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.
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