From the Archive: Freelance Photographer
Ian Phillips-McLaren - celebrity portraiture, daylight and making a living as a photographer
I recently came across this copy of Freelance Photographer magazine, which featured a profile of my work as a London-based celebrity and portrait photographer.
My portrait of actress MyAnna Buring was used for the cover, with an extended feature inside looking back at how I’d arrived at photography, moving from Glasgow to London, assisting photographers, shooting editorial and commercial work and eventually photographing actors, musicians and other public figures.
Reading it again all these years later, what interested me wasn’t so much the career history. It was how many of the things I talked about then still form part of the way I photograph and teach today.
From Glasgow to London
My route into photography wasn’t particularly planned.
I was already working as an artist and photographer in Glasgow, and in the early 1990s I was invited to become an Artist in Residence at Glasgow School of Art. Photography had increasingly become central to my practice, alongside the other work I was making at the time.
I began photographing club culture and taking whatever opportunities came along.
Moving to London in 1992 changed everything.
I was suddenly surrounded by magazines, designers, art directors, record companies and photographers. There was much more work, but there was also much more competition.
Looking back at the interview, I’m reminded how much of those early years involved simply saying yes to something and then working out how to do it.
Daylight was already doing the heavy lifting
One thing in the article made me smile.
In the accompanying profile, Freelance Photographer described my approach very simply:
“Uses daylight as much as possible.”
In the interview I talk about photographing an award-winning author for a book. We’d hired a studio for the day, but I never used it. Instead, we walked along a corridor and I photographed her there because the daylight was much nicer.
That probably says more about the way I worked than any description of lighting equipment could.
I wasn’t particularly interested in using a studio simply because one was available. If the better photograph was somewhere else, that’s where I went.
Apparently I’ve been banging on about daylight for longer than I remembered.
That approach — looking first, understanding what the light is doing and making the photograph with what’s available — is still central to the way I work with portraiture today.
Making it up as you go along
There’s another thread running through the interview that I recognise very clearly.
Quite a lot of a photographic career involves being offered something you’ve never done before and deciding you’re probably capable of doing it.
The article talks about my early work photographing clubs, getting commercial jobs, working for Capital Radio, moving into advertising and eventually photographing increasingly well-known people.
There wasn’t a grand plan connecting all of those things.
You learned by doing.
You watched other photographers. You listened to art directors. You made mistakes. You worked out what mattered and gradually developed your own way of doing things.
Perhaps most importantly, you learned that knowing how to use a camera was only a small part of being a photographer.
The person in front of the camera
The magazine describes my portrait style as relaxed and informal, which still feels fairly accurate.
However polished the final photograph might look, I’ve never been particularly interested in forcing people through a collection of predetermined poses.
I talk.
I watch.
Sometimes I direct and sometimes I wait.
The technical side matters, of course, but portraiture ultimately depends on the relationship between the photographer and the person standing in front of the camera.
That’s something I’ve become even more conscious of through teaching. Finding beautiful light is one thing. Recognising what is happening with the person inside that light is something else entirely.
Some things haven’t changed
At the end of the article I was asked to give a few pieces of advice to photographers.
Reading them again now, I don’t think I’d change very much.
The magazine pulled them together as:
Be honest with yourself.
Learn by listening to others.
Get out and meet people face to face.
Don’t become complacent. Always try to improve your skills.
I’d probably phrase some of it differently now — and the internet has changed rather dramatically since then — but the underlying idea is much the same.
Look critically at your own work. Listen. Remain curious. Meet people. And don’t assume you’ve got everything figured out.
Photography changes. Cameras change. Careers change.
The need to keep learning doesn’t.
From photographing to teaching
Looking back at this article now, I can see a fairly direct line between the way I worked professionally then and the way I teach photography today.
Working with people. Arriving somewhere without knowing exactly what you’ll find. Responding to a location rather than trying to impose something upon it. Understanding daylight. Knowing when to direct and when to watch.
Those things came from years of having to make photographs in whatever circumstances I was given.
Today, much of that experience feeds into the one-to-one photography workshops and mentoring I teach.
The equipment may have changed.
The looking hasn’t.
DAYLIGHT PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP →