Bill Oddie Photo Shoot
If you want to capture a piece of someone’s personality on camera, you the photographer must give them the confidence to be comfortable not only with you and your camera, but also with themselves.
After many years of photographing one of the most emotionally charged days in peoples’ lives, their weddings, I’ve learnt that having the courage to show something of your own personality to a complete stranger pays huge dividends.
If you live in the UK you’ll almost certainly know Bill Oddie as that bloke on TV doing silly things on a Trandom or with pair of binoculars round his neck. I’m always interested in what’s behind the public persona of celebrities, so when I was asked to do a ‘Naked Camera’ photoshoot and interview with Bill I jumped at the chance.
This video was shot as a proposal for TV which may or may not be commissioned and is one of the toughest assignments I’ve ever done. Bill was great to be around but his house is very dark so even at 2000 ISO and an f2.8 lens I struggled to get above 25th second. As a ‘naked’ shoot there was no posing or flash, I had to listen and ask intelligent questions whilst operating the camera; think about where I was in relation to Bill so Jayne could get her shots and avoid getting her in my shots.
I know some of you will want to know I used a Nikon D3X and Nikkor f2.8 24-70 lens. Professional Photographer magazine are running an article about the shoot in the August edition if you’d like to know more.
