Calibre Quarterly Magazine approached me to photograph Hollywood legend Brian Cox, and I jumped at the chance.
The brief was to capture a portrait for the cover of the magazine, and several candid shots during the interview. We arrived at the Bush Theatre nice and early to scout, and decided to conduct the interview in their Playtext Library.
We shot the portraits first, against the black curtains in the room. Calibre’s covers are always in black and white, and they had asked for a dark background for this issue. I set up an octabox to Brian’s right for a nice contrasty sidelight, and a second softbox behind him and to the right, to give me a defined edge and also help shape his face. Needless to say, he was an absolute pro, and we had a whole range of expressions within a few frames.
Having got the portraits out of the way nice and quickly, Brian settled in for the interview with Barnaby while I moved my lights around for the new location. I shot during the interview with just the octabox on camera left; mimicing the kind of light we might have gotten through the windows were it not an overcast day.
After the interview (which was facinating – read some of the article here) we had a little time left so we quickly set up in the theatre itself for some more portraits to give the designers a few more options.
All in all, the afternoon was a fantastic experience, Brian Cox was an absolute pleasure to work with, and one of the nicest people I have ever met.
