When you get the call to come and work with Japans top professional photographer, specially flying over to the UK with his team to photograph the Japanese sportstar and footballer Hidetoshi Nakata you just do it don’t you.

I was one of 2 UK based Stills Assistants responsible for setting up lighting for 2 full studios we built from scratch. I learnt more in those 3 days about lighting than I knew from my previous 10 years of photography.

The photos were for a Japanese CANON advertising campaign so I have never seen any of the photos until now when I managed to track one of them down, albeit a photo of the actual poster.

Ironically, the chinese gentleman who was used as a stand-in for Nakata was about a foot taller and had jetblack medium length hair. He was unsuitable to test the lighting and clothing and meter reading against so they use me instead as I had similar mad spikey hair at the time and am about the same height. Wearing a thin cashmere jumper in a freezing studio was interesting. Standing still with the camera at a funny angle (See Pic) for 5 or 10 minutes at a time was interesting.

I got cramp a couple of times but got on with it. Anyway the photos were really good, and now I get to apply the lighting knowledge I learnt in my own photography so it was a double bonus.

Working for CANON and DENTSU, I was the Stills Assistant.