Ledger Magazine · 2024
The Makers issue: seven portraits in four days for Ledger
Seven craftspeople across northern Italy, each photographed in their own workshop in under thirty minutes, for a themed issue and its cover.
- Client
- Ledger Magazine
- Year
- 2024
- Role
- Portrait photographer
- Duration
- 4 days, 3 regions
- Services
- Editorial portraits
- Location lighting
- Cover shoot
The problem
Ledger planned a spring issue about people who still make things by hand: a luthier in Cremona, a paper maker in Fabriano, a glass blower near Venice and four others. The editor wanted each portrait taken in the subject's own workshop, with the tools and mess left as they were, and one of the seven had to work as a cover with room for the masthead.
Most subjects could spare twenty or thirty minutes in a working day, workshops were dark and cramped, and I was travelling alone by train with the kit. The budget allowed four days and no assistant. Two subjects did not want to be photographed looking at the camera, which the editor accepted as long as the series still felt consistent.
Process
- 01
Calls before cameras
I called every subject a week ahead, with an interpreter for three of them, to ask when the light in the workshop was best and what they would be making that day. Their answers set the route. Each call ended with a request for one phone photo of the room, which told me where I could stand and where a light could go.
- 02
One light that fits in a backpack
Every portrait used the same setup: a battery flash in a 90cm octabox to the side of the window, set roughly one stop under daylight, so the existing light still leads. I shot on a medium format body with a 110mm-equivalent lens at f/4, and made a backup frame on a 35mm compact for each person in case I ran out of time.
- 03
Sequencing the series
Back home I edited each sitting down to three selects and laid all twenty-one out as a grid, so the art director could see colour and posture side by side. A shared grade kept skin tones honest under the mixed tungsten and window light. The cover option was framed with a third of the frame left calm for the logo.
Selected images
Seven workshops, four days, no assistant, and the series reads like one sitting. Ada Brennan also got a shy paper maker to give us a cover.
Outcome
All seven portraits ran across twelve pages, and the paper maker from Fabriano became the cover. The issue was the magazine's best-selling print run of the year, and the luthier's portrait was picked for a portrait annual. Two of the makers now use their images on their own websites under a small licence.
- 7
- portraits in four days
- 12 pp
- plus the spring cover
- 28 min
- average sitting length
Keep reading
All work