Bill Nighy photographed in the Sutherland Suite at the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, London, February 2014 Harry Borden recalls the shoot: "Bill Nighy’s roles in films including Love Actually have made him one of Britain’s best-known actors. His distinctive glasses are an integral part of his brand. In February 2014, he was about to appear on BBC TV in David Hare’s political thriller Turks & Caicos, the second part of the acclaimed Worricker Trilogy. As part of the publicity drive, he was being interviewed for Spectator Life magazine and I was commissioned to shoot the portraits. The venue was the Sutherland Suite at the luxury Connaught Hotel in Mayfair. As always, I arrived at the location early and looked around the suite for good places to photograph him. I aimed to shoot with daylight most of the time, but also brought my lights and a tobacco-coloured backdrop. I’m always happy to do an environmental portrait and the hotel room suited that approach, but I had the backdrop just in case the hotel room was too cluttered. I also have black and white backdrops but felt they would be too sterile; the tobacco-coloured one was different and wouldn’t jar with what he was wearing.  Nighy arrived, looking magnificent in a classy suit. He was very charming and erudite, and was very clear about how he wanted to appear. As the shoot progressed, I remember learning a lot about tailoring from him because he was talking in detail about design features he did and didn’t like in suits. I wanted to take a classic portrait, something that would stand out. I put up the tobacco-coloured backdrop and did a few pictures. Then I looked more closely at his glasses—and noticed that by chance we were wearing exactly the same glasses. They were a vintage pair with black frames, made by Cutler and Gross, and I suddenly realised I was missing a potentially interesting opportunity to mess with his brand.  At that point I suggested he wear both my glasses and his at the same time. The idea was influenced by the photography of Asger Carlsen, who takes photographs that look like everyday pictures, but which are digitally altered to look strange or surreal. I was trying to do something similar but in-camera. I also decided to shoot him in profile, without showing his eyes. I was photographing him more as an object than a person – a familiar object, but one that has something unusual about it. I took the shot with my 50mm lens, with settings of 1/100sec at f/5, ISO 100. I lit him using a softbox.  I think the other people on the shoot thought I was going a bit off-piste when I took this picture. It was one of those occasions when I had got all I needed for the commission and I wanted something for myself. Realising we had the same glasses was a serendipitous moment – if I’d planned it beforehand and asked a stylist to find the same glasses, they would have found it impossible. I was really pleased with getting this completely unexpected picture. It wasn’t used by Spectator Life but was displayed in the 2014 Royal Photographic Society International Print Exhibition. This one has a twist and that’s why I have it in my portfolio." Available in a choice of physical size options. Please ask for framing options. Please allow 2-3 weeks between order and delivery for an unframed photograph.  Framing adds 2-3 weeks.

Dermot Morgan photographed in Soho, London in February 1998 Harry Borden recalls the shoot:"In February 1998, I was commissioned to photograph Dermot Morgan by The Sunday Times magazine. During the previous three years, the actor’s brilliant comic performances as the star of TV comedy series Father Ted had made him a household name. I was a big fan of the series and was looking forward to the shoot, but despite my determination to come away with strong pictures and my enthusiasm for the subject, this shoot didn’t quite go to plan.  I was usually allowed to decide on how I was going to photograph my subjects, but The Sunday Times had a specific idea for this shoot. They wanted colour shots of Dermot outside some sleazy establishments in London’s Soho. He was meant to strike some comic poses looking as if he had been caught out visiting the area’s strip joints and massage parlours, adopting a persona somewhere between his own and Father Ted Crilly’s. I realised from the outset that this idea could be problematic: the people who operate these businesses were not likely to appreciate me using them as a backdrop. I was wary of the situation and tried to prepare, but at the time my wife had recently given birth and I was caught up in the maelstrom of caring for a baby and sleepless nights. It wasn’t until I had driven from my home in Hackney to Soho that I realised I’d left all my camera gear in my hallway at home.  I hired a portable flash unit that I was going to use for fill-in flash. I tried to hire a camera from the same company, but they didn’t have any at the Soho branch. Trying not to panic, I went straight to a local Jessops and bought a second-hand Fujifilm 6x9 rangefinder. However, when my assistant and I connected the camera to the flash set-up in a Soho car park, we heard a ‘pop’, the flash started smoking and an acrid burning smell floated across. After that, it wouldn’t work at all. By then, the cold, drizzly afternoon was beginning to get dark. We were also running late. