The shoot took place in Jasmine Studios, which was a studio complex in Shepherd\u2019s Bush, West London. It was a great location which had really good daylight, which I generally prefer to use, and was equipped with lots of other light sources. There was nothing chintzy or retro about the studio, which is much more the fashion these days; it was just a cold, empty and very functional space.<\/p>\n
I arrived at the studio at 9am with my assistant, and was met by a stylist and racks of clothes to use in the shoot. While I was waiting for Pike to arrive, and afterwards when she was in hair and make-up, I anxiously paced around the outer areas of the studio. Whenever I do a studio shoot, I always walk around the immediate area to see if there are interesting places I can use.<\/p>\n
While I was wandering upstairs, I found I could get access to a mezzanine floor that looked directly down on the studio. I wondered if I could use that viewpoint in the shoot.<\/p>\n
As I had the whole morning to work with Pike, I did a variety of different shots, from tight close-ups of her face to wider shots where she was just one of many elements in the picture. I mainly used daylight, but in some I used a big Octa softbox for flattering light and a Quantum flash, which gives a much harder light.<\/p>\n
Pike is genuinely beautiful, with almond-shaped eyes. I thought she looked like a kind of British, prim Brigitte Bardot. Her experience as an actor means she\u2019s comfortable taking direction and adopting a range of personas, poses and facial expressions. She\u2019s very intelligent, but at the same time there\u2019s a kind of brittle coldness about her.<\/p>\n\t\t
![\"Harry](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Harry-Borden-Rosamund-Pike-with-lighting-equipment.jpg\")
\t\t\tAn alternate shot featuring the studio’s ample lighting equipment<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n
As the shoot progressed, I was pleased with the pictures I\u2019d got, but still wanted to try shooting from the mezzanine floor. I took some shots of her from that viewpoint, sitting in a chair surrounded by lights. Then I decided to try a simpler image with her lying on the floor with the tangled black cables of the studio lights at the top of the frame.<\/p>\n
I would be embarrassed about asking somebody to lie on the floor unless I was sure it would make a really good picture. Making someone feel uncomfortable would be excruciating for me. It was
\njust a question of having the strength of my convictions and asking her to do it. As it turned out, she happily agreed.<\/p>\n
She lay in different positions, but the one I liked most showed her looking to one side, with her arms above her head and both her hands and feet crossed. The picture was lit only by daylight. I used my Canon EOS 1DS Mark II and a 50mm lens, and the settings were 1\/80sec at f\/6.3, ISO 250. The camera was tripod- mounted due to the slow shutter speed, but I had to hold it on two legs and steady it against the mezzanine\u2019s waist-height wall, so I could look straight down on her. This perspective makes it almost look as if she is floating.<\/p>\n
The pose in this picture is relaxed and psychologically submissive, but the fact that she\u2019s crossed her hands and feet suggests she\u2019s keeping something back. That fitted in with the mood of the shoot, because although she was very photogenic and interesting to photograph, it wasn\u2019t an engaging or warm process. I didn\u2019t feel I had a sense of who she was after spending time with her.<\/p>\n
This picture was used over a double-page spread in the Sunday Telegraph<\/em> magazine and has been published in the same way in other magazines. It\u2019s a good image to use over a spread as it\u2019s eye-catching, and, from an editorial point of view, allows space for text to be overlaid.<\/p>\n Rosamund Pike is beautiful and famous, so any professional who photographs her really has to get something good. However, although there are lots of portraits of her around, this one is special to me. It was later included in the RPS International Print Exhibition for that year. Even if it had been a more lavish shoot, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d have got a better picture.<\/p>\n Harry Borden is one of the UK\u2019s finest portrait photographers and his work has been widely published. He has won prizes at the World Press Photo awards (1997 and 1999) and in 2014 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society. The National Portrait Gallery collection holds more than 100 of his images.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Working instinctively during a portrait shoot is often better than trying to create images to fit pre-set ideas, says Harry Borden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":323,"featured_media":99900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[],"product-category":[],"class_list":["post-99896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photo_insight"],"yoast_head":"\n