Sally Beamish promotional portraits

Composer Sally Beamish

I’ve been lucky enough to photograph the acclaimed Glasgow based composer Sally Beamish a few times over the last few years. The first time we worked together the picture was used on the cover of Classical Music Magazine.

She asked me to come to her home recently to take some new photos for her latest set of promotional portraits. The idea was to to capture a variety of moods for the portfolio in order to produce a range of shots which would cater for the different styles and tastes of various art directors and picture editors. I wanted to use natural light in some of the portraits and artificial light in others but we faced the common problem I often come up against when I work with people so busy and in demand – there’s never enough time to do everything you want!

This is a very familiar way of working for me as my background in press and media stills photography has enabled me to work quickly and effectively to achieve the most variety for a client in a limited time frame.

We had a very busy morning moving between various rooms in Sally’s home and in the capable and experienced hands of Kate Elliot-Muir who did a great job on hair and make-up as always, I think we got a lovely set! Sally is very natural and unselfconscious in front of the camera and I tried to keep the pictures as natural and un-stylised as possible to reflect this part of her character.