Pulp pianist Candida Doyle, photographed for Inspire, Arthritis UK’s magazine. Candida was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was 17. We didn’t have many options at all (the planned location was changed the day before). I’ve talked about fallback/go-to ideas in my post on ‘Working around the Subject’, and this is one of them: have the subject sit in a chair and frame it. “Something Changed” was my favourite Pulp song, if you’re interested.
Using the same idea as the opening photo, our subject is seated, and framed. This was from a series of images (including below) of a media trainer. We had one room available. I don’t mention this as an excuse (although I do like excuses!), but to make the point that sometimes on the day we don’t get what we’d expected / asked for / planned, but we problem-solve and work with what we have. That’s the job, and I prefer it that way.
Last seated one - I thought it would be interesting to show my thinking by having three very similar shots. But here, I did have some options with the office location. But seating the subject, as I’ve said elsewhere, is a way to connect them to the space, making it more than just a background. It allows for varied poses and angles - especially when the chair has a high back or arms. And, crucially, the subject can relax a bit more.
(Above and below) Interview portraits taken just behind the National Theatre on the Southbank.
Actors Joseph Lee, Maria Camargo and Barry Sloane feature in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Activision commissioned me to photograph them in a pop-up Korean alleyway in Shoreditch. I talk about this a bit more here, but here I want to comment briefly on the placement of the subjects for this hero image. They need to be central for symmetry, as well as to work easily with different crops and formats. But as for distance: if they’re closer to camera, they block the (key) background. Further away, they lose importance. If I go higher up, there’s more background but the subjects lose stature. If I’m lower down, they may look more ‘heroic’ but again you lose even more background.
Model Christy Turlington Burns, founder and president of maternal health organisation Every Mother Counts, at the American Express Leadership Academy in London.
