steph emailed me one day asking if i could do her maternity photos for her. she then proceeded to tell me that she is a photographer herself, which caused me to immediately search for her website and look at her stuff. after that, i felt a bit intimidated to shoot for someone else who knows what they're doing.
although intimidating, i also thought it was cool that a fellow photographer deemed me worthy to shoot her personal photos. after talking a little bit we realized we are both cranstonites and actually went to the same high school, although different years.
we started to talk about ideas for the shoot and where it would take place. initially she wanted to search around the city for cool christmas light displays and use those as backdrops. that idea was scrapped when she found out bryan, her husband, was getting them a room at the nylo in warwick for her birthday which was right around the shoot date. we decided to use the cool architecture and unique rooms at the hotel for the location.
the nylo is a modern hotel with a rough feel from the exposed cement and ductwork everywhere you turn. the lobby has furniture like nowhere else - most notably hanging spherical seats with a blue and white striped pattern on them. they're pretty cool over there about letting you roam around and use their facility for a photoshoot. sprawling out on their couches and seats in the restaurant area didn't even make them blink. it probably helped that it was nine or ten in the morning, not quite rush hour for dinner.
the bookshelves in the lobby were useful to us since steph is a librarian at a public school in cranston. we used whatever we could find inside the building and in the room they had rented and then ventured out to the deck off the back of the building that juts out onto the pawtuxet river. it looks out at the old industrial mill buildings that are mostly no longer in use. the nylo itself is a renovated mill building. it got washed out and shut down a couple years ago pretty badly in 'the flood' due its proximity to the overflowing river.
steph and bryan, enjoy the ride with a new baby, it's crazy and awesome. thanks for choosing me to do your photos. (to see some cool HDR shots of the nylo that i did awhile ago, check out this facebook album . also, make sure to check out steph's photography at her website!)
