A Little Bit of Drama at Pineridge Hollow

Apricot dress (c/o Pineridge Hollow) (similar)
Sezane cardigan
Mango hat (similar)
Mumico espadrilles (similar)
Sezane tote (similar)
RayBan sunglasses
Location: Pineridge Hollow – Oakbank, Manitoba

It was a cold January morning in 2017. The sun was barely up when we piled into a taxi, arms full of bags and boxes, one of us carrying a vase of cream roses already full of water. We – Lyndi, Ian and I – were on our way to Holt Renfrew to shoot a Valentine’s Day feature at their new cafe. At that point, we’d already been up for hours, sitting through make-up and hair preparations. It felt absurd but wonderful but mostly absurd, trying to balance that vase along with everything else in my arms as we entered Holt Renfrew through a side door.

Everything turned out so beautifully – the Givenchy dress and perfectly coordinated Manolo Blahnik pumps, the pink champagne positioned next to a pair of Chloe handbags on a marble tabletop. But we’d been doing elaborate shoots on an almost monthly basis for well over a year. Between that and my always very full full-time job, it was a lot. I was tired. So I wanted to take a simpler approach to content creation.

I am, at once, eminently practical and completely over-the-top. While I love the look of minimal outfits, my closet overflows with sartorial options. I love red lipstick and rhinestones. My flair for drama is well-documented. I grew up wanting to be an actress, starring in every school play until eleventh grade when I abruptly gave it up for ridiculous teenaged reasons that aren’t worth the energy it would take to explain them. Once, a friend accused me of orchestrating moments of drama as inspiration for my writing. We were young, and I was understandbly offended by the suggestion. But with some hindsight, I realise he wasn’t exactly wrong. While I never orchestrated drama, outside of a photoshoot scenario, I also never did anything to stop it – I always wanted to wait to see how a story would play out in real time, to live what would happen next.

My simpler approach to content creation worked for a lot of years. We got it down to a science, or perhaps made it into an art, especially when travelling. With good planning, we could keep props to a minimum and still achieve the kind of results I craved. When we went to Athens in 2019, it really felt like we’d gotten to exactly where we wanted to be – without needing to ever transport a bouquet of roses in a taxi again.

…of course, everything changed in March last year.

We’ve all felt those changes in so many different ways. But most recently, I’ve felt a craving for the drama we used to create in those elaborate photoshoots, because that kind of drama – the excitement, the glamour, even if it’s staged – is missing from the isolated indoor lives we all lead now. It was right when this desire came back to me that I connected with Pineridge Hollow. It wasn’t fate – I’m not that dramatic – but it was perfect timing.

We visited Pineridge Hollow on a blissfully sunny Sunday. It truly was the perfect spot to create a vintage-inspired picnic photoshoot. While I didn’t bring along a vase full of flowers, we did pack the car full of props, including one my sets of china. (I mean, who doesn’t picnic with porcelain crockery?) It was pretty perfect, really – somehow, going over-the-top for this shoot still felt effortless, and the results are exactly what I craved. We still can’t truly explore anywhere new, but we can still adventure and pretend to be different people, just for a little while.

When I get right down to it, I think that’s what I missed most about the elaborate photoshoots. The stories. The, for lack of a better word, acting. Moments like these give me a chance to be something other than just another woman wearing another outfit to go nowhere because it’s a pandemic. And that was exactly what I needed.

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