Interview with ‘RAW’ Podcast

1 Apr

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dave and Paul for an episode of the RAW Podcast, and I absolutely loved our chat. We dove deep into what goes on behind the lens, the reality of navigating high-pressure commercial assignments, and the balance between personal passion projects and commercial hustle.

Here is a quick look at what we talked about:

Setting the Weather on Set

We talked a lot about the psychology of portraiture and what it takes to get people to relax in front of the camera. The vast majority of people I photograph have never had a professional lens pointed at them, and they usually arrive tensed up and self-conscious. My assistant always tells me, "Drew, you set the weather," and it’s completely true. Whether I'm joking around to break the ice or blasting a playlist, my job is to pump energy into the room, meet people exactly where they are, and treat the camera as an extension of my body so I can focus entirely on human connection.

Reimagining the Archive: The Sound Wave

We went behind the scenes of one of my biggest production challenges: rebranding the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Stripping away the generic, half-circle setups that have defined orchestra photography for decades, I wanted to capture the literal feeling of walking into their rehearsal room—being hit by a massive, swelling wave of sound. From months of rigorous pre-production to collaborating with a stage-building company to construct a custom tiered system, it was a masterclass in putting creative vision ahead of production limitations (even when our original location flooded with only 18 hours' notice).

Healing with the XPan

We also got into the vital role of self-funded passion projects and how they protect you from commercial burnout. Following a catastrophic, world-ending breakup, I booked a trip to New York City, hired a model, and fired off thousands of frames while hanging my legs out of a doorless helicopter over Central Park. On that same trip, I challenged myself by shooting local ballerinas entirely on film using the panoramic Hasselblad XPan. Stepping out of my digital comfort zone and working within the rigid geometry of that wide frame completely revitalized my love for the craft.

Trading War Stories

Of course, it wouldn't be a proper photography podcast without trading a few industry horror stories. We shared a laugh over our absolute greatest hits of failure—from missing major wedding aisle walks to my own personal nightmare of spending weeks meticulously photoshopping a front tooth back into a Father of the Bride's mouth after he got into a massive bar brawl the night before the wedding. It’s a hilarious reminder that no matter how organized your workflow is, real life always finds a way to keep you on your toes.

Whether it's chasing an organic story with a female rancher in Texas, collaborating with a stone sculptor at Durham Cathedral, or capturing an elite athlete in a high-pressure 90-second window, it’s all about staying vigilant, showing up with confidence, and putting yourself out there completely.

You can listen to the full episode below, and see the transcript below that!

Full Transcript

Dave: Hello everybody and welcome to episode 60 of the RAW podcast with Dave and Paul. This is Dave here, and we are so glad to bring you this episode. It's such a good one, even if we do say so ourselves. If you don't toot your own horn, who'll toot it for you? That's what I say. This episode, we speak to an amazing photographer from the UK, a lovely guy called Drew Forsyth. Drew is a portrait photographer primarily, and he works in the commercial and advertising world shooting across the UK and internationally. I can't recommend enough going onto his website actually and just going deep. It's a brilliant website. We talk about that on the podcast, but it's just so image-rich. There is so much to look at. His work is centered around people, really, and the stories behind them. He's photographed so many people, from Royal Ballet performers, comedians, Nobel Prize winners, entrepreneurs, world leaders, and on and on. The list is honestly endless, and it's been featured in all sorts of places like BBC News, The Guardian, The Times, and Rolling Stone. You name it. So it was a really enjoyable chat, it really was. Drew is a great talker, and he's very open and very honest. He really gives a proper insight into what it's like to work in what is really a very high-pressure world. He would do shoots—we talk quite at length about a shoot that he did for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra—and that was a shoot that took two days technically, but months of planning beforehand. And then there's other shoots, of course, that he would do where he might only have 90 seconds or less with his subject. That brings a whole different level of pressure. So it was really interesting, really fascinating actually, I have to say. Such a lovely chat. We talk about how he found his way into commercial work, the importance of putting yourself out there. If you go to his Instagram page, you'll see that he's upfront and center on quite a lot of the posts and how that works out for him. We talk about his personal projects. He's got his personal passion projects that he does, which are all on his website as well. We talk about those at great length—some brilliant work and really good stories behind them as well. So, all in all, just a brilliant chat. What stood out most is just how honest he is. We talk about his big wins, mistakes, things that worked, things that didn't, and it just made for a really good and genuine conversation. So I hope you enjoy it. I really do hope you enjoy it. I know you will. How could you not? So that's our guest. Hope you enjoy. I've said that three times, so I'm not going to say it anymore. So here he is, Drew Forsyth.

