A lot of good things start with a good conversation. This shoot started when we were packing down from a previous shoot. It had been a great day photographing in a gymnasium for Wardour (to be featured in a future blog post) and the awesome Rob Cuthbertson had been art directing the shoot. I really enjoy working with Rob and thought we should do some personal work together.
I put this proposal to him and on the 10 minute walk back from our location to the car he managed to come up with about 20 great ideas. After much discussion we narrowed it down to one and I set to work putting together the shoot. The idea was to combine mine and Rob's passions into a photograph: I love people and he loves cars, and we both like doing crazy things to make interesting images.
The aim was to animate a mechanics surroundings to attempt to illustrate the way he works in a single still image. This involved vast amounts of fishing wire attached to the ceiling, about an hour trying to balance a tyre on top of a rim and probably more than a complete roll of duct tape. I also managed to use every single light I had brought with me to create pools of light dotted around the scene. Doing something like this for the first time always takes ages, but that is what personal work with for: trying new things. Finally after many hours we were ready for our mechanic.
The man in question was Maxwell Greene, he runs an independent workshop with his son in Fulham. I get my car serviced there and he is the most pleasant guy around. It turned out that he is also great to photograph.
Huge thanks to Maxwell for letting us raid his garage - maxwellgreeneservices.co.uk
Thanks also to Rob Cuthbertson for being so great to work with and being brilliant with fishing wire:
rob.cuthbertson.com
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Follow me on facebookLabels: art director, fishing wire, maxwell greene, mechanic, personal, photograph, portrait, Rob Cuthbertson, thoughts
