Vintage Soul Modern Spirit
Three men. A bar. A bottle of Chivas. What’s not to like.
I was commissioned to shoot a series of portraits as part of a campaign for Chivas Regal in collaboration with Havas London. A full production — TV crew, producers, grips, a DP, the whole apparatus of a large commercial shoot at a bar in London. The models were from BMA Models. My role within that machine was the stills, and within that, the creative decisions were entirely my own.
The brief didn’t call for black and white. That decision came later, in post, sitting with the images and feeling the colour drain the life out of them rather than add to it. Strip it away and something else emerges — atmosphere, weight, a specific kind of cool that colour simply cannot manufacture.
There is a nostalgia that only monochrome can unlock. Looking at these images I think of a 1940s Bogart film. Casablanca. The way a room feels when you enter it rather than observe it. The camaraderie between the three men — the glasses, the bar, the easy confidence — all of it lands differently without colour pulling the eye toward surface detail. Black and white forces the viewer into the scene rather than at it.
What I have noticed across commercial work recently is a shift in how black and white is being used. Not the harsh, high-contrast treatment of the past — something softer, more considered. Detail held in the shadows. Modern clarity with a vintage sensibility. The narrative over the artifice. This series sits in that space.
Working in a commercial environment with a full crew around you is a different discipline to a quiet studio session. The energy is higher, the pace faster, the variables harder to control. But the goal is the same — find the truth in the frame, even when the frame has been carefully constructed by a production team and a client brief. Sometimes the best creative decisions are the ones the images demand rather than the ones you planned.
This is the commercial side of the work I do — campaign photography for brands, produced alongside my portrait and fine art work. Based in Sandwich, Kent, I am available for commercial commissions across the UK, London, and internationally. If you are working on a campaign and want a photographer who brings a fine art sensibility to commercial work — get in touch.
Visceral, character-led portraits from honest, quiet human moments. Classical legacy portraiture for private commissions. International, UK, London, based in Sandwich, Kent.