Paul: Well, we've learned something today. You guys should know I'm coming in so hot right now. I got up and was sitting at my laptop at 8:30 this morning going, "Can I do some emails? Let me just make sure I'm all prepped and ready to go." And then it just wasn't having it.

Dave: Real life, that's just how it works, isn't it? I realize it's very boring for people listening to hear about other people's tech issues, but this is like an ongoing theme. This is one of our... it's not called a RAW podcast for nothing.

Drew Forsyth: Oh, I just ironed all this stuff out during the pandemic five years ago.

Dave: I know, but then we were all on Zoom back then or Skype or something. Now we're on this whole new system.

Paul: Yeah, so you should know I'm ready to yell.

Dave: Paul, take a couple of breaths. We're good. We're good. It's great to talk to you, Drew.

Drew Forsyth: It is. Thank you very much. Great to talk to you guys.

Dave: Oh man, what a pleasure. Honestly, your work is out of this world. Out of this world.

Drew Forsyth: Thank you very much. What can I say? I'm very lucky to work with some lovely people.

Dave: Is that all it takes? Working with nice people? You just got to work with nice people.

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, I implemented a soft rule a few years ago to no longer work with assholes, and it's working.

Dave: I would say that's good. Do you figure that out beforehand?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, you can.

Dave: Oh, is it like a Spidey sense? Not like a checkbox in a form or anything?

Drew Forsyth: No, no. It's like the US immigration form: "Are you ever an asshole? Sometimes." Hard luck. Sorry, okay.

Paul: In what context are you an asshole, exactly? Your dating life?

Drew Forsyth: Oh God, no, it's great. [laughter]

Dave: Where are you at the minute? Where are you based?

Drew Forsyth: I'm in Manchester right now. Yeah, I'm based in Manchester, but I go wherever the work is. I go everywhere.

Dave: So you have to tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Drew Forsyth: Sure. Where do you want me to start? Where should I start?

Dave: Where should you start? I guess maybe how you became a photographer, in any sense of the word.

Drew Forsyth: Okay, well, like every big mistake I've ever made in my life, I picked up photography to impress a woman. Basically, my first serious girlfriend was really into photography, and I said, "Oh yeah, me too," despite having no interest in it whatsoever, because I was absolutely besotted with her. Her parents were really into photography, so I got into it through that, and it was just a hobby for years and years. Then I went off to university and studied performing arts and drama. Around that time, I was the only one with a proper camera. All my friends were actors and dancers, and they all needed headshots or needed their shows shot, and I was the only one who could do it, so it kind of grew from there.

Dave: So it grew from your uni days?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, it's one of those things. I didn't study photography at university, which I think about when I go into universities now to do guest lecturing here and there. I don't mention that I didn't study it, or they'd think this is all a waste of time.

Dave: Yeah, well, it could be amazing, I have no idea.

Drew Forsyth: But yeah, it just started out as a hobby, and then during uni when I was shooting my friends, someone I didn't know messaged me and said, "You shot my friend Sarah. I'd love to do a shoot with you. How much do you charge?" And I thought, "Oh, I don't know."

Dave: Hardest question in the world sometimes.

