Had enormous fun shooting at a natural light editorial workshop organised by the very talented Giacomo Cannata.

We had our model (Maria), a stylist, MUA and four changes of outfit. Apart from Giacomo, the only other photographer was Paolo, so we had as much time as we needed to get some practice. All the images were taken in the communal gardens of a housing block in East Putney, proving that if you’re resourceful enough, you don’t need a really fancy location to get some half decent shots.

Making the best use of the available location is an important consideration and the team’s decision to shoot on the fire escape was an inspired choice. Not quite Manhattan, but plenty of angles, parallels and shapes formed by the ironwork and door frames to strongly contrast with our model, Maria. The setting is really made to ‘work’ in this shot, which is why I’m really pleased with it, as all too often my location work largely eliminates the background using a narrow depth of field.

Also, I’m usually quite decisive about how to frame an image and where to position the subject (just instinctive from looking at thousands of pics, I guess), but I agonised over this one for ages. Landscape didn’t work so well (too much brickwork for me), but there was enough fire escape to position Maria in portrait mode almost anywhere in the frame.