Yesterday morning, I got a message from the Australian Financial Review’s China correspondent to see if I was available to go and shoot a portrait more or less immediately for the next day’s newspaper. I was also told the shot would be a potential Page One.
There seems to be a pattern emerging with these assignments for the AFR. Just like the last one I had to stop what I was doing and scramble to get across town and back, edit, caption and file before deadline in Sydney. The assignment was to photograph Peter Logan, the Chief Executive Officer of MUTE Garage, an Australian e-scooter start-up headquartered in Shanghai with operations in the China, Indonesia, Australia in the U.K. This was the second time I’d been asked to photograph Peter for the AFR this year. As it happens, I know him socially through watching Australian Rules Football at a local Australian sports bar called the Camel. I’ve even done a bit of commercial photography for MUTE.
Just before I left my apartment, I saw an email from the photo editor with the brief. The photo editor was after a bit of a Roman Holiday vibe, but in Shanghai and with Peter Logan instead of Gregory Peck or Audrey Hepburn. All the reference shots attached to the email were shot with a medium telephoto lens, so I grabbed my 70-200 2.8 VR along with the rest of my kit.
The editor also wanted a shot inside the office/showroom with a few staff members, but as time was of the essence and not everyone from the office was around when I first arrived, we skipped that and headed outdoors.
The thing about shooting these kinds of assignments for the next edition of a newspaper in Australia generally means that I’m unable to photograph at an ideal time in terms of light. In this instance, I had to photograph just after midday on an unusually bright and clear day. It would have been ideal if I could have done the shoot from 4pm, but that’s not how it goes.
Although few people actually wear helmets when they ride on scooters here in China (it’s not required by law), I asked Peter to wear one to match the example photos I’d been sent. As it was a peaked helmet this meant that with the sun overhead, Peter’s face was obscured by shadow. I expected the light to be an issue, so Peter helped me recruit a freelance web designer named Kim who was working for MUTE that day. Kim tagged along and held an off camera Nikon flash to fill in some of the harsh midday shadows. He seemed to enjoy the novelty of being a lighting assistant too.
We did a circuit around a couple of blocks in a leafy part Jing’an District, the city’s former International Settlement, over an hour or so. Once we were back at the MUTE showroom, I had to bolt to send my photos to Sydney. They were happy with them. One ran on page one, while the other ran inside on Page 6. It also seems like at least one other shot ran in the online edition, so I think that’s a good result.
Here are the tear sheets and a couple of other shots.
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