Paul: Two questions: did it impress the girl?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, well, we were together about 18 months. I was like 17, right? So an 18-month relationship when you're 17 is quite long. But yeah, it didn't work out. From what I know, she's a GP now. Look who's really winning—one of them is actually saving lives, and the other is the ballerina photographer. He's really having an impact. [laughter]

Drew Forsyth: Exactly.

Dave: When did it become a paid job then?

Drew Forsyth: It became a paid job once I graduated. I was just floating around doing nothing in particular, and it kind of started then, really slowly, with people asking me to do stuff. At that point, you're just shooting everything. I was literally shooting absolutely anything I could get my hands on.

Dave: Did you make a decision at one point to go a particular way from there? Or how did you form a business? You've done some weddings as well, am I right?

Drew Forsyth: A few weddings. Not like you guys, like big weddings. Let me try to provide some context here because I realize I'm speaking in very vague, general terms. So I graduated university, and photography was ticking away in the background. Then I decided I was going to do a master's degree, so I went off to do a master's at the University of Manchester. That went well, but I still didn't really have any idea what I wanted to do. Then I went off to study for a law degree because the performing arts world didn't feel like a viable career path. I went off to do law for a year and actually failed my law degree. I got to the end of the one-year program, and out of seven exams, I failed five of them. Then I had a decision to make: do you retake all your exams and do another year, or do you want to give this photography thing a go? I decided to give photography a go. At that point, I really was just messaging hundreds of people trying to find any kind of assignment or work. I had some connections in the theater world, so I was shooting a bit of performing arts stuff, but really, I was just trying to find anything.

Dave: That's brilliant, though. You really had to put yourself out there and chase the work down.

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, 100%. Weirdly, when I started shooting dance, the dance world is just so small that you shoot one dancer, and they're friends with this person, who is friends with that person, and suddenly you've got this amazing, ready-made network. If you do a good job with one person, the doors just fly open. So yeah, it was mad.

Dave: And when was this all starting for you?

Drew Forsyth: This was around 2012 or 2013, something like that.

Dave: And at that time, you were shooting?

Drew Forsyth: Bits of ballet, theater, actors' headshots, family portraits.

Dave: Okay.

Drew Forsyth: The kind where you go into someone's house and they have their family on a white backdrop wearing jeans and barefoot. I did that. I did a few surprise engagements, some jewelry, stuff for restaurants, food. Literally anything you can think of, I have shot it.

Dave: And was this mainly you chasing that work down? Did you eventually start—I know you said there about ballet, you do a good job for one person and then that opens up a door and they all start coming after you—did you find that with other projects as well where you shot a job for somebody and then that same kind of world would come after you?

Drew Forsyth: Yes. I'll shoot one thing and then I get a run of them. Back then, I shot one personal trainer, and then I did ten personal trainers. You do one ballerina, and then it's the same. It was the same with tech companies; I did a lot of tech startups around that time because you do one set of headshots and then someone else goes, "Oh, can you come and do ours?" It just happened recently with orchestras. I did the new season and some of the rebrand for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and then the orchestra for the English National Opera got in touch with me. Now, the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, I'm doing a big project for them right now. It's mad how that still happens.

Dave: That is amazing. But you know what I think you're very good at doing, Drew, is showing you at work. Do you think there's a lot that comes from that? People getting insight as to what they're going to be dealing with and the kind of guy who's behind the camera.

Drew Forsyth: Definitely. I think about it a lot, and I try to put myself out there in a way that I don't physically cringe when watching it back. I post a lot on Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn. I think clients and people consuming the stuff I make aren't necessarily the most photographically literate. I wouldn't say everyone can tell the difference between a great photo and an amazing photo, right? So people make decisions based on all sorts of factors, not just the work. The work being amazing is a given, but people are making hiring decisions based on: "Can I sit next to this person for eight hours?" I did a job recently where we were on the train for four hours to get there, did a 40-minute shoot, and then spent four hours back on the train sitting at one of those table seats with the client. People want to be able to relate to you. If they don't like me on Instagram, they're definitely not going to like me in real life because my Instagram is a toned-down, professional version of who I am.

