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.

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.