The shoot ran late

My studio is thirty-two square metres with a ceiling too low for what I actually want to do in it. I work three points: a key in a ninety by sixty softbox, camera left, at forty-five degrees; a weak fill on the other side, barely enough to keep the shadow from going solid; and a background light I use sparingly, because most of the time it gets in the way.

I charge by session, not by the hour. That was a commercial decision I made in 2021 and it has never caused me trouble.

His session is the last one on a Thursday. Six o'clock. Press portraits for a five-piece band who decided, three days before a release, that they needed individual headshots.

The other four came in the morning. He comes alone because he works until five.

He arrives at seven minutes past, in a black shirt, hair wet from a rushed shower. Apologises for being late twice. I tell him seven minutes isn't late, and that's true.

The first part is always the same and it is always dull.

I put the person on the tape mark on the floor, take three test frames, read the histogram, correct. In this case I dropped the key ten centimetres, because he's tall and the nose shadow was landing crooked on his lip.

Then I talk. Talking is half the job and nobody believes that.

I ask what he plays. Bass. I ask how long. Eleven years. I ask if he likes being photographed, which is a question I always put, because the answer is always no and admitting it unlocks the jaw.

"I hate it."

"Everybody hates it."

"Do you?"

"Me most of all."

I shoot while he laughs. It's the oldest trick there is and it still works.

Six forty: I've got the portrait. Technically I have it. Sharp on the near eye, clean light, an expression that doesn't look requested. If I sent that file now, the band would use it and nobody would complain.

I don't send it.

"Turn your chin two degrees to my right."

He turns. I shoot.

Two degrees of chin change nothing in a half-length portrait at that focal length. I have known this since my second year of college.

"Drop your left shoulder."

He drops it. I shoot.

The shoulder was fine.

Seven oh five. The session costs what it costs and has already gone past what I normally take. I swap the 85 for the 50, and the 50 makes you come closer, and I swapped the lens in order to come closer.

I keep filing these things away in my head with a clarity that helps me not at all.

At seven twenty his collar is sitting wrong.

That part is real. The shirt is black, button-down, and the left point of the collar has ridden up under the strap of the bag he carried in. On a press shot that shows.

There's a mirror on my wall. That is what it is for: I point, the person fixes it, I don't put my hands on anybody. It's the house rule and it is a good rule, written in 2019, after an episode I won't be going into here.

I don't point at the mirror.

I put the camera down on the table. Cross the three metres. Fix the collar with both hands, thumbs inside the fabric, and take longer over it than a collar requires.

He doesn't move. He looks at a spot on the wall behind me, and his jaw, which had come loose around half six, locks up again.

"There," I say.

"Thanks."

I go back behind the camera. It takes me three seconds to remember what ISO I was on.

Seven forty-one. I switch off the background light, which was getting in nobody's way.

The studio drops to two points and the ambient falls off a long way. It changes the room in a manner any photographer understands and none of us can ever explain to a client.

"We've got it, haven't we," he says.

"We've had it since twenty to seven."

He's quiet for a few seconds.

"And we carried on."

"We carried on."

I lower the camera. It's the first time in the whole session that I've lowered the camera with him still on the tape mark.

What I remember is technical, because I think technical, and that is both my luck and my problem.

I remember the background is two metres seventy of grey paper and that it creaks when weight goes against it. I remember the table where I put the camera down is forty-five centimetres wide and that I pushed the camera two hand-spans further in before anything else happened, because kit falling is the only thought I am capable of having under any circumstances whatsoever.

I remember the top button of the black shirt, which I opened, and the bottom one, which he did.

I remember the heat off the ninety by sixty, which gets hot after an hour of being on and which nobody notices until they are near it.

I remember thinking, with my forehead against his, that a key at forty-five degrees is the most reliable position there is precisely because it isn't the prettiest.

After that I stopped filing.

At ten past nine I break down the set.

Breaking down takes twenty minutes and it's the only part of the job I do on autopilot. Softbox, stand, shoe. The paper rolls back up, and there's a fresh crease at knee height that is going to cost me half a metre next session.

He stays. I don't ask if he wants to stay and he doesn't ask if he can.

While I coil cable he reads the wall: I've got about fifteen prints up there, all of people I photographed before I had a studio.

"Is that your mum?"

"That's my mum in 1994."

"You've got her mouth."

I carry on coiling. Coiling cable is done from the elbow, in a figure of eight, and I put about four turns in wrong.

I sent the files the following Tuesday. Forty-one retouched portraits, inside the deadline, with the invoice.

The band went with frame 0117, which is from six thirty-nine, before any of it. It's the best picture of the set. It still is, and I still agree with them.

There's one file I didn't send.

It's from seven fifty-two, on the 50, slightly off on the near eye because I was too close for that aperture. Technically it's a bad photograph. If a client got that, I'd lose the client.

He's looking into the lens in a way the other forty don't.

Not because I asked.

It lives in a folder called fridays, and I made that folder on a Thursday, which is the kind of detail I notice late and then can't unsee.