Dave: You do have to bring energy to your shoots. You have to bring a sense of confidence to people when you're shooting. They want to see that in the photographer.

Drew Forsyth: My assistant says this to me: "Drew, you set the weather." And it's absolutely true. If I show up and I'm pumping energy into the room, it changes everything.

Dave: Do you think it's a performance then, Drew? Do you think it's from your background doing performance in arts?

Drew Forsyth: Yes, it's absolutely a performance, definitely. People want to see someone who's in control, who knows their stuff, and has answers. When you've got a room full of 30 people, you need to be like a conductor, making sure everyone's happy and keeping things flowing, looking like you know what you're doing even if you do not.

Dave: I was going to say, do you ever arrive onto a project and go, [whispering] "I don't know what we're going to do here actually"?

Drew Forsyth: My God, yeah, sometimes. Me, my regular assistant Naomi, and my regular makeup artist Becca are like a band. You know, like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, where it's just nods and winks and subtle non-verbal cues. Sometimes I'll just look at her, she looks at me, and we carry on. But yeah, sometimes you show up and the client says, "Oh, we decided that we were going to get rid of that first look and we want to do it in front of this wall instead," and you go, "Right, okay."

Dave: How long are those kind of shoots on the day? If you look at that BBC Philharmonic Orchestra shoot that you did, you've got to deal with 80 people there.

Drew Forsyth: There was a huge amount of time beforehand—months in the planning to get that sorted. They hadn't taken a staged photograph of the orchestra since 1998 or something, and they decided they wanted to do one big photo. It was about three months from the initial meeting and email through to the shoot day, and we ended up doing two days. It was a day and a half of individual portraits, and then a half-day with the full orchestra of about 80 people. There was just so much production that goes into shooting 80 people that I had never encountered before. Luckily, I had a lot of support from the BBC, which was great.

Dave: I can't even begin to imagine if somebody was to contact me and go, "Yeah, we want you to shoot our orchestra. It's 80 people." Because Paul and I are used to the entire wedding party, and we're always like, "Oh, we need an upstairs window," and the main thing is just gathering people. It's always just a bit of a mess, and as long as nobody's stuck behind somebody else, it's job done, and I can get back to doing what I do. Have you got a little ladder?

Drew Forsyth: I haven't got a ladder. Sometimes if there's a videographer with a drone, I use the drone. I'll just say, "Yeah, you just do it on the drone, that'll be grand." But I can't even imagine if they were to say, "Yeah, we want to do it in this huge TV studio." My head doesn't even compute how I would go about doing something like that. Then there's that video where you're wheeling in a massive trolley of all sorts of equipment. Do you even have to think about the camera? Does that even come into play, or are you hiring cameras, or is it stuff you own already?

Drew Forsyth: For that specifically, I did hire. I shot it on a Sony A7R IV, which is 60 megapixels. That's enough. If you're not getting it with 60 megapixels, you know...

Dave: Yeah. In a shoot like that though, are you just looking after the photography side of things, or is there somebody else scheduling when all the different people are going to be available for timing and the place that you're going to do it in? Are you inputting into that?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, kind of. With every shoot that I do, there are really two columns: the creative and the production. There's always that tension between those two things. For that particularly, I started with the creative. I'm really bad for starting with the production, and if you start with the production, it rules out a lot of your creative stuff before you even try to overcome it. So I started with the creative, and the first thing was: what do you want it to look like? The BBC said every single photo of an orchestra looks exactly the same—they're just in that kind of half-circle wearing black and white concert blacks, and they wanted it to look a little different. I went in to see them in rehearsal, and as the producer opened the door to the rehearsal room, the music just completely blew me away because it was swelling into something amazing. In that moment, I felt like I was being hit with a wave. When I looked at the photo setup, I thought it would be nice if it was like a big wave across the screen, because that's what it felt like when I walked into the room, and it's also a nice parallel with a sound wave. It started with that, and I told them I think they should look like a wave. Then production said, "Okay, in that case, we know a stage building company that we work with all the time because they tour. We can construct a stage system that will mirror that." It would have never occurred to me if I'd started from the production side of it because that's not my area of expertise.

