Bruno, a model booker in Cape Town, said ‘I have a guy who I think you should shoot. He’s 17 and a champion swimmer.’ I thought it far too ‘on the nose’ to shoot him at his training bath so instead we met at the beach near Sea Point for an hour. He’s holding the camera at the end because as I was changing film, a wave nearly swallowed it, as the camera rested on a rock. JJ’s training to hopefully join the South African Olympic swimming team for Japan 2020.
Good luck kid.
Editorial shoot with Jake and Maxwell.
Michael Lanni is an actor and sometime photographer. We shot in the gardens of Chiswick House in London in the last minutes of the fading winter sun.
Shooting someone else who takes photos seriously is a pleasure because it means they know to expect ‘another one, and another one, and last one, and one more, and last one, and one more…’ etc. Thanks Michael.
I was so excited when Josie Borain said yes to a garbled and over-earnest WhatsApp message about possibly shooting her. The best part wasn’t having a model in front of your camera whose face has adorned billboards in Times Square for Calvin Klein (he named ‘Obsession’ after her…) - it was the stories she told about working in the 80s with the likes of Avedon, Penn and Bruce Weber. It was such a special afternoon. Thanks Josie.
HMUA: Suaad Jeppie
I feel like shooting a ballet dancer is a photographic rite of passage but I wasn’t sure how I’d do it using natural light, given the space I might need. So I commandeered a basketball court and hung huge blackout drapes to transform it into a useable space. Of course our shoot caught the attention of the school kids nearby. They were loving it.
Hopefully our shoot or Josh Hutching’s amazing ability to throw shapes again and again (we shot on film) will inspire one of them to pick up a camera or become a dancer.
Toby Huntington-Whiteley was one of my first professional shoots. It was fairly epic and took place at the Old Bailey court house in the City of London. In one shot he was dressed in a gold dinner jacket underneath the enormous painted dome and marble walls of the Grand Hall. The Octobox was the size of Jodrell Bank. Thankfully things were a little more subdued the second time we met (below), in a warehouse in Tottenham.
Styling: Emma Lightbown
HMUA: Pipa Cross
All images copyright, Robert Timothy. 2019.
