Where do you get inspiration from? One of my biggest inspirations currently is my love of movies, I realized that I
had been preparing for this my whole life having watched so many movies for pleasure but all that creativity is
em-bedded in my brain, tapping into this for a creative photoshoot has been immensely fun and resulted in some
of my best work I think. My recent Post-Apocalyptic themed shoots where created on the fly without trying to
copy or imitate any particular film or existing image, just tapping into this feeling and memories from a life of mo-
vie watching.
Do you think in advance what you want in the picture? Yes to a certain degree, I have ideas that come to me or I
just see something random and I think I could do something with that, I then start putting the pieces together,
buying pros, outfits and looking for a model that I think could work for the concept. I don’t fully design the con-
cept, rather put the ingredients in place and then on the day its cooking time, working with the different ingre-
dients to put together the dish on the day! I find that if everything is planned too perfectly if the model doesn’t
quite work then the shoot will fail, so I keep things fairly flexible and piece everything together on the day.
Studio, on location or both? I work in the studio only. I have shot outdoors and on location before and would like
to do more of it, but my shoots are fairly complex in studio where I regularly shoot with up to 7 flash heads, large
soft boxes, 3 x smoke machines, haze and fog machines, that’s a lot of kit to drag around. I also find the studio
more challenging to create something interesting, location I think does a lot of the work for you by instantly crea-
ting your backdrop drama, in the studio you start with a blank sheet of paper.
What has been your most memorable session and why? A recent shoot with a fire performer in my studio, we
combined water, smoke effects and fire inside my studio creating various challenges, but ultimately very exciting
with some great results.
Issue50 - August 2019 - Modellenland Magazine