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to do the entire shoot in black & white.  We met Dermot at his management company office in Soho. I covered up my technical problems when I met him, but was inevitably feeling stressed. Dermot himself was a nice man, very kind and compliant, and willing to go along with the idea of doing the shoot around Soho. The shoot lasted a frantic 20 minutes. There’s only so much you can do when you’re being shooed away from one sleazy strip club or massage parlour after another. By the time I shook hands with Dermot and said goodbye, it was beginning to rain but I was hopeful I’d managed to dig out a result, largely due to Dermot’s expressive features. Just 10 days afterwards, I heard the shocking news that Dermot had died from a heart attack, aged 45, a day after he finished filming on the third series of Father Ted. It was so sad. My shoot was the last he ever did.  When the photos were published in The Sunday Times, instead of illustrating a light-hearted feature, they were part of Dermot’s eulogy. Shooting in black & white had been forced upon me by my circumstances, but it gave the images a poignancy and authenticity they wouldn’t have had in colour." Available in a choice of physical size options. Please ask for framing options. Please allow 2-3 weeks between order and delivery for an unframed photograph.  Framing adds 2-3 weeks.

Kevin Garnett photographed at Red Earth Studios, London, 2001 Harry Borden recalls the shoot: "Shooting portraits of sports stars is often difficult. Unlike photographing members of a pop band, for instance, where they recognise a shoot is part of the publicity process, sports stars aren’t usually relying on photographers to promote them. For them, a shoot isn’t exciting or a novelty, it’s a pain in the neck. Therefore, in my experience, you’re often relying on their innate personality to get the pictures you want. Photographing basketball player Kevin Garnett, back in 2001, was a notable exception. That was partly because he’s a good-natured person, and partly because he was doing the shoot for an article linked to the launch of his own clothing brand. Kevin Garnett is a huge name in American sport. He played for NBA teams for 21 seasons, between 1995 and 2016, and is considered one of the sport’s true superstars.  I was commissioned to photograph him for American GQ magazine, so there was a good budget and I had the benefit of working with a stylist. I asked the stylist to provide some props that reflected the theme of making clothes, such as some tailor’s dummies and a pair of tailor’s scissors. The idea itself wasn’t particularly original, but it led to what I think is a very interesting portrait. The shoot took place in Red Earth Studios in London, which had a tall ceiling and a skylight which gave wonderful north light. I always got really nice results there, so I was pleased it was available when I got the commission. If you’ve got good available light and a subject like Kevin Garnett, you’re already halfway there. Photographing Garnett was an extraordinary experience, partly because of his physical presence. He’s very much the alpha male, and at the time I photographed him he was just 25 and at his physical peak. He’s just under 7ft tall and very athletic, but perfectly proportioned – just much bigger than most people. His hands were huge and his arms were similar in girth to my thighs. I’m just under 6ft tall, but that extra foot makes a big difference and I remember having to stand on a chair to shoot at his eye level. However, he was very easy-going and playful, like a big puppy – at one point he got me in a headlock while fooling around – and was happy to do whatever shots I requested.  For me, the best shot came completely spontaneously, and mainly arose from Garnett’s playfulness. Most of the dummies we had were quite conventional, but one of them, which I think was possibly from the 1930s, had a weird look. At one point, Garnett picked that dummy up and turned it to face him. I took several shots, some with him looking towards the camera, others with his mouth open. But one shot, showing him staring intently at the dummy’s face, had something special about it. My reading of that picture is that there’s an element of homoeroticism about it: one man is staring out another man in a very overt way. But it also has an interesting racial dynamic: the white dummy has an angry and hostile expression, yet it’s completely powerless. I wasn’t consciously aware of these elements when I took the shot and they’re the kinds of things you can only notice after taking a picture. This is the sort of moment that gets you really excited as a photographer. I really love that picture, it’s definitely in my top ten favourite images from my commissioned portraits. However, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t used in the American GQ article because it didn’t fit the idea of it being a fashion-led shoot. More contrived images can go down well with a magazine in the short term, but they don't stand the test of time, because on some level they lack authenticity. Sometimes, a great picture just happens in front of you and you just have to be alive to it." Available in a choice of physical size options. Please ask for framing options. Please allow 2-3 weeks between order and delivery for an unframed photograph.  Framing adds 2-3 weeks.

