The reality of getting a result

Anybody with the slightest interest in photography, the media, or how the whole crazy world of how publicity operates, has probably seen behind the scenes clips of personalities (I can’t bring myself to say celebrities) being shot for magazines or ad campaigns. The final results are glossy, altered-out-of-sight images which don’t tell anything like the story of their creation. These commissions come in all shapes and sizes and depending on the subject can last a few days, or 10 minutes. 

A middle of the road example of how a job like that can play out was a task I was handed a little while ago to shoot pop star Duncan James, formerly of the boy band BLUE, for SEAT UK PR use. He was about to be unveiled as the new leading man in CHICAGO in the West End and my brief was to shoot some lifestyle shots of Duncan blasting around town in his company SEAT Leon in his position as a kind of ‘brand ambassador’. Unfortunately, the smallest amount of media exposure these days tends to get people believing their own hype, so naturally I feared the worst, expecting a sulky monster who didn’t want to know. What I found was a nice guy who was keen to please, which was just as well as the window of opportunity for photography was small at best.

My way of working is to travel pretty light compared to most photographers. I hate zooms, so only use prime lenses, and only a normal job will pack a 300/2.8, 200/2.8, 50/1.8, 24/2.8 and a fisheye for occasional use. I love Canon’s original 5D body because it’s rock solid, quiet, functional and a great file size for my work (almost 40MB). On more complicated people shoots I’ll take Elinchrom strobes and hot lights, but that’s pretty much it. I’m never first to get new gear, I see it through other photographers for ages before I buy. It’s always amusing to see people who buy the newest gadgets thinking it will transform their work, only to find that a few grand later it all looks the same.

The day started by meeting at his flat near Maida Vale, West London. Following a quick run through the ideas with his PR girl, who was obviously paid to obstruct and not smile, it was into the car with Duncan driving and me next to him. We started shooting right from the start as he drove to Little Venice for a roadside set-up shot. The technical aspect of the first few shots was tricky because I wanted a feeling of speed and movement in the pictures, so this meant a very wide lens (16mm) and a slow shutter speed (20th sec) to generate the feeling of movement. It’s always good to try and get away from something standard within a set of shots, so in this case I tried to show Duncan’s face in the rear-view mirror, but still keeping the SEAT logo visible on the steering wheel as he weaved in and out of traffic. Any photographer will know that this approach can be a hit/miss affair but the frames which work look nice.

I couldn’t experiment as much as I wanted because we had maybe 3-4 minutes to get the first shots in the bag. On arrival in Little Venice we parked by the canal and Duncan hopped out, doing his pop star thing by the front of the car. Once again the reality is that this is a public road, so you’re constantly framing the picture and then dodging a bus, or cab – it’s central London, so nobody gives you time or space. Another 5 minute slot to get a couple of set-ups and then we’re off again to a more open location, near Hyde Park. The next shot I wanted was him relaxing in the car, which took only a couple of mins as he was pretty relaxed. SEAT UK have always been open-minded on photography and I grab the chance to shoot in black and white whenever they let me. Sometimes it’s not appropriate, but on this occasion most of the material worked far better in mono because a person was the crux of the job, not something scenic or mechanical. 

The stats are pretty interesting I think. I’d been with him for under an hour, shot about 40 frames (15 of which were used by SEAT for PR availability) and we’d got through the brief without making much of hole in anybody’s day. So I guess the point is that in most of these cases you have no time to re-shoot, you need to hone your ability to chat to somebody you don’t know (while you work) and you can’t expect help – you’re on your own. Just don’t try and joke with the PR girl, they’re not on the same planet as you and I…

Perks of the job (part 1)

The amazing sight of the ceremony in full flow

One of the elements I love about wedding photography is spending time in churches. Although I’m not really a religious person I’ve always loved the fact that they ooze atmosphere and historical significance. In the middle of last year I was lucky enough to be commissioned to shoot a wedding in Westminster Cathedral, in the heart of London. The site itself was formerly a prison in 1834 and when in the 1850’s the Diocese of Westminster was created the site was purchased with the intention to construct a place of Catholic worship. In 1894 John Francis Bentley was chosen as the architect and the first foundation stone was laid around a year later. By 1903 the building was well on the way to completion and to this day public mass is held 20-30 times a week. The eagle-eyed may also have spotted the side chappel was used as a double for Lisbon Cathedral on the recent movie “Elizabeth: The Golden Age“.

Due to the time it takes to find and shoot nice detail pics for something like a wedding, I’d decided to go on from a client meeting one day and make a start  obtaining some shots I didn’t think I’d have time to do on the wedding day itself. The building is brimming with lovely quiet corners, each no doubt with their own little stories to tell. You can’t help but be moved by the sheer scale of the place and there’s only so much of that you can capture in a photograph, but it was fun  trying. My brief at the wedding itself would be, as usual, to record the day’s events in a  non-obtrusive fashion. It’s the style I’m known for and a way of working I prefer because I’m largely left to shoot whatever I think looks good/relevant, and the guests and family don’t need to worry about being bossed around by some guy  most of them have never met! The couple in question, Maria and Paul Craven, were fantastic to work for and were happy to leave all the shots up to me, just adding a request for a few traditional group shots on the Cathedral steps.