Dave: What you do is you put some people on their tippy-toes and some people on their knees.

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, that's right.

Dave: Have someone lying down at the front, someone jumping at the back, someone on the shoulders. Just send the drone, you're a new production.

Drew Forsyth: Luckily, the production side was mostly taken care of from their side of things. The funny thing about that shoot is that if you look at the portraits and you look at the group image, creatively they're not necessarily speaking the same language. The portraits were shot in an abandoned fire station in central Manchester, so they have almost like a Blade Runner type vibe where they're in the future but it's the past, with a bit of haze. It looked amazing. We were supposed to shoot the group image in an abandoned warehouse just down the street, but the night before, the warehouse got in touch and said they had flooded and we couldn't come in. So we had to completely move the location, redo the staging, and do the entire thing with about 18 hours' notice.

Dave: Could have brought a whole new meaning to the term "wave," I guess, if you had gotten them into a flooded warehouse. [laughter]

Drew Forsyth: That's the reason I'm here. I appreciate it.

Paul: Are those portraits from the website? Because if you go to "In the Studio," there's the shot of the entire orchestra, but man, the stuff is just so good. Your portraits are amazing as well. You do a lot of studio portraiture then, do you? That takes a big part of your time.

Drew Forsyth: Funnily enough, it's only about 30 to 40 percent in the studio. Everything else is out and about.

Dave: Back to that orchestra shoot—after that shot is taken and you're like, "Right, we got the shot, job done," what happens then? What comes after that? When you're editing, do you edit the shots and do all the production yourself?

Drew Forsyth: Yes. After we took the picture, we went straight to the pub, obviously, to decompress. That's a crucial part of my workflow. With that particular shot, we did a few options. We did one which was just one image, and then we did a composite version where we went through the whole thing with one light. Once I got it into the edit, I realized that the composite just looked nicer, so then it was a case of working with a retoucher to patch together the 30 or so images to make up that one image. I work with a retoucher maybe 10 to 20 percent of the time; I do almost everything myself. But for that, it was just so complicated because not only were we stitching together those 30 images, but you're also looking for people blinking, or people with their hands in the wrong place. I also wanted to adjust the heights of some people so you really got the wave motif through it. For stuff like that, I will work with someone else, but the workflow was not really any different to anything else I shoot—you export the low-res proofs, send them over to the client with Dropbox, they pick them, and then you edit them.

Dave: That's amazing. It's so good, it really is. When you're on a shoot like that, do you ever find yourself—because your documentary work of people at work is quite good too—going, "I might just take a few little bits here for myself"? I know you have those Hasselblad X-Pan personal passion projects. Do you ever feel like doing an X-Pan shot of this?

Drew Forsyth: Yes, I do. I try to take the X-Pan everywhere.

Dave: That's a great little treat. Owning an X-Pan.

Paul: That's where you're living the dream.

Drew Forsyth: I know, I am.

Dave: You can rub it in our faces, it's OK.

Drew Forsyth: Take that. It's a tough camera to find a good use case for, so it's nice to have for each project you do. It's one of those cameras where you think, "Oh my God, I'm going to use this for everything," and then you have it and you're like, "Wait, what do I use this for?"

Dave: Yeah, exactly.

Drew Forsyth: But having that camera is so nice because it's teaching me about film, which I knew nothing about. It's nice to have a camera to take on holiday that is not my phone. Knowing that it's that 16:9 or even wider—I think it's 2.35, isn't it?—really makes you rethink your composition, which I absolutely love. To answer your question, yes, there are moments when I'm shooting these big campaigns where I have a little camera and think, "Oh, that's a good one." Or I'll just use my phone to document me doing it as well, because it often happens so quickly and you're really in the moment. It's nice to have photos to look back at and go, "Oh, that was a good day."

