This shoot was commissioned by Redactive, a content and publishing agency, to accompany a long-form editorial feature. I needed to get a cover shot, and some for inside. Taking into account what the client and the designer like, the brief was “do your thing.”

Although the session was scheduled for around an hour, my aim was range. Designers like options, and in this case there was another detail: our subject was pregnant, and showing. I didn’t know how much - if at all - this fact would be included in the piece, so worked towards some images where it was unrelated (typically headshots), downplayed (very loose, full length compositions), or where it was included naturally, without making it a focal point of the shoot. But in practice, it was just another consideration to balance alongside layout requirements, time, and location.

The setting helped. The Lloyd's building in London (sometimes called the Inside-Out building, it’s the headquarters for a major global insurance market, and nothing to do with the bank) gave visual structure and scale, while still allowing for usable portraits that didn’t overwhelm the subject.

With a good location, a willing subject, and time, the challenge isn’t making pictures - it’s making a range of different ones that all work. Here are a small selection of the images along with how they were used in the publication.