Shooting Giles Andreae for ELLE Russia

Back in January I had the privilege of shooting a portrait of Giles Andreae (childrens author & creator of Purple Ronnie and Edward Monkton) for the April edition of ELLE Russia!


The portrait was to be included with a feature on fathers who also successfully work with children, as the series featured people who lived in Russia, America and the UK they needed a team from each country to photograph them so that they could eventually all look part of the same series!


The photoshoot took place at Giles's writing studio in Oxfordshire so on the day I met Melissa from ELLE Russia and Elizabeth from ELLE Uk at Paddington to catch the train out to Oxfordshire.On the train we had a closer look at the other photos that were already shot for the series and discussed our ideas for the images we planned to take with Giles!


We met Lara Himpelmann our make-up artist & Suze my assistant for the day at the train station, from there Lara drove and the rest of us got a taxi to the location!
When we arrived we met Giles who introduced us to his son Jackson who would be at the shoot and his daughter Freya was on her way back from school!


Melissa and Elizabeth began by showing Giles the clothing they had so he could chose what he would be wearing - and also a selection for Jackson to chose from when he arrived. Whilst they did this Suze and I set up a temporary studio and the lighting for the photos!


When everyone had got their selected outfits on and were ready to shoot Lara did some light make-up for Giles and Freya and then we begun shooting!
My aim was to keep everything quick during the shoot to keep Jackson from getting bored - so we worked quickly talking to them throughout the shoot.

There were some really funny moments during the shoot - trying to get some fun photos - at one point Giles said that Jackson could say the rudest thing he could think of to make everyone laugh, after double checking he wouldn't get told off Jackson smiled to himself and then said "f**k off you Russian idiots!" to us - here is the reaction photo;

Here's another funny moment..

Here's another favourite image from the shoot! 

For the shoot I used the Canon 5D MkII with the 28-70mm F2.8 L lens, 1x Canon Speedlite and 2x Interfit flash heads. As you can see from the behind the scenes photo the backdrop would not be wide enough for the final images, which is where photoshop came into the equation, here is a before and after photoshop shot;

Here is a translation of the text in the magazine article!

Dad's school

In an executive poll of the most touching/moving/emotive images, that of man and child came top of the list. The heroes/subjects/stars? of this project have already achieved the most important thing - they've become great fathers. But they went even further, and have dedicated their time to improving the lives of other children.

Text: Olga Siplivaya

Photos: Timur Artamonov, Temma Hankin, Oscar May

Next page:

Giles Andreae

The English children's writer, author of the bestsellers "Rumble in the Jungle" and "The Lion who wanted to Love". Freya, 12 years old. Jackson, 6 years old.

It turned out that the books that had the biggest influence on me were those I read during my childhood. They were short stories, but in the depth and strength of their emotions they portrayed they could give adult literature a run for its money. It's probably because of this that I decided to become a children's writer.

I have four kids, and they are my most important influences and source of inspiration. Before sending a book off to the editors, I always read it to them first. Once my youngest son declared that my newest opus was "a bit dull" and that I should write about Batman instead, since "all the boys love Batman". Of course my son was still unfamiliar with copyright laws.

I see a lot of myself in them, especially in those born redheads, as was I. Also I remember the day when we revealed to our three older kids that there was going to be an addition to the family. They were thrilled! Later they confessed that it was the best present we, as parents, could have ever given them.

They ask me so many different questions, that I as a writer feel I should have the answer to. The hardest thing to discuss is religion. When a three year old looks up at you, wide-eyed and without blinking, and asks "Daddy, is God real?" you are stumped for an answer. "Yes" sounds too straightforward. "No" seems intuitively dishonest. Maybe the joy of fatherhood lies in exactly that - playing games at the same time as being borderline honest. It's a challenge, an experiment and the most unimaginable happiness.

Thankyou Maria for translating the article for me!!

London Fashion Week AW12 - February 2012

This February I had the privilege of being invited by Canon to shoot the Tuesday of London Fashion Week. 
Having only shot a couple of small fashion shows before I was quite nervous about squeezing in between the seasoned pro's in the photographer pit and producing a good documentary of the shows! 
Throughout the day I was fortunate enough to use the Canon 1D MkIV with a selection of lenses. For the first show, David Koma, I started out with one of my favourite lenses, the familiar 70-200mm F/2.8 II L, which was a great lens to use for a catwalk as you could zoom in to get full length shots when the model walks onto the runway but also have the option of a head and shoulders shot when the model gets close, or still take a 3/4 or full length photo by zooming out to 70mm. 
Something that also helped was the realisation the lighting was even enough to have everything set to manual and the colour temperature could stay the same throughout the day which always helps keep the continuity in the images nicely.

For the next show, Holly Fulton, I decided to take the new 400mm F/2.8 L out for a trial, having felt the weight of its predecessor I can't say that it was heavy but holding it still without a monopod for 25 minutes is definitely a workout for the arms! 

Being a prime lens this meant I could only stick to that focal length but it took some stunningly sharp images so it was certainly worth it. 

I could just about get a full length image of the models if I took a photo of them as soon as they walked onto the runway, the lens was great for close up shots and the main attraction in using it was to get a nice depth of field whilst having enough focusing space to get one models face nicely in focus during the line up at the end of the show!

Next up was the Ashish show, which was really fun and loved the fact that there was a lot of details on the backs of the designs that really kept the photographers on their toes! I decided to test out the 24mm F/3.5 II L Tilt-shift lens, though after a quick test we decided it would probably be best to get used to the lens for a bit longer before using it to shoot a show as it is manual focus and had a lot more options than the lenses I'm used to (shifting the plane of focus etc!) It definitely looks like a fun lens to use in the future though! Here is one of my test images from that lens:

I quickly changed over to the 8-15mm F/4.0 L Fisheye lens to catch the Ashish show which give me some really different images and helped to capture a wider shot which will hopefully help to show what actually being at the show is like! 

For my final show of the day, Aminaka Wilmont, I decided to use the 70-200mm F/2.8 again as I did find it the best all-round lens to use, though I think my best results were probably from the 400mm F/2.8! The only aspect of this show that I didn't anticipate before was that the lighting changed - so only the lights in the closest third of the runway were on full power, so consequently the exposure settings I set for one part of the runway would be different to the closest part which made things a bit harder, after realising this I just shot the girls when they were in the well lit area!