Altar detail

Cathedral residents...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After shooting some relaxed pictures with Maria at the family home in Forest Hill,  I caught a cab to a pub near Victoria Station to see the Groom and Ushers who were having a quick drink ahead of the ceremony. I’d like to think the smiles as I entered the pub were because they were genuinely pleased to see me, but I think the fact that I was also delivering their button holes was the real reason for the  tangible sense of relief. After a short walk with them to the Cathedral and we were closing in pretty fast on the time for guests to arrive. It’s usually around  this time I wander off and shoot detail pics which will later work very well within the wedding art books we design for clients. The small, quiet moments captured  in the ‘before photos’ work very well in print juxtaposed with major parts of the day, so well worth the effort. Only at this point did the value of shooting Cathedral pics a few weeks earlier really present itself, because the boys were a little late sorting themselves out, plus it was raining, and worryingly the wedding before ours was running very late, so I had no significant access to the inside of the Cathedral. I can’t imagine how I would have felt for the rest of the day knowing I’d failed to obtain the vital background shots to the occasion, but as it was there were no worries.

Following the bride’s arrival (under a brolley) the day unfolded nicely and there  was plenty of time to savour the atmosphere of the Cathedral because the ceremony itself was a full Catholic mass and lasted about 90 minutes. The available light in photographic terms was typically poor, but that’s a given with churches – massive buildings and tiny windows – but today’s modern cameras handle this aspect of a wedding shoot remarkably well. After some formal shots in the plaza just in front of the Cathedral we all hopped onto a couple of hired  Routemaster buses and took a mini tour around central London on the way to the reception venue, The Oval cricket ground. For any family members attending the wedding who didn’t know London well, the efforts made by the family to create a whole day out was really impressive. Of course, I thought I’d be smart and get onto the first bus with a view to shooting some pictures of the other bus in motion as we ventured over Westminster bridge and past Parliament. So imagine my frustration when at the first set of traffic lights one bus overtook the other and I found myself pointing a lens at a van owned by a plumber from Peckham…

Roll of honour

Candles during mass

Life in the desert

I’m going to kick-off the posts with the first in what I’m calling my “blasts from the past”. When I meet new clients and people in general I’m often asked about past commissions and places I’ve worked, so I figure this is a good platform for mini anecdotes.

One such job which springs to mind is working in the Western Sahara desert. I’d been asked to be Nissan GB’s official photographer accompanying members of the press on a trip to Mauritania during the 2005 Paris Dakar Rally. The plan on such jobs is to be on-hand to shoot specific material the invited journalists may need to take back to their publications. At the time Nissan’s driver line-up was headed by the late, great Colin McRae. The idea was to hook-up with Colin between stages and I’d shoot whatever was required, easy. Well, not easy.

The Paris Dakar Rally is one of the most  demanding events in the sport. North West Africa is  a punishing place and between inhospitable locals, barren wastelands  and a punishing schedule,  the teams encounter just about everything possible to slow their progress. Those of you who are familiar with Colin McRae will know the guy had one setting (flat out) and the day before our arrival at Atar airport he’d had one of his bigger accidents. Typical of the man he was on the limit when he hit something in his path, launching his car into a series of rolls which left debris across hundreds of meters of desert. He promptly flew home to Scotland to recover, unfortunately leaving the invited journalists without their star attraction, but making the best of this we focused on the team in general. It was only then that the basic problems of working with photographic equipment in the desert hit me, and I really wasn’t prepared at all.

The route down to Africa had been London-Paris-Marrakesh, the last leg of which was a private charter to Atar and therefore didn’t require my the standard argument at check-in about equipment weight, etc. But the difficulty of working in the Sahara was apparent after walking from the plane to the terminal building. I say building, more of a portakabin which lurched slightly if you stood for too long at the wrong end.

After a little while in customs we ventured off on a 10 min walk to our tent – yes, tent! – and by this time I was covered in a thin coating of dust. It got into every corner of your clothes and luggage and because we were basically camping there was no escape from the grit. Atar is really just a runway in the middle of nowhere. You can see a ramshackle village on the horizon but all the event infrastructure is based around this long strip of tarmac.

Now, I’d expected sunsets, soft dunes and Michael Palin type backgrounds rolling into infinity. The reality was a place comparable to the moon. Featureless, dull and a little depressing if I’m honest. I spent the rest of the day in and around the Nissan section of the paddock. One of my more notable errors was to try and shoot a portrait of one of the local guards surrounding the rally cars. Resplendent in Russian WW2 coats, with manky old guns and chewed cigars, one of them took one look at the lens and matched my aim with his rifle. This very one sided stand-off resulted in me putting down my lens, him laughing and then me walking quickly in the opposite direction. Note to memory, blokes in the desert don’t like their pictures taken… I didn’t do it again.

The technical side of the trip became comical when trying to dodge swirls of dust. I would change lenses pressed up against walls trying to protect the digital sensors in whichever camera I was using. I couldn’t even put anything down as the place was filthy, so everything had to be carried. You’d wake up in the morning and your eyes and lips were caked in dust. I won’t even go into the ‘facilities’. But the food was great. Admittedly it was only pasta and tomato sauce, but when you consider that one catering facility in the middle of the desert was serving hundreds of team members, TV and media, it was a triumph. 

Given that this had been my home for 3 days I’d like to say that I had a misty-eyed moment upon boarding the flight back to Morocco. No way, the place is a dump. I even looked forward to getting back to Paris, and I hate France. It was at that point the trip played out it’s surreal finale. Standing in line to board Club Class on BA (it was a fully paid press trip, after all) I spotted a women who seemed familiar. Then later it hit home, it’s Angelina Jolie! Great, I’m sitting here not having showered for 3 days, looking like a vagrant, and one of the sexiest women in the World is a row in front. Of course, it would have made no difference had I only just washed and been dressed in a tux, but whatever…