Shoot at the Penthouse

A penthouse is a strange kind of set. The walls are mostly glass, the ceiling is high, and the sky does half of the lighting for you, and then changes its mind. In London this happens several times a day. I have always found that a good reason to be there with a camera.

For one day, six photographers and three models will work in the apartment and on its terrace. We will move in small groups between the living room, the long corridor of windows and the terrace over the river, following the light as it turns from flat morning grey to the sharper afternoon and the last warmth before dusk. Each of you will have time to think, to talk with a model and to try a picture that was not on the list.

Cleo, Anna and Melissa bring three different ways of inhabiting a space: still, restless, precise. Our photographs will come from the conversation between their presence and the geometry of the place, rather than from a set of poses.

Meet the Model is a shared photographic production. It is neither a course nor a workshop: no lessons, no project to hand in. Bring the images you would like to attempt and the curiosity to find others.

I will be with you throughout. If you would like a short explanation of a light, a technique or a piece of equipment, I will gladly give it and try it with you. This informal help is offered entirely free of charge.

The penthouse is reserved exclusively for our production. Lunch is taken together and is included in the participation fee; drinks remain at each person's own expense.

The apartment occupies the top two floors of a building on the south bank of the Thames, a few minutes from Tower Bridge. Its main room runs the full width of the building behind a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass; a steel staircase leads to a smaller upper floor and to a terrace that looks north across the river towards the City.

For photographs it offers two opposite conditions in one place: a soft, enormous window light inside, and hard sun with long shadows outside on the terrace. Pale floors and concrete walls keep the interior neutral; the reflections in the glass, the river and the buildings opposite give the images their depth.

Nothing is built for the day. Curtains, a chair, a change of floor: the rest is the sky.

Over many years of working as a photographer, and of running both a photographic studio and an equipment-hire service, I came to understand what photographers truly hope to find when they arrive on a set. Not simply more equipment, but the freedom to make an image without being stopped by the absence of the right tool.

This is what London Photographic Workshop places at your disposal: a rare, complete photographic production, brought together in one place and made available to you for the duration of the event. It is the kind of equipment most photographers encounter only in fragments, over many years, and which would cost a considerable sum to hire for a production like this.

You will be able to work with HASSELBLAD X2D II cameras and a selection of lenses; SUNBOUNCE natural-light systems, including reflectors, screens, Sun-Swatter and Sun-Cage; PROFOTO, BRONCOLOR and BOWENS studio flash; professional battery-powered PROFOTO flash, with a complete selection of modifiers; LEE Filters and professional matte boxes; MANFROTTO photographic tripods; and MATTHEWS grip equipment.

This is not equipment assembled for display. It is a working set of serious tools: the cameras, light, modifiers and support systems that allow an idea to become a photograph when the moment arrives.

Respect is part of the photographic language, not an administrative footnote. All models and participants must be eighteen or older. The models determine their individual nudity and posing boundaries. Consent is specific, ongoing and may be withdrawn at any time. No participant may touch a model without explicit permission. No phones, spectators or behind-the-scenes recording on closed sets.

Images may not be published, exhibited, sold or submitted to competitions outside the agreed model-release terms. No generative-AI training or synthetic alteration of a model’s body or identity. A private changing and resting area must always be available. Models receive proper breaks, meals, accommodation and transport support.

Alcohol is served only after photography has finished for the day. Before each session, the artistic director holds a short consent check-in covering wardrobe, nudity level, location, participating photographers and intended images.