Elle Russia X Giles Andreae

I had the privilege of shooting a portrait of Giles Andreae (childrens author & creator of Purple Ronnie and Edward Monkton) for ELLE Russia!

The portrait was to be included with a feature on fathers who also successfully work with children, as the series featured people who lived in Russia, America and the UK they needed a team from each country to photograph them so that they could eventually all look part of the same series.

The photoshoot took place at Giles's writing studio in Oxfordshire so on the day I met Melissa from ELLE Russia and Elizabeth from ELLE Uk at Paddington to catch the train out to Oxfordshire. On the train we had a closer look at the other photos that were already shot for the series and discussed our ideas for the images we planned to take with Giles.

We met Lara Himpelmann our make-up artist & Suze my assistant for the day at the train station, from there Lara drove and the rest of us got a taxi to the location.

When we arrived we met Giles who introduced us to his son Jackson who would be at the shoot and his daughter Freya was on her way back from school.

Melissa and Elizabeth began by showing Giles the clothing they had so he could chose what he would be wearing - and also a selection for Jackson to chose from when he arrived. Whilst they did this Suze and I set up a temporary studio and the lighting for the photos.

When everyone had got their selected outfits on and were ready to shoot Lara did some light make-up for Giles and Freya and then we begun shooting.

My aim was to keep everything quick during the shoot to keep Jackson from getting bored - so we worked quickly talking to them throughout the shoot.