Dave: That little behind-the-scenes video of that shoot—is that something where you're going, "Right, I need somebody to do behind-the-scenes stuff," rather than you doing selfie stuff? It looks like a proper production.

Drew Forsyth: More and more, I pitch it to clients and say, especially in the age of AI, this is a great opportunity for you to show the behind-the-scenes. If you're already spending all this money on photography, why not tack on an extra 500 quid to capture all this extra content? They said yes, so I worked with a videographer friend who knows me, is patient with me, and is an absolute pro. The client absolutely loved it. They said it looks like a movie.

Dave: It's also something for you in the first place that's been turned into a business opportunity.

Drew Forsyth: Definitely, and it's a nice little charge of the flattery battery. Just make me look good and let the client pay for it.

Dave: Just nothing from the side, everything from the chest up, okay. It's so clever, it really is. It builds a really good online presence. I know personally I would struggle with having somebody video me. It's becoming quite a big thing in the wedding industry to do behind-the-scenes content of you shooting at a wedding, saying where you are and all that kind of stuff, but I just cannot bring myself to do it.

Drew Forsyth: In preparation for this, I re-listened to that episode with Emma. I was flying back from Barcelona yesterday and listened to the whole thing on the flight. It sounds insane having content creators at your wedding.

Dave: Oh, I know, it sounds nuts.

Drew Forsyth: I shot my last wedding in 2016, and the idea that I would have someone there on a phone taking all these videos—no chance.

Dave: I know. How does it even work? You're about to take a picture and you're like, "Hey guys, today I'm..."

Paul: With the content creators, they are literally doing a videographer's job but on a phone, and sometimes they'll be doing it with a main videographer there as well. Then they might be getting the brides and grooms to do trends or dances, and you're kind of going, "What's happening?"

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, what's happening? So the experience isn't about us, it's not being pointed at us.

Dave: No, it's the couple. We're just another person in the way doing stuff. But making them do dances and trends is a bit much.

Paul: I've only worked with one, and they didn't do anything too crazy.

Dave: But that whole idea of videoing yourself at a wedding and using that as content for your social media stories has become very popular. Do you have the Meta glasses? I've seen a lot of photographers using those.

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, and then they're kind of shooting everything like this so people can see from the camera's perspective. I think a lot of the time when people get their Metas for the first time, they hold their main camera up to their eyes and then you don't really see anything through the glasses.

Dave: No, I haven't done that either. I would like a pair of glasses, actually. There are times I think it would be great when you're with your kids or doing stuff.

Drew Forsyth: I've tried them out. They're awful. It's a flashy light, too, to let the person know you're recording.

Dave: OK, but I would like to do it just for washing the dishes and saying, "Look what I'm doing, Dee," so I could send my wife all my content at the end of the day. "Look at all the things I did, I cleaned out the fire."

Drew Forsyth: On bad days, you just send her all the videos of the laundry again. That would be my use case. It's like whenever GoPro shows you all the amazing footage you can get, and then you actually get a GoPro and your footage is complete crap because the scenes in front of you aren't production level.

Dave: Your website is great, I have to say. I love your blog because a lot of people don't really blog anymore, so the fact that you do is great. But your personal projects—you have a section there called "Projects"—are they personal passion projects or paid jobs?

Drew Forsyth: They are personal projects, just things that I go out and do.

Dave: You've pitched to people and said, "I'd love to photograph this"?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, kind of. I come up with an initial idea, or someone mentions something to me, or I read a news article online, and the projects grow from there. There's one called Breaking Ground about women who work in very male-dominated industries. I got asked to speak at a conference in Austin, Texas. They offered to fly me out Thursday night and fly me home Sunday afternoon. I asked if they could fly me out two weeks beforehand instead and fly me back on Monday, and they agreed, though they obviously wouldn't pay for my hotel for those two weeks.

