All language subtitles for 1. Photo Breakdown 01

The thing about these shoots is that,

it's lovely not having a big plan.

I first met Matt on the set of the talented Mr. Ripley,

where I actually took one of my favorite onset photos ever.

It's a picture I love and hold very close to my heart.

And then I also worked on set

but I also did the poster campaign for the Bourne ultimatum.

I shot him for one of the ocean's movies.

So I knew him but I hadn't actually seen him for ages.

As we were taking the boat out we noticed a catamaran

with a big pizza sign.

We had no plan for this whatsoever.

We would have pizza and they were like,

it's gonna to be an hour.

So we went off, we did a bunch of other pictures.

As we were sort of on our way back to Cannes

we picked up the pizzas and we've got these lovely shots

of Matt with the pizza boxes

and then we all sort of shared the pizza

on the boat ride home.

So allow spontaneity.

Allow spontaneous things to happen.

Don't have too much of a plan

and you'll get some really great fun pictures.

I shot this picture of Alison Janney

at the BAFTA Awards.

You can see we got John Williams,

Daniel Kaluuya, I can see Gary Oldman there as well.

And I mean numerous other people.

But the reason I love this picture is 'cause you can see

that she's holding my hand and I'm congratulating her

and I'm taking the photo as I'm congratulating her.

So I'm getting this lovely kind expression

into the lens that she's giving me

but it makes the audience looking at the picture,

feel that same warmth from her.

It's what I call being a participant.

So an observer stands back and she sings,

and this is the image of a participant.

I've shot it on the Leica Q2, which has a fixed 28 mil lens.

She's probably just under a meter away from me.

It's not what I asked in this picture.

I'd known Alison for a while, shot several times so that

when this moment came I sort of knew the kind of picture

that I wanted to get.

So I made sure that my sort of auto-focus was set up

in the right position that it would be her,

that was in focus and not my hand or not someone off

to the right or the left.

So I thought it through,

but then allowed a really lovely, genuine moments

to happen.

So I just shot a picture of Bella Hadid in here.

This is where I shot it and I could have come this way,

but I didn't wanna see that TV as me.

So I shot this way.

My light though, is this one up here.

It's that quite an ugly little downlighter.

But when you come up, and you look into it,

it turns into something very different

and it looks like you've built sets

and put up really sort of big elaborate lighting rings.

And actually it's just a simple downlighter.

So this photo of Stanley Tucci and Mark Ruffalo

they're sort of pretending to do up each other's jackets

and ties and it's basically about just setting up narratives

that make the pictures fun.

I was at the Venice Film Festival

and we were at a hotel called The Gritti Palace

and I was having a drink

and I just saw them about to get on a boat.

And I just went straight up to them

and I'd met Stanley Tucci you before

and I'd shot Mark Ruffalo and just said, can I do a picture?

And they said, yeah, we shot this picture.

And then they ended up inviting me to travel on the boat

with them to the premiere and I jumped in

and then we took a whole lot lovely pictures,

but the whole spirit of all of it was very, very light.

In this shot, we've got Stanley Tucci, Mark Ruffalo

but really what they represent in this picture is friends.

You can see their friends and they're having fun together

and we've all got great mates, right?

We've all got great friends.

What you're feeling the picture though,

is that there's a third character in this photo

and that's me behind the camera

and they're playing up to me.

I'm encouraging them to play to me.

And it's something you're seeing more

and more of my photos is just how interactive I am

or sometimes I'm so much behind the camera

that you feel the lens is interacting with them.

And if I've done it really well, you the viewer feels like

you're the person interacting with them.

I will say this over and over again

that photography is all about light.

Where is the light?

I'm in a situation like that.

They're in the shutters and it's a bright sunny day.

The first thing I think about is,

well if I want them exposed,

I'm gonna have to adjust the camera

to make them expose correctly,

which is gonna create that blown out background.

And what that gives is this lovely wrap light,

this sort of back wrap light that comes around them

and makes them stand out against the background

and just makes for a stronger show.

So I'm in the water with Matt.

And I suppose the only thing

that I really have as recommendation in these situations is

to backlight people.

And the reason is that as the sun comes

through the water, front like you get these dapples

on people's faces that you can get lucky and it looks okay.

But for the most part, it doesn't.

So I always think you should backlight people

when they're underwater.

Is I'll go down four or five seconds before you push

I need a bit of time to compose myself.

Okay.

But not so much time that I drown.

One, two, three.

So I just made sure the sun was behind Matt

and he dives in across me and I take some pictures.

(people chattering)

What I love about this picture of John Boyega

is because he's wearing a white shirt and a bow tie,

and there's nothing else I suppose, modern particularly

within the picture.

It feels immediately timeless.

It throws you back to pictures of Sidney Poitier

from a 1950s Life Magazine or something like that.

He's leaning on the French doors of the Hotel Terrace,

it's cloudy but a bright day sets a very soft light comes in

on them and if you look into the room behind,

even though the room was quite well lit,

it looks very dark back there,

which makes him really stand out from the background.

People dress super smart to be seen formal.

And then when you undo that

I mean there's a whole James Bond thing.

There is the sort of bow tie on that relaxing

in the show after an event or after something's happened.

And he just has this timeless glamor every time.

This picture has a real narrative and that narrative is all

in his eyes.

There's a sort of sense of longing or foreboding.

There's drama in his expression.

I think there's a drama in his stillness.

It feels like the moment before

or after a significant life event.

You can imagine if someone was about to go out

and play that big game, give that big speech, become a dad.

Any of these things you get

this feeling of someone really lost in their moment.

And in that me or you as a photographer, the observer,

not the participant.

I spent a day with Dakota Johnson in Los Angeles,

in west Hollywood

and basically arranged the shoot the day before.

And she came and picked me up and drove me off.

And we went off, we went to herself,

place she likes to buy coffee.

We went to her house, took a dog for a walk.

We basically just hung out.

I set the exposure for the shutters,

which means that I brightened the image

so that even though she's dark in the car,

it's hard it's exposed.

And you get this wrap light coming around from the windows

that's giving the shape to the photograph,

but the actual streets outside is overexposed.

There's a lot of frames going on.

You've got the frame of the windscreen out so that

you can see some sort of Spanish style Hacienda

and some Palm trees.

And then you've got Dakota's face framed

by the driver's side window.

And she kind of breaks the edges of the frame,

but she is still framed within it.

And then you've got the frame of the glasses

and because of the silver of the frame of the glasses,

even though that side for faces in shutter,

it gives all the three dimensionality

you need to the picture by having it there.

None of which was my plan.

I just took a picture.

I love this picture because

you really feel clearly just hanging out with this person.

There's no sense of Hollywood finesse.

There's no styling, there's no hair or makeup.

It's just a girl hanging out in her car about

to turn on sunset Boulevard and I'm the passenger.

I just feel it's a picture that anyone could take

with any of our mates we were out and about.

When he jumps in the water,

what you've got is you've actually got

to time your picture right.

So I'll jump kind of that way

and just spin in the air and turn.

People often ask me about how to capture a moment

and I regard it a bit like how you hit a tennis ball

with a tennis racket.

And it's not about false motor drives.

It's about having the calmness of mind

that when they leap in the air,

see when the pitch happens and take it then.

And it's very similar

to playing any kind of hand-eye coordination sport.