95 Babies Charity Photo Shoot
It's amazing what you can find in old drawers, or in my case, on a hard drive tucked away in an old draw. I came across a set of pictures that I'd totally put to the farthest reaches of my mind.
I vaguely remember getting a call from the media marketing officer of one of the UK's largest charities offering me a photoshoot that was to be "totally unique and ground breaking".
I was to photograph 95 babies all coming together in one room. What could possibly go wrong 😩!
The shoot was to take place at one of London's most prominent commercial studios; the building was filled with a cast of thousands. To say the noise inside the two large booked studios was deafening would have been an understatement, it was enough to make the hardiest of babies walk-out in disgust!
There also seemed like a cast of hundreds on hand to assist me, all aiming for me to get the perfect shots needed for this, their premiere marketing campaign for that particular year, so the pressure was totally on!
I vaguely remember the campaign was to be based around breastfeeding issues in the 3rd world.
But first, I had to get all the babies sitting on the ground facing the camera, with a rocking chair in the centre, and then a large wooden hourglass somewhere amongst the babies in various pictures.
The problem with photographing 95 babies all at once was that they just wouldn't listen to me… these little people just wouldn't take a blind bit of notice of me, off my instructions or even my frantic attempts to engage with them. My efforts actually made it worse. Indeed, one teary-eyed mother even called me a 'monster' for letting their baby cry. Arrggh!
The mothers reactions or over-reactions made it more difficult; as soon as one of the babies fell over or started to cry, they all rushed into shot and ruined the picture. Even though the rest of the crew and I kept on appealing to the mothers, "please do not rush into the picture; we can retouch it". But it was to no avail.
I was positioned on a cherry picker or scaffolding tower, looking down on the scene. At the top of my voice, I shouted to the crew below, "arrange that baby into the right position….please!". Only to hear someone answer “Which bloody one!” You couldn’t make this up.
We didn't have long because of the babies' needs, but in the end, I think we just about produced the pictures needed. I also thought there was a really strong feeling that I might loose my voice too,
Unfortunately, and to my knowledge, the final images were never used; apparently, they wanted more babies in the photos, plus a host of other things were also required to make it work. So, after all this effort and expense, it all came to nothing, but not through a want of trying.
What a day!
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