Recent photoshoot: Jeff Bridges

This was a shoot that I had come through just before Christmas - the type of assignment that gets you immediately excited and on a high, but at the same time put's you on edge as you start planning the shoot and going through various scenarios in your head. Of course with any job like this there's only so much you can plan, everything remains fluid. As it was we were the last people of the day to get a slot with Jeff and we had to fit an interview and a photoshoot into precisely 10 minutes! I knew the image was going to run in black and white which removed a number of problems (the room we were in had about 3 types of lighting and the walls were terrible terracotta brown - the whole set up looked like a fake Roman villa). The black and white therefore was a blessing, however I had to figure how to add some drama with the lighting. Being that we were shooting an actor with fairly distinctive features I knew I could afford for his face to be partly in shadow and for him to still be recognisable. But of course any complicated light set up is not ideal when you have such a short time slot with the talent, mainly because it limits how much they can move (especially when you're working, as I was, unassisted and have to therefore move all the lights yourself!). To add to that I had get the shiniest award I've ever seen, in shot, whilst still being able to read logo on it. Needless to say, it gave me a lot to think about and not much time to engage that much with 'the dude'. But what can you do - sometimes in those situations you just need to slip into autopilot and make sure you get the job done.