Andrew's Working Stories, number 4

Here’s a picture I took for The Times at very short notice. I got the phone call at 5pm and was asked to be at the lady’s house, in Hove, no earlier than 6pm. The paper needed the photo in London by 6.45. It was for the following morning's paper, or 'on edition.'

Working backwards, this meant I knew I had to be out of there by 6.15 at the very latest, before getting home, editing the shoot, ‘finishing’ the picture and sending it down the line.

It can be a challenge knowing that you have to arrive, introduce yourself and make friends, choose your locations (you have to have a strong variety), set up your shots, shoot them, check they’re all fine, complete the niceties by offering your thanks and goodbyes, and getting out. All in less than fifteen minutes.

The flat was difficult to shoot in; it was dark and the background was cluttered. My flash chose this moment to really play up as well, so it wasn’t exactly going brilliantly! The subject was a lovely, bubbly girl but the story was about financial hardship, so we had to work on her serious face.

As you can see from the 'before' shot, it was heavily cropped but it was taken with the possibility of that happening. The next day, it had a big ‘show’ on page three, an important page in all newspapers (not just The Sun!).

Andrew's Working Stories, number 3

Here’s a portrait of comedian Jo Brand, shot for The Guardian. It was for a weekly feature called “Portrait Of The Artist”, which always uses a landscape-shaped picture.

I was given a couple of hours’ notice for this and I went along twenty minutes earlier than arranged to figure out a couple of spots that might work. The venue was The Dome cinema in Worthing, a marvellous art-deco cinema where Jo was having a public question-and-answer session, and signing some books (she’s written loads!), rather than doing a stand-up gig.

The challenge here was balancing the lighting in the beautiful, but relatively dark, auditorium, with Jo’s face. I used a diffused flash, but I still had to use a long shutter speed to soak up the rich reds in the room (I'm posting one of the leftovers for you to see as well).

I had to tell her to keep still and stop talking. That’s not very easy for comics to do.

With celebrities like this, I’m always aware that I don’t have long. Some of them will let you have about two minutes if you’re lucky, but Jo was lovely and couldn’t have been more helpful. In the end, I think I probably got about 30 minutes, she was great company and, needless to say, very funny.

I wish there were more like her.

Andrew's Working Stories, number 2

Browsing through some property websites, I noticed an unusual property for sale in Hastings. I forwarded the web link to a contact at the Daily Mail and was given the nod to follow it up. I had to go twice actually; the first time I went it was impossibly foggy, so I returned a few days later when the weather was brighter.

I had made contact with the estate agent and arranged to meet them there, where they allowed me to shoot pretty much as I pleased.

It was two weeks before the story was published, on Monday February 7^th. At 9.30 that morning, I had a call from ITV who wanted to use a couple of the shots on a programme I’d never heard of, called “This Morning”. I had the odd sensation of emailing the pictures at 09.45 and then seeing Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby discussing them live on TV less than half an hour later.

Yahoo UK also wanted the picture, for their home page. We are not talking big money for these shots….£60 from Yahoo and £50 per picture from ITV.

Here’s a link to the Daily Mail’s web version of the story, with different pictures used.

Andrew's Working Stories, number 1

I've been thinking maybe I need to write a little about jobs that have come my way since you all came on the course. I think these will illustrate points I made to you all at the time.

To start off, I wanted to talk about something I shot a fortnight ago in Midhurst, on assignment for The Times. They run a regular feature, every Monday, in their T2 supplement, called “How We Met”, where a couple write in to the paper and describe exactly that.

The feature usually features a cut-out shot of the couple with the words wrapped around them. This means I had to be very aware of the background, to make it as easy as possible for the sub-editors to cut around their shape.

Inside the house was impossible; it was a tiny cottage with dark furniture, knick-knacks and pictures everywhere. The garden was quite small as well, with high walls and trees, which made it difficult to get a clean-background shot, and the weather was miserable and damp.

Nonetheless, they had to be shot against a background that contrasted with their complete outline. Here’s the result, before and after the background was stripped away.