer was all sunshine yellow and lemons. Autumn is full of lovely cosy things, and in winter there are light installations glowing in the windows and fairy lights everywhere at Christmas.
She’s a fan of the results too: “The winter shots of my shop front were just magical.” I’ll take that!
How the Shoots Work Now
In the early days we planned things a bit more, talking through what was new and what needed capturing. Now I just arrive, we have a chat, and I start shooting.
I know the space. I know how the light changes through the year, which corners work and which angles sing. And I know I’ll get an excited welcome from Frankie, Victoria’s dog. Victoria says Frankie can tell the difference between her greeting a customer and greeting a friend, and she gets excited when I walk in because she can sense the friendship vibes. One of my favourite things about these visits!
Each shoot takes 45 minutes to an hour. We work through headshots, lifestyle shots, product details, window displays and all the beautifully styled corners. Yet we’re still finding fresh new ways to capture the space and it’s ALWAYS fun. Victoria is completely relaxed in front of my camera now, which still makes me smile given how we started. In her words: “I won’t let anyone else take my portrait – only Bex.”
More Than a Client
When you visit a business four times a year (or more) for three years, you get to know each other properly. We’ve talked about our lives – our fitness, our homes and our work – the kind of chats you have with a friend, not a supplier.
We do each other favours too. Victoria orders her stock so far in advance that deliveries can be unpredictable, so I’m always flexible with her shoot dates. She’s noticed: “Bex always finds a way to make it work without any fuss.”
In return, she pushed way outside her comfort zone to appear in my brand film, which was a HUGE favour. As a thank you I gave her a bonus mini shoot on the day – handy timing, as not all her stock had arrived in time for her seasonal shoot before that!
And I’ve pushed outside mine for her. When she ran her first event with Jigsaw, she asked me to model for it. Me, modelling! She gave me a voucher to spend as a thank you, and then we all went out for dinner. It was a lovely evening.
She came to my client Christmas party in 2024 with a beautiful plant as a gift (which is miraculously still alive!). We’ve been for coffee and a wander. If I’m in Lewes between shoots I always pop in to say hi, and she always gives me a discount on whatever little thing I can’t resist. Supporting local goes both ways.
Recently I was in Lewes waiting to collect my Dad, so I picked up lunch and a Gail’s carrot cake and took them to the shop. We ate our lunch together and shared the cake. Somewhere along the way, a client became a friend I’d happily share my favourite cake with.
What the Images Do
It’s not all tea and cake (well, carrot cake). The images work hard for her business.
Victoria has seen the difference herself. When she posts my professional photos instead of ones she’s taken, “Her images always get so much more interaction.”
That’s the whole point of regular seasonal shoots: a fresh library of professional images every few months, so your socials and website always look current, without needing one big expensive shoot every time.
And one of my proudest moments is a photo of Victoria. In 2024 it won me my first ever gold medal in the Lifestyle Photographers Association Pro Awards. Not bad for someone who hates having her photo taken!
Why Chroma Exists
I loved working with Victoria season after season so much that I wanted more businesses to have that kind of relationship. That’s a big part of why I created Chroma: four shorter shoots a year, a fresh gallery every season, and a photographer who knows your business inside out.
If you’re local to me in East Sussex and run a shop, café or any business that changes with the seasons, it might be just what you need. (Carrot cake not guaranteed, but likely.)
I’ll leave the last word to Victoria:
“She is bloody amazing and I feel so lucky to have found her. What started as a professional relationship has become a real friendship too.”
