Warren Mitchell photographed by Steffan Hill

This assignment, again for the Daily Telegraph was over in Hammersmith, er, or perhaps Kilburn, at the Tricycle Theatre, I can't quite remember now, but it was shot in 2001. Warren Mitchell is famous for pretty much one character he played in the 60's and 70's, namely Alf Garnett, the bigoted West Ham supporter from the sitcom 'Til Death Do Us Part' (also starring Tony Booth, Cheri Blair's Dad).

I guess he was always someone I always knew about my whole life, even though I never really watched the sitcom, (I'm just about not old enough to remember it first time around!) What strikes me about him is that he seems to have hardly changed appearance since about 1965!

He was a real darling and very nice to me, and his eyebrows just scream to be photographed all by themselves!

This was also one of the first professional jobs I shot on a digital camera, the Nikon D1, which at the time I thought was an amazing camera, and looking back at it now, I realise just how bad it was compared to what exists now in just 9 short years... very scary! I think I shot a roll of 35mm just in case as a back up! As usual the picture desk didn't choose my favourite picture (the published picture is at the bottom, but that's life!)

John Terry photographed by Steffan Hill

Well, as he is a hot topic right now, having been dropped from the captaincy of England for his affair (alleged) with a team mates missus, I thought I would throw this picture of John Terry up on the blog.

It was taken for 442 Magazine in 2006, and although it looks like a studio shot, it was actually in a tiny room at the top of the Virgin store on Oxford Street, in London.

I put a mini backdrop up and simple 2 light set up, key light front left, and hair spot rear right. Shot with fuji film 100 transparency on my Contax 645, probably the last film job I was commissioned to do before I went totally digital...

What can I say about Terry, in the whole 7 minutes I was given to photograph him...

Lets just say what comes around goes around...Oh and I've had a bit of a smile on my face these last few days....

Sydney Lonely Planet Cover by Steffan Hill

A few years ago, at the end of 2002, I decided to take a break from the cut and thrust of London and take a year out travelling, mainly in Australia. It was quite simply one of the best periods of my life. I brought with me in my already heavy backpack a Mamiya 7 medium format film camera with 4 lenses and a stack of film. A joy to travel through and photograph, my guide whilst there (and pretty much everybody else's) was the Lonely Planet.

One day in Sydney I decided to climb up the viewing tower on the bridge and shoot the harbour and views. I took a shot of the shadow of the mighty bridge with a single yacht approaching.

I guess it was with some serendipity that a few years later I sold this image to Lonely Planet to be used on the front cover of their Sydney City guide. Little did I know at the time! Although heavily cropped and sharing the cover with another photographers picture it was still a great feeling, not to mention that it paid for some of my airfare over there! Just goes to show you never know where your photos will appear...

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...

Inspiral Carpets photographed by Steffan Hill

I found these in my attic last night, and thought it would be fun to post them. This was probably one of the first times I ever worked 'on set' as it were. It was for the NME way back in '93 or 94' can't remember exactly. The Inspirals had a new song with The Falls Mark E Smith on guest vocals and the NME commissioned me to go along to the shoot and cover it.

I had a brilliant time, what a fun day, the storyline for the video was fairly simple, band plays on stage, bunch of beautiful girls invade stage and beat up the band, then run away....genius!

The band members were very friendly, especially Tom and Clint Boon who was just hilarious, any time he spoke you just cracked up laughing.

The shoot was somewhere in Camden I think, possibly the Roundhouse, but it was so long ago now, I really can't remember much more from the day. I thought the song was quite good, it was one of their last hits before they went off into obscurity, and to be honest they are now most famous for having had a certain Noel Gallagher as their guitar technician.

Lee Evans Photographed by Steffan Hill

This was one of my first ever jobs for the Daily Telegraph, way back in 1996. I had been to see Lee Evans along side Jack Dee when I was a student for the princely sum of £1.00 in our S.U. bar. It was one of the funniest nights I have ever experienced, and was really excited to photograph him 4 years later.

The shoot was at his agents offices in Soho, it took an age to find as it was hidden away on a really quiet back street. I had a quick scout around and decided to set up in the stairway as everywhere else was really grim. I was given a whole 20 mins with him, which is great as even just a few minutes longer allows you to get much more variety. He was brilliant, what a nice guy, he's much more famous now of course, and I really hope he's remained as nice as he was back then.

It was a whirlwind photographing him as he just came up with all these great poses, running around just like he does on stage. It was almost difficult to get him to stop and calm down, before he would say 'hey lets do this'...

In those days before digital everything for the Telegraph was shot on colour neg film, to give them a choice whether to use it in black and white or colour. My favourite shot I think is the one of him looking to towards the light, which is actually positioned at the top of the stairs, he's at the bottom. Using a honeycomb I managed to get a lovely pool of light on him and the wall.

I had one almost disastrous occurrence, as my time was nearly up with him, and I was rushing around almost as much as him, I didn't notice getting the sync lead wrapped around my legs and I pulled over the flash head which sailed pass both of us, narrowly missing his head and crashed to the bottom of the stairs. Fair play to Lee, he tried to stop the falling light with his leg and rushed down to pick it up for me. I nearly had a heart attack, thinking Christ, I've nearly knocked him out and now he's going to get electrocuted by my alarmingly fizzling flash head! Considering he was about to go on the West End for his first major season, I dread to think what would of happened if I had injured him. Anyway, glad to say I've never had as near a miss as that since, and Lee carried onward and upwards on his amazing career. I've managed to route out some old contacts and scan them so you can have a look at the progress of the shoot.