Blog
Category: Portrait
A Tale of Two Covers
This is a behind-the-scenes tale of two assignments. Shot for different clients at different times, both were corporate portrait commissions for magazine covers; both subjects were men at the top of their game.
Subject number one was Mikael Krafft, founder of Star Clippers cruise company. Private Banking Magazine has asked me to take the portrait aboard his private yacht. The second shoot, for Marketing Magazine, was for a feature on the CMO of Mars, Bruce McColl, who’d won the coveted Advertiser of the Year award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Portrait of Chrissie Wellington
Chrissie Wellington is something of an exception. Right now she is the world’s no. 1 female Ironman triathlete. She has been crowned Ironman World Champion at Kona (Hawaii) four times and is the first British athlete to hold this title. For those who don’t know, an Ironman consists of a 4 km swim (outdoors, in a lake), a 180 km bike ride and a 42 km run (yes, you finish the race with an actual marathon). Chrissie has competed in 13 Ironman races. And won them all.
Opticians à la Française
I was commissioned recently by a boutique optician in Nice who wanted a photographer to shoot some portraits for a new advertising campaign. A creative brief to combine quirky humour with élégance in black and white made for a particularly French feel to this photography assignment.
Travelling Light, Sleeping Rough
The ordeals faced by the many Tunisian migrants who came to Europe after the recent revolution to start new lives in France are not over. Having travelled to Lampedusa, Italy, by boat, many have wound up in the border town of Ventimiglia, on their quest to reach France. A month ago, Europe watched closely as this Italian town so close to the South of France became centre stage for a border control spat between respective national governments.
I went to Ventimiglia and took a series of portraits of the migrants, photographing each one alongside the contents of the bag they were travelling with.
Superyachts on the Drawing Board
Sitting on a sunny café terrace, if you overheard people next to you discussing Wally, Linda Lou and Queen M, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were talking about old friends graced with slightly unusual nicknames. However, I was on assignment in Monaco, just about to meet leading designer of superyachts Espen Øeino, and my companions (members of Centurion magazine’s editorial team) were excitedly discussing the yachts they could spot from our table.
Ultra’s World
Salvador Dali’s muse. One of Andy Warhol’s chosen ‘superstars’. Ultra Violet, now well into her seventies, still has a steely gaze and the considerable charisma that you might expect of her.
I took her portrait at the apartment in Nice, where Ultra spends time when not in her New York home. In one lounge, another photographer was lost in concentration shooting her latest installation piece, ‘Self Portrait’. Tradesmen were rushing to and fro. Ultra was alone at the centre of it all, calm and regal.
I Love…
“I love…” How would you complete that sentence? The only rules in this case are that it cannot be 1) someone you know or 2) something that someone else has already put.
I tackled members of France’s defence services with this question for a portrait series made at an annual defense and security recruitment fair near Cannes. One by one, French policemen and women, firemen, soldiers and even one of Monaco’s Royal Guards, struggled gamely to put chalk to slate in a quiet corner of the showground.