When Angi Wallace moved in with her partner, Michael, he soon discovered that he would never be eating dinner at the dining room table again. Angi commandeered the room for her photography, transforming the space into a mini studio. ‘Michael asked me when I was going to tidy everything up and I said “never”’, she laughs. It’s hard to complain about mess when your partner wins countless awards for her creative still-life, floral and close-up work. ‘We eat in the living room now,’ she adds, with a smile. The basic set-up comprises a table, a series of backdrops on a pole (which Angi flips over), three lights and walls of shelves packed with vases and other photogenic props. ‘You can barely get into the room now and there’s hardly any space around the table for the lights,’ she confesses.
Angi studied history of art at school and believes this early training might have fuelled her passion for still life. ‘I like the Old Masters, but I’m also inspired by a lot of European and Russian still-life painters,’ she says. There’s a lot to be gained from looking at accounts on Instagram, where people share their behind-the-scenes lighting set-ups, too. ‘These can be very handy to learn from,’ she says. ‘The set-ups people use are very much like the old-fashioned painters.’ When she started shooting still life, Angi didn’t give much thought to the lighting. ‘I used to position a light on either side and just point it at the subject,’ she laughs, ‘I wasn’t very imaginative.’
