Brighton Girl Introducing Inspiring Local Women: Holly Stone

Holly Stone is a woman who wears many hats. A creative at heart with modelling and photography as her main focus for now, and with a mesmerising new project focusing on photographing people. As it started with the Brighton Girl Facebook Group, we thought we’d have a chat and see what’s next for Holly.

Holly Stone

Since February Holly has launched her photography business working at 100 miles per hour after her facebook post in the Brighton Girl group created around 60 responses from people for her to practise on. Using this resource, Holly has been working on portraits focusing on using natural light. Photographing everyone from family, friends and to now a lot of Brighton Girls, Holly has created some beautiful shots with people whilst also creating a group of friends from all over Brighton.

Combining her talents in modelling with her photography seemed a natural progression as she already has a background in film. Working as a model since the age of 18 means that Holly has knowledge of the model’s perspective, as she already knows her way around the creative process of capturing a unique shot.

Counting Humans of New York as one of the inspirations behind wanting to share peoples’ stories, she says:

‘I got totally sucked in by approaching someone and then just asking them about their life and why do people do the things they do, and look the way they do, what part of them makes them want to share that, and what’s going on with them right now’.

Holly is a firm believer in getting to know the subjects and capturing a side to them that isn’t too posed or forced, but a natural shot that shares a moment with a model. Using the Brighton Girl group as a basis for finding models, Holly has now found a selection of women who she has photographed, that have all met up with each other since. Creating a group of women who were all strangers but brought together by Holly and her photography, is an incredible way to share a creative talent and get more people from Brighton involved.

For any aspiring photographers, Holly is a real inspiration, as although she has the background in film, she’s completely self-taught. Knowing how the light works is good, but not essential and her advice is to ‘just pick up the camera, practise and keep it really simple’. As someone who is still learning, Holly has managed to create some beautiful imagery of some incredible Brighton Girls and we can’t wait to see what she does next.

Of course we had to ask Holly about some of her favourite places in Brighton, so for cafes she loves Gails and Cafe Pelicano as well as Marwoords. Also, shopping in The North Lane at places like Dirty Harry and To Be Worn Again. Most importantly, her favourite pizza place is Fatto a Mano.

To see more work from Holly you can find her on Instagram or her photography website.

Written by Gabriella. All Images by Holly Stone