Stephen Lock coaching

I never wanted to just take Stephen's photo.

I wanted to collaborate. Bring ideas together and see what happens.

That's not how most brand photography works. Most of the time, I turn up, we find a spot with decent light, I say "chin down a bit, relax your shoulders," and forty minutes later everyone goes home with some perfectly good headshots. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes that's exactly what's needed.

But it's not what I'm chasing.

Before the camera came out

Before I photographed anything, I asked Stephen to write down whatever was on his mind for his business. Not a brief. Not talking points. Just whatever was there.

He wrote: The sky comes first.

I still think about that line. I don't know exactly what he meant by it, and I didn't ask him to explain it. But it told me something true about how he thinks, and that's what I was actually after. Half the job isn't bringing something new into a space. It's finding what's already there and hadn't been looked at properly yet.

Half the job, I've realised, isn't bringing something new into a space. It's finding what's already there and hadn't been looked at properly yet. A whiteboard note someone wrote for themselves. A shadow falling across the carpet in a shape nobody planned. The way someone sits when they've stopped performing for the camera, which always happens slower than people expect, and is always worth the wait.

What it actually looks like

Some of it's quiet. A portrait taken in window light with nothing else going on, because nothing else needed to be there.

Some of it's playful, someone lying on the floor in sunglasses because we'd both stopped taking it so seriously, and that's usually when the best images happen.

Some of it's just the brand doing its job, the name on the wall, the person standing in front of it, present and unguarded.

None of it was staged in the way people usually mean when they say "staged." It was built, slowly, out of paying attention.

What Stephen said afterwards

I think I said this before, but in case I didn't:

"I have so much love and respect for genuinely skilled, creative people. I never wanted a photo shoot. I wanted to collaborate on something creative, to bring ideas together and see what happens. I only wanted to work with you. This, Jo, is beyond what I dreamed. Truly. I feel privileged to work with you."

I've read that back more times than I probably should admit. Not because I need the validation, though I won't pretend it doesn't feel good, but because he named the thing I've been trying to do for twelve years and never quite had the words for. It's not a photo shoot. It's a collaboration. And when someone gets that, really gets it, it changes what's possible in the room.

If this is what you're after

If any part of this sounds like what you're missing, not a shoot, a collaboration, get in touch before September. I'm holding a few spaces before things fill up for autumn.

I'd love to know what we could create together.

Jo x