32 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.ukWhen Harry Met...
Sir Terry Pratchett
Harry Borden looks back on a tricky shoot with
the best-selling fantasy novelist
Harry used a softbox for this image, to provide a clean backgroundALL PICTURES © HARRY BORDEN
I
’m sometimes
commissioned to shoot
portraits of people I
really admire. Having
in-depth knowledge about
someone’s work often helps
to form a rapport with them,
but it also puts you in a
slightly subservient position.
Conversely, if you’re not a fan,
you can’t win someone over
through enthusiasm for their
work, but you can look at them
objectively and concentrate on
getting a good picture.
When I photographed Terry
Pratchett in January 2001, it
was an example of the latter
situation. I was obviously
aware that he was one of the
UK’s best-selling authors,
particularly well-known for his
Discworld series of novels. But
although his brand of fantasy
and science fi ction is very
imaginative and clearly appeals
to many people (he has sold
over 85 million books and was
knighted for his work in 2009),it just doesn’t fl oat my boat.
I was doing the shoot for an
article in the Mail on Sunday’s
Night and Day magazine.
Pratchett was rarely
photographed without his
trademark black Akubra hat,
but I’d had a request from
Night and Day’s picture
editor, saying simply: ‘Not all
with hat.’
In those days, I would take a
full battery of equipment on a
shoot: my Hasselblad CM, a
Pentax 67, a Fujifi lm 6x7 and
6x9, a Leica and probably a
Polaroid Land Camera 195.
Each of these fi lm cameras had
a di erent personality and
impressed itself on the way Iworked, helping me to get a
greater variety of images.
My assistant and I arrived
at Pratchett’s house in the
Wiltshire countryside, near
Salisbury, on a bitterly cold
winter’s day. Superfi cially, the
location looked promising: it
was a large, heavily oak-built
house that I thought would
o er plenty of variety in
shooting locations. As regular
readers will know, I prefer to
use natural daylight, but on
this day the light was too poor
to shoot with inside.
Pratchett wasn’t keen on me
exploring the house for other
locations and the one room he
wanted me to shoot in, his
writing room, was really
cluttered and a bad
environment for a clear and
simple picture.
To get around the problem,
I had one get-out-of-jail
technique: I’d brought an
Octa Softbox and just put it
behind him, so he was backlit
and I was exposing for the
softbox. It immediately made
the shot look like it had been
taken in a studio. I also
persuaded him to pose for a
close-up head shot without
his hat, to keep the picture
editor happy, but I needed
something else.
Pratchett was just 52 at the
time, but his full grey beard
made him look older. As a
person, I found him to be
perfectly nice, but a little
nerdy and haughty. He had a
narrow idea of how he
wanted to be perceived, and,
at times, getting him to do
what I wanted was like
wading through treacle.
Even though it was very
cold and beginning to snow, I
knew we’d have to shoot
outside. He defi nitely wasn’t
keen, but to his credit he
eventually agreed, put on a
full-length Driza-Bone brown‘At times, getting
him to do what
I wanted was
like wadingthrough treacle’
Terry’s coat provided
a good prop, adding
lots of character to
this shot