Now that I have done this so many times, I have a well tested setup for these shoots that has served me well in many different locations. However, it does involve a fair bit of kit and some setup time. Once the setup is complete I can shoot as fast as the people can put themselves in front of the camera!

This shoot for the Wales Audit office was carried out over two half-days and the client wanted three different backgrounds as well as headshot, half-length and full length portraits, looking left, looking right and smiling/serious. This added up to a LOT of different combinations and I had to work out a system to make sure I got all the required shots for each person as efficiently as possible.

Here’s the setup…

As you can see, I’m using red gels on the background lights to give a red background for one set of shots. Removing the gels gave me the pure white background and over on the left you can see the black cloth background clamped to a boom stand which I was able to swing into position for a pure black background. (with the back lights switched off of course!)

The main problem I had with the gelled red background was the low white ceiling causing a lot of light to bounce around and wash out the red colour. Since there was nothing I could do to prevent this (other than painting the ceiling black!) we got the best red we could and the client was happy with the results after checking them on screen.

I shot tethered in to the Powerbook you can see on the left so each person was able to see their pictures immediately and I was able to check that all the lights were firing and I wasn’t getting any nasty reflections in glasses etc.

Here’s just a few of the shots…

And that’s just one pose with each person! There were a lot more. Because all the lighting had been arranged carefully, I only needed each person for around 10-15 minutes to do all the background and pose combinations. In an ideal world each pose and background combination would have been lit differently with the lighting tailored to the individual picture, but there was no way we were going to have time for that. The lighting had to be designed to work as a compromise for all the shots.

Once we’d done all these I needed to get some more portraits of the auditor general. We had planned for around an hour with him in between meetings. However, at the last minute we discovered that he was going to be required for a live radio interview and then have just 15 minutes between arriving back (hopefully on time) and his next meeting.

I broke down all the lighting and worked on setting up lights around the office and corridors to enable me to move from one setup to the next as quickly as possible, so that when my subject arrived back we would be able to shoot straight away and not worry about lights, exposure, background etc.

I set up in four locations and did test shots with a stand-in. We waited for the arrival of my subject and then got to work…

Location 1:

Location 2 :

Location 3 :

Location 4 :

He got to his next meeting bang on time.

Are these photographs great artistic creations? No, not really. But the client got exactly what they needed with the minimum of fuss and disruption for their staff. If time is tight then my job is to make quick decisions about what is and isn’t possible under the circumstances. And then be prepared to change my plans when the circumstances change!

Being able to do shoots like this under pressure requires a thorough understanding of equipment and technique, good logistical skills, careful planning and a willingness and ability to change those plans and still get the job done.

So my first instinct was to find an indoor location. Fortunately the chapel was free and when I walked in and saw the amazing windows, I knew I had my first location. These shots were done using one hotshoe flash in a brolly as the key light with a second flash balanced on the pew behind her, providing a rim light to simulate the light coming from the windows. Keeping that second light coming from roughly the same direction as the natural light makes it look real and doesn’t call attention to the lighting.

I shot plenty of variations using these windows as a backdrop and, although I was happy with these, I needed to offer my editor an alternative so we moved outside into the harsh sunlight to find a possible shot.

With the sun so high in the sky, there was very little shade around but we managed to find a spot right up against the chapel wall, under a tree. By putting the subject in the shade I was able to expose for the background ambient and then add my own light to the subject. This was again just a hotshoe flash at full power, fired into a medium size brolly and moved in as  close as possible to make the most of the power available from the small flash.

This lady was not at all keen on having her picture taken. I can understand that, as I really don’t like it myself. Hopefully though you can’t tell from the photos that she wasn’t enjoying it!

The shoot was done in a hotel conference room, where the makeup artists were getting training before the launch day. Some portraits had already been done in other cities and mine had to match the style of the others. Here’s the very simple setup. One light with a grid to stop it spilling onto the black cloth background.

And here are the results…

So, what are the worst possible weather conditions in which to shoot cardboard cutouts? Hmmm, wind perhaps? Yes, the day we shot these pics was INCREDIBLY windy with just a little bit of torrential rain!

We started down in Cardiff Bay and did our best to tie the cutouts to railings, benches and lamposts, whilst still making them look “real”. Not easy. With Jack, the runner, helpfully running around picking up the cutouts every time they fell over, we managed to shoot a few decent pictures, but decided that we would head to Swansea and see if the weather was any better over there, then come back to Cardiff later in the day, when frankly the weather couldn’t have been any worse than it was already. Nothing to lose.

The rain didn’t stop but the wind was less of a problem in Swansea’s Castle Square and we got a nice range of different shots there. And quite a few funny looks from shoppers!

Back to Cardiff and still it rained, but we’d had a bit more practice now, and managed to find a few spots that were sheltered from the worst of the wind. A couple more goods shots and we were done. Wet, cold and tired but successful!

This is a perfect example of a job which I simply could not have done single-handed. Having an assistant to help carry and arrange the props, keep an eye on equipment and provide a second pair of eyes when scouting for locations was invaluable. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to set up one of those cut-outs and run back to the shooting position, only to have the cutout fall over and have to repeat the process over and over again?

Here’s a few of the pictures…

The crew started at 7am, but I was asked to arrive for 12 noon and stay until about 7pm when filming finished. Comic Relief needed pictures of the filming taking place and also studio style shots of Ronnie Corbett and Elisabeth Sladen (and also K-9). They also needed a specific shot of Ronnie for the cover of Radio Times, which was going to print the next day!

After a quick chat with the producer from Comic Relief and a couple of the BBC crew, I set up my portable studio in an empty TV studio. The massive amount of space was a real luxury. TV studios are, by definition, the ideal place to set up an on-site photo studio!

