What attracted you to Mountain Equipment's brief? As a photographer, I get excited by an opportunity to create a 'round' body of work rather than just to shoot single pictures. Shooting 8-10 portraits within a 6 week time window – it's a big assignment, expensive too. It takes a certain vision from the client's side to commission an assignment of this kind and a lot of trust. I like a good challenge too and meeting interesting people is one of the perks of my job, some of them I was good friends with already. I was attracted to the the scale of the brief, its boldness and the creative freedom I was given.
What do you think is the key to a successful portrait? And how did you go about achieving that in this series? A succesful portrait is not about the camera or lens choice, it's all about
what's happening on either side of it, it's all about the connection between the photographer and the subject. How you achieve this personal connection is a matter of personality, I try not to overcomplicate things and focus my attention on the subject and be relaxed. In my book, a good portrait shows personality and goes beyond what your subject might think of themselves. For most of us it's unnatural to be photographed… and if you can find a way of making people comfortable you will succeed in taking better portraits. I guess, what helps with my style of photography is that I like to keep things authentic and there was also a strong emphasis on authenticity in the brief. People are obviously a lot more relaxed when they can just be themselves.