Kate spoke cautiously. She was starting a knitting design pattern company. She would need photographs. We met over smoothies and coffee at Panera and talked about what it would look like – she wanted her images to be natural looking with real people in real places. She showed me some ideas she had. A few months later, a company is born. Introducing Black Bird Knits.
Kate hired the high powered women at Flight 9 Creative to build an elegant website which has one of the best bios I have ever read in my life. Even if you don’t knit, it’s worth the visit.
As for the behind the scenes planning, one of the first mountains to climb is choosing a location. This is a road less traveled, but if your house isn’t exactly what you want, then arranging to use a friend’s house is an excellent option. Kate has her life chock full of artist friends who bind their own books, paint canvases bigger than me, and collect African art from their travels all over the world. If you ever have a chance to get to know Kate a little, I’d highly recommend it.
Kate arranged to use three different friend’s houses over three separate sessions, then we went to her home and added a few images from there as well. We had a wide variety of models who smiled through their scarf wearing despite the summer heat as we tried to keep the images looking at a least a little wintry.