Day in the life of Paul Plews
The Scottish Widow is an icon of modern day marketing, so a commission to shoot the company’s 2008 calendar was an opportunity too good for photographer Paul Plews to miss
Words Georgie Woof Pictures Paul Plews & Ian Farrell
Shooting for Scottish Widows is by far the biggest job I have had to date. Having shot previously for exhibitions and single-image adverts, producing 12 images in five days has been a challenge, not only for my creativity, but also my stamina!
I won the Scottish Widows job after being chosen from a shortlist of five other young photographers. All entrants were given a small budget for a test shot to show how we would interpret the Scottish Widow in the calendar. Mine was based on the idea of the widow in a mixture of classic and contemporary portrait poses to make up the calendar.
It was a real buzz to be chosen for the job, pretty soon however the enormity of the task ahead began to dawn on me. After three weeks of planning, location scouting, styling and four days of shooting, you join me on the last day of the shoot. With nine shots complete we have three to do today to finish the job.
7am: After getting up at 6:30 my assistant and I check through the kit and make sure everything is packed for the day ahead. We are shooting digitally so we ensure all batteries are charged and the lenses and digital back are cleaned. Next the laptop and back-up hard drives are packed, and we load the car.
8:30am: After arriving on location and unloading the car, we say hello to Hayley (aka the Scottish Widow) and the people from the client and design agency. We have been shooting all week in location houses, which I much prefer to working in a studio. Houses have some great features and a certain character to them, which gives me ideas and inspiration. Quite often a studio leaves me feeling totally blank.
9:30am: After coffee and breakfast we are ready to start preparing the first shot. Hayley will be another 30 minutes in hair and make-up, so we set up and tweak the flash lighting and make sure the whole digital set-up is working. The first shot of the day is the Widow striding confidently through a set of double doors.
