This job was a real challenge, and the brief was to capture an intimate moment in an extremely dark space, 31 floors up into the dark orange London sky. The job had 2 parts, a shot in a dimly lit hotel room with a view of Tower Bridge and a shoot in Shard, the tallest building in the UK with among the highest restaurants in London. As always with a shoot, I visit the venue beforehand to gauge the correct camera settings that I will use to shoot with, especially at night. I could use a flash, and own a speedlight but it came with my camera as part of the deal and is the crappiest speedlight I have ever used, even confounding the course leader on my Trained Eye course. It would be akin to releasing an atomic bomb in an intimate restaurant, with flat, dull, mobile phone images as the fallout. It also goes against the images I like to create, especially a proposal. I enjoy the warmth of the images that I did capture during this job.

On the Saturday I cycled through throngs of people enjoying their Saturday night out, and queued up for the security to access the Shard, surrounded by people in ballgowns and tuxedos. When I arrived at the restaurant my worst fears were confirmed – the place was totally pitch black! To top it off, the restaurant people also told me I was not allowed a professional camera! I had to slip away when the waiter was accosted by another customer and quickly scope out the restaurant to see where the lightest areas were/or where I could reflect light from. I went to bed very anxious that night. What is the worst thing that could happen? Create really grainy images on a mobile phone because my camera was thrown from the Shard and smashed by the restaurant staff. Then get unhappy clients.

If it was not for my prime 50 ml lens or ‘nifty-fifty’ I would not have been able to do the job at all. I had to stop down to ISO 12800 which is extremely bad for any photographer, yet alone myself who rarely goes above 800 for fear of grainy – noisy – images. However it was either this or not have any images to deliver! My instinct was to naturally panic when I saw how dark the client’s table was, luckily it was in corner of the restaurant so I could have a bit more space to move around with my prime lens. However the shots I got were extremely poor, with the faces of the couple extremely grainy and difficult to make out, with the bright city lights behind them. I showed the guy who was about to propose and he handed me his Android phone which I had no idea how to use. I took some really bad pictures with a flash and after 5 minutes of using a phone to take photos as a paid professional photographer I had the idea to take the couple to a brighter area of the restaurant as seen in the above photo. Their faces would still be grainy at ISO 3200 however this is more of a native ISO to the camera so would be far better than those I took at ISO 12800.

However the client thought this was too public an area to make his proposal. A restaurant worker then came up and said a professional camera is not appropriate for the restaurant! This was my worst nightmare, the sort of thing that makes me nervous before any job. Just as I thought about shooting on the landing of the stairs leading down into the restaurant from the lifts, the Maitre’D of the shift very kindly offered us a private dining area around the other side of the venue which has a gorgeous chandelier in the centre, which casts a beautiful, intimate and warm light. My confidence rushed back, and I moved the chairs around and asked the couple to pose by the window where I got some shots that I was very proud of. In fact I ended up staying an extra 10 minutes so that I could capture more moments of the proposal. The images I created were exactly what I want to offer as The Timeless Lens because these are images that the couple can look at for many years to come.