Looking back at portrait shoots I did much earlier in my career, it’s interesting to see how my shooting style has changed over the years. Back in 2000, for example, when I photographed Bob Mortimer, I would have taken a range of equipment to the shoot and tried as many different things as possible in the time available.
Over the years I had hit on a way of working that suited the magazines and newspapers that commissioned me. Here I would have been directing Bob’s poses, asking him to stand in a certain way, make an expression or perhaps do particular things, making it up as I went along and trusting my instincts.
It was a kind of creative scattergun approach. The resulting pictures didn’t tell you very much about the subject’s personality and I was less inclined to get amazing authentic moments, but that’s the way things were back then.
In this case, I was photographing Bob for Later magazine, a men’s magazine published by IPC that was aimed at a slightly older audience than Loaded, one of the company’s other publications. My brief was simply to shoot a range of images that would illustrate an interview with him, and one of those images would go on the cover.
This story is from the March 21, 2023 edition of Amateur Photographer.
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This story is from the March 21, 2023 edition of Amateur Photographer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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