Fifteen Minutes With Carol Vorderman
So this is a fairly typical portrait job for The Times – 15 minutes with the subject at the end of an interview, in a pretty uninspiring meeting room. It’s for the Weekend section of the Saturday Times, so I know they’ll probably want a landscape portrait of Carol looking into the lens, no fancy settings or backgrounds. Which is pretty handy, as there’s not much to use in the room, except a particularly fine view of London, albeit through thick double glazed, reflective glass.
I had an hour to think about what I wanted to do, and make some notes for moving the lighting around. This helps speed things up considerably during the shoot, so I am able to get more variety from such a small amount of time. I used two Canon Speedlite 550EX flash guns, one with a shoot through umbrella, one bare. I also took this first shot with available light, which had a beautiful soft quality at this time of the day. Carol was an absolute professional and lovely to photograph, even when I asked her to climb onto the wide window ledge in her striking dress.
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View some of my other editorial blog posts with more of my work for The Times.