As events photographers in Glasgow it’s been a bit of a quiet year. Just before lockdown we were booked to photograph a large 3 day medical conference in Glasgow which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. Then a last-minute events commission came up.
When I was originally booked to cover an event in Glasgow, the only clue I had that it was someone well known was that I was asked to provide my passport details so these could be shown to the police. I’d photographed Scottish politicians like Nicola Sturgeon and various Scottish ministers before but they rarely required that level of security. Boris Johnstone had been in the news a lot so given that it was a business event I suspected it might be him…
When capturing an event like this it is crucial to get shots of the Queen meeting key people.
Finally on the day before I was told it was to be the Queen. In terms of high profile celebrities they don’t come much bigger than that. This wasn’t the first time I’d photographed the Queen. The first time was about 20 years ago when I was the official photographer for her visit to the New Lanark Heritage Village, so it was nice to get the chance to cover an event like this a second time.
I had pre-rehearsed the Queen’s route through the building so I knew where I’d be able to take all the various shots of her meeting people.
I once remember attending an event by the well known celebrity photographer Harry Benson, who famously photographed the Beatles on their first tour of the US. He started his career working on the Hamilton Advertiser, in the days when photographers were sent out with a camera and one roll of film to cover an event. His mantra from those days was something along the lines of ‘turn up and shoot at f8’ as that was the correct exposure for those earlier cameras with a big flash bulb. The point he was making is that first you need to be in the right place and secondly you need to get the shot.
The Queen has a very generous smile which I was keen to capture.
In terms of PR and event photography I’ve pretty much adopted that as my own mantra, especially with an important one off event like a visit by the Queen. Crucially you need to be there with plenty of time to spare, you need to rehearse the route she will take and plan what shots you are going to take in advance. You also need to keep things simple technically, so there’s no messing about. A sharp, well exposed shot of the Queen with the people she’s meeting is far more important than something overly complicated that goes wrong.
One crucial shot I wanted to get was the Queen walking past the company’s logo.
When the Queen did finally arrive, I quickly went into my event photographers zone. When you are looking through the viewfinder you don’t really have time to stop and think about who’s on the other end of the lens. You are too busy thinking about getting the right shots for the client. It’s only when you get back to the studio and look at the shots that it really starts to sink in that you were a couple of metres away from one of the most famous people on the planet!