Shoot with CEO Stephen Robertson

I was commissioned to shoot Stephen Robertson, CEO of the charity The Big Issue on location in the pedestrian tunnels between Waterloo Train Station and The Southbank.

The idea being that many of his homeless Big Issue sellers sometimes are seen either selling the magazine or sleeping rough.

I, as always arrived early for the shoot and scoped out 3 possible locations that I thought would provide a great backdrop to the portraits.

The first location I started from is usually the weaker of the locations but it gives me and the subject time to acquaint themselves to the environment and loosen up a bit. This is extremely important when you meet the subject directly at the shoot location.

Although, this time after rattling off a few frames I felt I was beating a dead bush and decided to move to the second location immediately. When you don't have much time with the subject its better to cut your losses and move on.

The second location was more fruitful and I started to work with the subject on the pose and feel of the images. Stephen was perfect and felt relaxed almost immediately and was keen to make the shoot work, which is not always the case when shooting CEO's.

There was a sleeping bag deposited in the tunnel but unfortunately the owner was no where to be seen and I asked the art director to walk towards the camera in the background. I find that the more layers you can give a portrait then the more interesting the image becomes. Since the CEO was so comfortable infant of my lens I tried out some different poses and the shot that worked for me were the shots of him crouching looking away from camera. these for me stood out from the shoot. The lights in the tunnel were constantly changing so I had to keep in mind which of the colours worked. Deep blues and reds were my choice. Right beside the location were a slimmer tunnel and I took some moments to include this area since the 1st location was so dire.

I was really happy with these results and after shooting several different set ups we moved to the 3rd location to get away from the tunnel shots and shoot something different to give the magazine some other options.

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It was still underneath the road but it opened up a bit and gave me the opportunity to play around with something different.

The magazine decided to publish the shots in the slimmer tunnel area, an afterthought when making my location selection but thats why its always better to give more options as you never know what the client thinks will make the best image on their pages of their magazine.