Shots 1 & 2 are from a session with actress Jett Tattersall who needed some new head shots for her profile. I’ve known Jett for a number of years so we spent a lot of the shoot mucking around resulting in shots such as the first shown here which, to me, entirely encapsulates her personality.
Shots 3 & 4 are taken from a test screening that actress Lindsay Morton did for her role as the character Gwen from NCsoft’s game Guild Wars. The session was shot using only the afternoon sunlight from a single point of origin.
Shot 5 is taken from a session of corporate portraits I did for NCsoft Europe’s business brochure. Game developer Jay Scott asked me to get a shot of his tattoo that he’d recently had more work done on. He explained that, just like the Sagrada Família itself, his tattoo is incomplete and gets added to over time.
Shot 6 is of Brighton programmer Max Williams, about to approach internet dating for the first time, asked me to do some portrait shots of him as he liked my style and felt he needed a strong photo to use rather that just a snap-shot. Of all the finalised shots I sent Max this was my favourite but it was the first he rejected – claiming it didn’t really do him justice. The eventual outcome of this story is that (according to both parties) Max met his now wife on the strength of my portraits and funnily enough, after I sent him this version of the one he rejected he used it as his Facebook profile picture and it’s stayed that way ever since!
Shots 7 & 8 are my first real attempt at self-portraiture. After spending so long taking other peoples portraits and subjecting them to the glare of the lights I thought I should see what it was like on the other side of the lens. The posing in these is based on those I’d seen in a book I have of original portraiture of men in the first half of the 20th century.