Here’s the setup, ready to go…

Once the studio was up and running, I shot a few pictures of K-9 (who, incidentally, was very easy to work with – a true professional!). Then I started shooting some on-set stills during breaks in the filming. Since, I don’t have a (very expensive) sound blimp, I was unable to shoot during takes, but I got what I needed during rehearsals.

Next we shot a set of pics with Ronnie and Elisabeth together, followed by Elisabeth on her own while Ronnie went off to makeup. I had probably 5 minutes with the two of them together and another 5 minutes with Elisabeth on her own. TV stills usually involves a LOT of waiting around and then frantic 5 minute bursts of activity when there’s a suitable break. Today was no different.

Here’s some shots from the brief session…

After some more on-set stills, I then had to wait until Ronnie had finished filming for the day and got out of his makeup and costume for the main shot of the day – the Radio Times cover shot.

He’d had a very long day (it was about 7pm by this point) and gave me 5 minutes to get what I needed. The great thing about working with professionals is that 5 minutes is enough. Ronnie “switched it on” and ran through a great series of poses, giving me exactly what was required. Five minutes later and we were done…

Here’s my favourite picture from the shoot.

All the natural light in this picture is coming from the stained glass window so I needed one light on camera left to light the subject, but I also need to boost the minimal light coming from behind. I placed another light on a stand directly behind the archbishop so that his body was hiding it from the camera position. This light is what is giving the rim of light around his head and also lighting up the floor behind him. Because this flash light is coming from the same direction as the big window light it all looks natural. In reality the light from the window was no where near bright enough to light all that floor area behind him.

Adding artificial light to a scene can be done without it looking too obvious, if the light appears to be coming from somewhere sensible – in this case the window.

As you are probably aware, David Tennant spends a lot of time around South Wales filming “Doctor Who”, so Comic Relief managed to arrange a shoot in Cardiff, just before he started a night of filming. The location chosen was Tiger Tiger in the city centre, and we used their big, dark, empty dance floor as the perfect location for an on-site “studio”.

So here’s the gear, all packed up and ready to go…

Did I mention I had no assistant for this job!

After unloading all the gear at the location, and meeting up with the organiser from Comic Relief, I had about 45 minutes to set up the studio and test the lighting. The shots had to match a whole set of other celebrities which had already been shot in London – clean and crisp lighting against a pure white seamless background. Very simple but required four lights – two on the background, one key light in a softbox and one fill in an umbrella directly above the camera. Here it is, all ready for Mr. Tennant’s imminent arrival…

David arrived bang on time and in full “Doctor” costume and after a quick run through of the shot list we got started. Shooting tethered into my Powerbook allowed us to review the pics as we went along. After twenty minutes we were done and David went off to start his long night of filming.

And here are the results…

I was asked to shoot some PR shots of a student who had won a competition titled “Win Your Rent” run by Rileys snooker club.

So, we did the obligatory cheque handover and also did the same shot with a wad of cash. But neither of those pics was likely to make its way into a newspaper as a PR handout. So I had to come up with something else.

My first idea was to have the winner shooting a cue ball into a big pile of money, but the cash we had available wasn’t enough to make this work, so I went with the next option which was to throw the money in the air over the table as the winner pretended to break off. Here’s the shot that worked best…

Now, as you can probably imagine, this was one of many attempts at throwing the money and catching it in a good composition. There’s no Photoshopping of extra notes – this is as it was shot.

It took about 30 minutes extra to get this one shot set up correctly but it was well worth the extra effort. The shot sums up the story nicely as well as being interesting to look at. Most importantly it will stand out in the crowd of mediocre PR handouts when it lands on an editor’s desk.

I was assigned to photograph Sir Brooke Boothby, owner of Fonmon Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, for a magazine feature. I had no idea what to expect from a knight who lives in a castle but he was a lovely bloke who showed me all around the castle and we stopped to shoot in various locations around the property.

My favourite shot by far though was a simple portrait in the gardens. The castle was lit perfectly by the sunshine and there was an interesting sky (a boring, flat grey sky can kill a picture). I liked the combination of blue sky, green grass and red ivy on the castle walls.

However, I needed to stand my subject in the shade, out of the harsh sunlight, and then light him separately from the background. So we found a really big tree and stood him under that. A single light in an umbrella was all that was needed to light him up. I let the light fall off towards his legs so the emphasis was on his face and positioned him in front of the shadow side of the castle.

I was commissioned to shoot PR photos for a street football tournament in Newport by the organisers of the event. I’d spent some time photographing the action during some of the games and I’d also posed up a few team shots of the competitors. These were fine as record shots that the organisers could use later, but they also wanted something for an immediate press handout for the newspapers and I didn’t feel like I had anything that would make a good news picture.

I’d noticed one of the players doing “keepy-uppy” and was trying to figure out a way to make a picture from that. The problem with trying to photograph footballers is that they tend to always be looking at the ball at their feet, so you don’t see their face – which doesn’t make for a good picture.

The football pitch they were using had a couple of skateboard ramps nearby, so I came up with the idea of putting someone at the top of the skateboard ramp and shooting a silhouette against the sun. The railings would give it that urban “street” feel.

It worked even better than I had hoped.

I shot loads of pictures of this player trying to do keep-uppy on the small platform at the top of the ramp and got a couple of frames that worked, but this was the stand-out shot, simply because of the sunburst under his leg. There’s no way I could have achieved that effect by trying – it was pure luck. The sun is exactly between the edge of the railings and the edge of the leg – a bigger gap would have caused massive lens flare and ruined the picture.

I’ve heard this kind of happy accident described as being “visited by the photo fairies”.