There were occasions before the Covid pandemic where it was necessary to consider comping. Maybe someone couldn’t be present on the day of a bigger group shot or it was just not possible for all or everything to be in the shot. However, Covid 19 has made it necessary for most shoots that include more than one person, to be comped together. This shoot with the food podcasters and journalists Alison Oakervee and Jimi Famurewa needed just that. We were all able to be in the same studio at the same time, (which does help in terms of dynamics,) but in order to keep 2 meter distance we had to shoot them separately and comp them together in post. The shoot was to promote the food podcast ‘Life on a Plate’, where Alison and Jimi are hosts, and we looked at different fun ways to convey the message ‘food’ and podcast’. I had bought in food that I thought would work.
On the morning of the shoot I emptied my dishwasher, only to find that a breakfast bowl had broken , clean down the middle. I suddenly thought this may work as a good prop, especially as we had two people involved. I brought the bowl, split a pomegranate down the middle, and made it look as if the cutting of a Pomegranate and plate was done in one action. Sometimes, keeping an open mind, keeping shoots in the back of the mind, allows for happy accidents to happen. I love this way of working - getting ideas from items and things around us that you can imagine being involved in a shoot setup. It has been a part of the way I work editorially since the beginning.
Shot for Waitrose / Life on a plate
