Sunday Herald Shoot One

The editor of the lifestyle section of The Sunday Herald, Eva Arrighi, is on maternity leave so her assistant, Carrie McAdam was on trial as to whether she could take over temporarily. These were the four days I was working with her in which she nervously and with a great deal of uncertainty pulled off a very successful shoot.

On the Friday we collected clothes from Glasgow and Edinburgh. On the Monday and Tuesday we had the two shoots and on Wednesday we returned clothes. Shoot one was at Govanhill swimming baths; an abandoned and decrepit maze of rooms with empty pools spotted with mould and asbestos. It was here we did a shoot with what Carrie had in mind to be 'lady of the manor'. Girly colours, but prim and properly put together. Our model, Nicola, from Superior has the perfect face with doll features and carried with look with stunning grace. I went on to the Superior Model Management website to put up a photograph of her, but they only have scans of pictures from The Sunday Herald despite the fact Nicola has the pictures on disk. It is not a particularly impressive portfolio at all which is a shame when she is such an excellent model. The make-up was done by Ainslie Currie, who circles around almost any fashion related event, shoot or anything that requires make-up in Glasgow. She also did the hair which was fantastic. I cannot wait for the shoot to come out so I can see it in the paper.

My favourite shot was a waist up shoot in a room with grey flaking wallpaper. The model wore a red velvet vintage bubble dress with three bow detailed straps across the back. We piled her neck with pearls and put a grey bow in her hair handmade by William Chamber's Millinery

The photographer, Kirsty Anderson took some fantastic photographs. She really managed to capture some brilliant looks and it was interesting having to work on location, in a run down abandoned place with no electricity and having to managed with what we had.

The whole day was so different from my experience with Kelly at The Herald which was rushed and fast paced; fitting in three shoots into a day. It had a lot to do with Carrie's nervousness and her conscious effort to make it go as perfectly as possible. And fortunately for her and all of us it did.