The Short
£2,900
A half-day editorial or portrait session, run like a small film shoot.
- Four hours, one location
- Sixty hand-graded frames
- Private gallery for twelve months
- Personal print rights included
- Delivery in three weeks
Noctis Studio — Cinematic Photography Atelier
Stillness, shot like cinema.
Weddings, editorial and commercial photography — composed in available light, graded by hand in the dark. Eighteen weddings a year. No more.
Contact sheet
Selected Works
What we take on
Three disciplines.
One grade.
-
Weddings
One day, told as a film. We document from first light to last dance — two photographers, primes only, no flash unless the night demands it. We take eighteen weddings a year so every edit gets the darkroom time it deserves.
-
Editorial
Portraits and fashion stories for magazines — and for people who behave like them. Concept, casting support and on-set art direction included, with retouch supervised in-house so the grade never leaves the building.
-
Commercial
Campaigns for hotels, ateliers and product houses that prefer shadow to gloss. Full usage licensing written in plain English, motion stills available on request, delivery mastered for print and screen.
The atelier
We keep the lights off for a reason.
Noctis began in 2016 in a former print darkroom off Brick Lane, when cinematographer Mara Ellingsen stopped waiting for feature work and started shooting weddings the way she lit films — slowly, in whatever light the day offered.
A decade on, the darkroom is still the heart of the studio. Every commission — a vow in Provence, a cover for Mono Journal, a winter campaign for a Highlands hotel — passes through the same hands and the same grade: blacks that are built rather than crushed, skin that looks like skin, and nothing that will embarrass you in thirty years.
The atelier is Mara, producer Tomás Ferreira, and printer Iris Kowalczyk. Nobody else touches your frames.
Mara Ellingsen — Founder, Noctis Studio
How a commission runs
Scout. Shoot.
Grade. Deliver.
-
Scout
We walk every location before we raise a camera — light studies at the exact hour of your event, weather contingencies, a shot map you will never notice being executed.
-
Shoot
Two photographers, three bodies, primes only. We work quiet and close; most subjects forget we are in the room by the second hour. That is when the real frames happen.
-
Grade
Every selected frame is hand-graded against a print reference in the darkroom. No presets, no batch actions — the shadows are placed one frame at a time.
-
Deliver
A private gallery, a museum-grade box of twenty-five fibre prints, and a film-frame contact sheet of the entire edit — numbered, like the one above.
Awards and press
- Lumen Awards — Gold, 2025
- Frame Quarterly — Cover, Issue 41
- The Wed Edit — Top 50 Studios
- Mono Journal — Feature, 2024
- Aperture North Prize — Shortlist
Written on the back of the prints
Client captions
“Our wedding stills made my mother cry twice — once at the frames, once when she realised she couldn’t remember a camera being there.”
“The only studio I have ever commissioned that delivered a grade darker than my brief. They were right.”
“Noctis shot our entire winter campaign in available light. Bookings for the Edinburgh property rose 31% the month it ran.”
Plain numbers, no asterisks
Packages
Most booked
The Feature
£4,800
A full wedding day, first light to last dance, told end to end.
- Twelve hours, two photographers
- 500+ hand-graded frames
- Numbered contact-sheet album
- Twenty-five fibre prints, boxed
- Engagement session included
The Director’s Cut
£7,600
Multi-day and destination commissions, or full commercial campaigns.
- Three days of coverage
- European travel included
- Full print box and parents’ albums
- Priority grade — six weeks
- Commercial licensing available
Dates are held for seven days from enquiry. A 25% retainer confirms the commission; the balance is due four weeks before the shoot.
Booking
Tell us about
your date.
We reply within two working days. If we cannot take your date, we will point you to someone who can — and mean it.
Studio14 Greatorex Street
London E1 5NF, United Kingdom
Telephone+44 20 7946 0821
Emailbook@noctisstudio.co
HoursTuesday–Saturday, 10:00–18:00
Viewings by appointment only