Meet this week’s stunning frontispiece for Country Life Magazine – Princess Adebomi Adewale, from Nigeria, photographed at the Church of St Mary & St Nicholas, Wilton in Wiltshire.
A joy and honour to photograph – Bomi was beautiful, vibrant, intelligent and great fun. What more could I ask for? Thank you Country Life for another wonderful commission. Lucky me!
Thank you also to the fabulous make up by Mach Management.
This portrait commission for Country Life Magazine, accompanied an article in the issue on 22nd November 2017 about the Country House Foundation which offers grants to help the preservation of buildings of historical or architectural significance. Indeed, this charitable foundation has helped the Nick Ashley Cooper, the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, restore the St Giles House Estate, Wimborne St Giles, back to its former glory. The earl explained: “During the restoration, we wanted to showcase one room in its unrestored state. The Great Dining room seemed the perfect space to do that, with its bare brick walls and layers of history.”
My aim was create an informal portrait from an angle which best displayed these ‘layers of history’, with particular focus on the juxtaposition between the bare brick and remaining plaster. What you can’t see are the two new layers of history on the carpet where Hettie (taking pride of place on the chair) was sick when she came in!
Very honoured to have met and photographing this inspiring young lady – Sophie Montagne. As covered recently on the BBC news, Sophie is part of the first all female team attempting to cross Antartica later in November this year. The team has just returned from 3 weeks training in the Norwegian Wilderness, where they have skied 463km and climbed over 6000m, pulling 50kg behind them (about 75% of their bodyweight).
In November, their 3 month journey will be cover 1,700km during which they will be battling temperatures of -50C with wind speeds over 60mph. Some feat. Follow them on twitter @exicemaiden.
One of the things I love most about being a portrait photographer is the variety of my work, the people I meet, and the places I visit. One day I’m photographing children, another adults, sculptures, interiors,weddings, etc. One day I’m in Dorset, another Wiltshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire. No day or commission is ever the same.
A recent portrait commission from Country Life Magazine took me to the new gallery, Messums, which has recently opened in the Medieval Tithe Barn located in Tisbury, Wiltshire. Here I had the pleasure of photographing Lord Margadale, the owner of the Tithe barn and Johnny Messum the founder of the gallery. I was also asked to capture the stunning interior & ceiling of the barn, and their inaugural exhibition of stone and bronze sculptures.
Not exactly your usual frontispiece, but this is one of my favourite photos for Country Life. My great friend and hugely talented make up artist, Amanda Jackson Sytner, and I headed down to the dark depths of Devon on a cold wintery day in early March.
Publication was set for the end of April, so I’d been briefed to capture the colours of spring. but there was not a flower let alone a bluebell in sight. Fortunately the yellow derelict digger, aka “Custard”, caught by eye and invited some quirky compositions, and worked particularly well with Freddie’s bright green dress. The red wellies provided the final touch.
This portrait may not have captured any spring flowers, but the bright colours made a pretty good substitute on this bleak midwinter’s day!