The Little Prince

Late last year the Lyric put on a performance of The Little Prince for their Christmas season, I have already posted these to my website, but here is a larger selection. Great fun photographing this one, it certainly kept me on my toes as it was frantic on stage!

Juliette Lewis

I had such a positive response regarding the shoot with Juliette Lewis on Facebook (thanks everyone!) that I thought I would post more photographs of the shoot.

It was for the Daily Telegraph, and I was sent down to a hotel in West London where she was staying with the band. The pressure was on right from the start as I was instructed by the paper to only get photographs of Juliette, but knew that her press officer would want to concentrate on shots of her with her band, Juliette and the Licks.

So a compromise was struck, I would get 7 mins with the band and get her on her own for the remaining 7 mins. I was also acutely aware that Juliette herself would not really be keen to be photographed on her own, as she was really pushing the band as a self contained unit.

One other thing that I was worried about, the fact that we had to do all this in the foyer of the hotel, which was a basically a public space and usually a nightmare to control.

I got to the hotel and did my recce, then set up my lights and waited for them to make an appearance. Suddenly this blonde girl appeared out of nowhere and I realised that she had bleached her hair ... very rock and roll

I can honestly say that Juliette did not disappoint one bit, she was brilliant to photograph, mad as a box of frogs, and it was all a bit of a blur, but I came away satisfied that I had captured some great shots.

Times Educational Supplement

I have the front page of the current Times Educational Supplement this week, they asked me to photograph a student who was waiting for her results. We did the shots the day before her results came out, so I hope she did well!

This was my first job for the TES, always nice to get a cover, it was 16 years ago since I showed this paper my portfolio, still better late than never!

Small Island BBC Drama

Small Island was filmed by Ruby films for the BBC earlier this year in Belfast, Dublin and Jamaica, based on the popular book by Andrea Levy. I was commissioned as the stills photographer and ended up covering 8 days in total, 2 of which were in Jamaica.

It will be shown on BBC1 on Sunday 6th December 2009 and Sunday 13th December at 9pm. I urge you to watch a brilliant drama!

The first location was in Dublin, they tried to get a suitable location to double as a typical London Georgian street in Belfast, but couldn't. It was a cold February day, and it is always a bit nerve racking turning up on set for the first time and meeting all the new actors, directors etc, but it was also great to see so many familiar faces amongst the local crew from the North. Day 1 for me was spent covering exteriors of the main house owned by Queenie and the arrival of Hortense, which was filmed at night, always very tricky when shooting.

My second day was back in Belfast, in Ormeau Park, East Belfast which was doubling up for a foggy Green Park in London in the late 1940's. They had a fog machine which I had never seen before, basically a big plastic sausage skin they blow smoke into, and it made for some really atmospheric pictures. This is where I shot the 2 separate images of Hortense and Queenie, as used on the cover of the re-release of the book above.

The next day for me was in Portaferry, where the art dept had converted the whole town square into wartime Britain, it was a fantastic day for me, shooting a major scene in the film I won't talk about here so I don't spoil it for you!

Then there was a break for me for a whole month which is quite unusual, so it was a bit strange turning up in the Painthall (a converted ship yard paint hall, now a film studio) in March to pick up where I left off. Not all filming days are really suitable for stills, and they choose which ones to cover quite carefully. I had a couple more days in the Painthall including the main publicity shots which were art directed by Jo O'Leary from the BBC.

Then another 2 weeks before I flew out to Jamacia to join the rest of the crew in Kingston who had gone out earlier. This was a photographers dream, they had re-done the centre of Spanish Town, now a notoriously rough town near Kingston, to recreate the 1930's, including pouring tonnes of sand over the tarmac-ed roads to make it look authentic. It was stunning out there and the other fantastic scenes included sugar cane plantations, hurricanes, and military parades. Apart from my horrendous jet lag and the searing heat I had the time of my life, not forgetting, on our Saturday night off, a trip with my fellow crew to the live recording of the Jamaican version of the X-Factor, complete with drive by shooting...

It's a wonderful drama and I really hope you all watch it this week-end...

If you want to view more of my stills they are on my website at the link :

Small Island Stills

Evan Dando photographed by Steffan Hill

I shot Evan in the reception of the Halcyon Hotel in Holland Park, London in 1996. He's the lead singer of a band called The Lemonheads. I knew he had a reputation for being a bit of a loose cannon, and was not disappointed! This guy had a huge problem with drugs, but I was told that all that was behind him. They had not arranged anywhere to do the photoshoot (usual story) so I asked the hotel if it was ok if I shot in the reception. It is quite a rock in roll place so they were cool with that.

I set my lights up and waited and eventually Evan walked in with his people and he was as pissed as a fart, totally off his head so it made for an interesting photo-shoot to say the least. He was generally rolling around the floor pulling faces, some of which worked and some of which definitely didn't. I have to admit I was struggling a bit. As with many hotels there was a large flower display handy, so I asked if I could 'borrow' a couple, they said of course and I think instantly regretted it as Evan pretty much destroyed their display.

If you look closely on this photo you can see the beer bottle to the right that was never far away from Evan during the photo-shoot. It certainly was not his first of the day!! Anyway, we had the flowers and the shoot progressed with him acting silly buggers, but eventually I persuaded him to calm done a little and captured the shot with him holding the flower in front of his eye. It's funny, he looks so serene, it totally hides what really went on in the shoot, but I was very pleased with the outcome, and to be fair to Evan, he brought a mile more energy and enthusiasm to the shoot than a lot of other musicians. I prefer my version with his mouth closed than the papers choice, as I feel he looks far more composed in mine and too wasted in the picture below...