OK, OK, I know I haven’t posted since January but circumstances overtook me, sorry! I had this blog in my sights but never quite got to it. Anyway, I’ve got a fair bit to blog about having been silent for 5 months so lets start…
It’s late April and I get a commission to go and shoot new young fast bowler of English cricket, Stuart Broad. Brief was to get some portrait shots of Stuart while he was on a promo day for VW and that I’d have an hour to share with the journalist doing an interview at the same time. There’s a possibility this could be a cover shoot and there’s nothing like that to sharpen the mind. So I set off to the location - Trent Bridge the home of Nottingham CC.
Being a Virgo (sure I’ve mentioned that before) I’m half an hour early. I park up and at reception I’m told they know nothing about it. This isn’t an uncommon occurence (he says from years of experience) so I decide to wait in the car for Rob the journalist and Stuart to turn up. Meanwhile, it can’t fail to be noticed that Trent Bridge is a complete building site. There are construction workers everywhere. There’s a new stand going in which needs to be ready for the summer test series against New Zealand. This worries me as location options are going to be tough.
It’s 5 mins before the shoot and nobody has turned up. The phone rings……
The shoot has been moved to a hotel. I plug in the co-ordinates to the Satnav and head off. Arrive 15 mins later. The free car park spaces are about a mile from the hotel. Rob comes out to meet me and I tell him to do his bit first as I need to recce. Suddenly all my pre-planned ideas are shot. At least its a country hotel and not some uber-brick monstrosity.
At Trent Bridge the weather had been glorious blue sky and full on sun. At the hotel the weather is getting worse. There’s that impending feeling that at any moment the heavens will open. I decide to go for the rear gardens as a location and the shelter of a large Oak Tree. Lets hope there’s no lightning….
I set up and sandbag the lights as there’s a wind blowing up. Time is now pushing on. I go and retrieve Stuart from the clutches of Rob’s tape recorder (could be an mp3…not sure!) and we head out to the location in the garden. Stuart was great, completely relaxed and I explained what I was doing and how I envisaged the images would look after my post work. I love to involve the subject as much as possible, especially in portraiture as you get a much better result when you’re both shooting for the same goals.
A few shots down and I can feel those large blobs of rain starting to fall ever so sporadically. We move under the tree and do a series of shots there, then it stops raining for a second so we dart out and I frame Stuart under the really dark sky - this shot will be the main shot of the series. I finish off with some close in headshots. It starts to rain harder and harder as I pack up the lights and eventually becomes a cloudburst. Talk about in the nick of time.
Here’s the shot that was used for the cover:
You can see a larger version of this final in the “people” gallery on my website portfolio
…and here’s the cover and one of the spreads:
Until later (promise it won’t be 5 months…!)
J