Martin Scorsese photographed at The Dorchester Hotel, London,March 1998 Harry Borden recalls the shoot with the acclaimed director: "In March 1998, Martin Scorsese was in London to appear at an event held by The Guardian. Scorsese was 55 at the time of the shoot and was firmly established as one of the major directors of his era for films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Casino and The King of Comedy. He’s a genius and undoubtedly one of my cinematic heroes.  The Guardian’s sister paper, The Observer, had a one-hour slot with him, during which he was to be interviewed by the journalist William Leith. Afterwards I would have about ten minutes to shoot a portrait. The shoot was going to take place in a suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Publicists repeatedly booked The Dorchester for interviews, so I could easily have ended up with lots of people against the same kind of background. Therefore I always took along either a roll of material or my black, white or grey backdrops. They provided a simple and plain alternative to a rather chintzy hotel environment.  Prior to this shoot, I went to Brick Lane in East London, where,at that time, there were a lot of fabric shops. I used to buy three metres of fabric and use it as a backdrop, which was much cheaper than buying a roll of Colorama paper. On this particular day, I found some sparkly blue material which had colours and textures that I thought might work well with a ringflash. While the interview was going on, I set up my equipment at the other end of the suite. I had loaded my Hasselblad CM (fitted with a 120mm lens) with a roll of Tri-X black & white film, and as Scorsese was saying goodbye to William Leith I took some informal shots of the director. I showed him a small portfolio of my work so he could see the kind of images I produced. He was quite macho; very smart, straight-talking and quick-witted; but friendly and jovial.  In that situation, it was an advantage that I had grown up with a Jewish-American father; he reminded me of my dad and so I didn’t feel intimidated. I just asked him what I wanted him to do. Scorsese was apologetic that we had so little time, and I think he would have given me a lot more time if he had been able to spare some. When he saw the roll of dark blue, sparkly material, he thought it was funny and knowingly said, ‘I see you’re going for the Vegas look.’ His movie Casino, released only a few years earlier, had been based in Vegas so it seemed appropriate. Sometimes, when I have very little time for a shoot I’m panicked into being more upfront about what I want from a sitter. I was desperately trying to find an impactful picture, and I thought the most striking thing about his appearance was his amazing set of eyebrows. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to ask him to wink as it made his eyebrows even more prominent. It’s not something I do often, but I have occasionally asked people to wink because it does make a good picture. I shot some with his left eye winking and some with his right, but the picture shown here worked best. I only had time to shoot three rolls of film before Scorsese had to go: one roll of black & white at the end of the interview, then two rolls of colour; one of him at three-quarter length then a roll of head shots. The ‘wink’ picture has subsequently been syndicated all over the world, while the others were hardly published at all. It was recently used on a t-shirt for an event in Amsterdam. I think it’s one of the best ‘wink’ pictures out there, because he’s so cool." Available in a choice of physical size options. Please ask for framing options. Please allow 2-3 weeks between order and delivery for an unframed photograph.  Framing adds 2-3 weeks.