Celebrity portraits from my time in Edinburgh
Browsing the archives can be an interesting experience. Once I could remember pretty much everything I’d shot but not now. With the archive about to tick over the 100,000 mark I guess I can be forgiven for forgetting what is there.
Just a brief glance at an image can bring all sorts of memories flooding back about the specifics of the shoot. The technical difficulties, how co-operative the sitter was or simply what a beautiful day it had been. A bit like looking back through old family photos I guess.
I was prompted to look back through my files as I’m having to look at storage solutions at the moment. Hard discs are becoming full and there is a need for something larger with a backup.
I’ve previously posted some of my celebrity pictures from my time in Edinburgh but thought I would share a few more.
Some are from one to one sittings, others are from press calls at the Festival and others from premieres. They cover a fast changing time in press photography, the change from film to digital. Most, including the Nelson Mandella , David Steele, Arthur Smith, Irvine Welsh, Matt Groening and Atomic Kitten pictures were shot on film and scanned from the negative. For me the Mandella picture is the stand out picture of my career. It’s not a great picture but a personal thing for me because of who he is and what he stands for and I had the opportunity to photograph him. The others were all shot on Nikon D1 or D1x digital cameras.
The Ed Byrne shoot is quite vivid in my memory as well. Most of the hour long shoot in a hotel room in Edinburgh revolved around photographing him with a bottle of Iron Bru , the local soft drink of choice. Ed was appearing at the Festival and was most accommodating and The Sun wanted a Scottish angle and as the shoot was indoors the only thing that presented itself was a bottle of Iron Bru. Anyway despite all our efforts with the bottle I prefer this shot.
To fill in some of the history, it’s been fifteen years since I started Mediaphotos in Edinburgh and almost unbelievably, ten years since the business relocated to Cardiff from where it still operates, supplying, editorial, pr, business and media clients with creative images.