Dave: Come on, for God's sake, that is outrageous. "Do you know who I am?" [laughter]

Drew Forsyth: Exactly. Austin seemed like an interesting place to go, and as I was researching it, I found a news article about a lady who was the only female rancher in Texas with a 100-acre ranch and 30 horses. I thought that was so interesting because Texas is imagined as the archetypal male space—the Wild West, guns, trucks, cowboys. I got in touch with a cowboy institution out there trying to find people to meet and take portraits. When I met this lady, Jo Marie, she was an absolute character in an amazing way. I spent the day with her, and for the first four or five hours, I didn't even pick up the camera.

Dave: Really?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, when I arrived, she was riding a cow.

Dave: Wow. That's when you should have taken out the camera.

Drew Forsyth: Well, I got out of the car—and I made sure I hired a Ford F-150 truck because I wasn't going to show up to a Texas cowgirl in a Nissan Micra. I showed up and she's riding this cow. I asked, "Why are you riding a cow?" and she looked me dead in the eye and said, "She's a horse," as if to say, don't say that in front of the cow. [laughter]

Dave: What have I got myself into? What am I doing here?

Drew Forsyth: Then the dog ran up and started licking my hand, and my assistant whispered in my ear, "Don't ever let a ranch dog lick your hands." I sat with her on the porch for about four or five hours just chatting, and then we spent about 90 minutes taking her portraits. After that, another lady DM'd me on Instagram saying she heard I was in Austin and asked if I could take her portrait. She turned out to be one of the only women who makes cowboy boots by hand in Texas. Every set of boots she makes has a 13-inch nail they have to hammer flat to form the sole of the boot.

Dave: Wow.

Drew Forsyth: All this stuff is amazing. Then when I got back to the UK, I wondered what else I could do. A friend mentioned that her girlfriend is a sculptor and one of the only women sculptors doing restoration work on Durham Cathedral. So the project grew organically. Once it's all edited, I package it up and send it out to people. All my best commissions and best commercial work come directly from my personal work. My clients aren't really interested in my commercial portfolio; they want to see the passion projects.

Dave: I suppose your personal work gives you the chance to express yourself and find your style, which is what you want to sell, and then you're comfortable doing that.

Drew Forsyth: Exactly. Clients look at that stuff and say, "Oh great, can you come do that for us?" I don't even have to sell them on the creative direction because they already see it. You mentioned the video clips on those projects—over the last couple of years, I've started working with a regular cinematographer/DOP type person. I had regular client meetings where they would say, "We've got X amount of money for stills, do you know anyone who does video? We've got ten times as much budget for video." So I thought, okay, I'll start offering it. I started integrating it into my personal work and taking more of a directorial role rather than getting enmeshed in the technical side of things, just creating the storyboards. It's only four or five moving images that sit together with some nice music, but it lends itself so well to ballet. I spent ten years freezing ballerinas, so it's nice to see them moving around a little bit.

Dave: But even on that Breaking Ground project, you're doing a little bit of video there yourself on your camera, not bringing a full crew.

Drew Forsyth: No, for that I just switched my own camera to video. When you're working with people who don't have a ton of experience being photographed—the vast majority of people I shoot have never had a professional camera in front of them—I don't want to freak them out. With Jo Marie, I kept a minimal handheld kit. I didn't want to show up with a huge gimbal rig and stabilizing systems.

Dave: That's a good point. How do you get people to relax and be themselves in front of the camera? Do you have a method?

Drew Forsyth: It's not a codified system, but I think about absolutely everything. The biggest thing is acknowledging the situation and their reality. The first thing I often say to people when they walk onto the location is, "Hello, welcome to your favorite part of the day." Because no one is looking forward to getting their portrait taken; it's usually something they are being made to do by someone else. Once you acknowledge that reality, I decide how much gear to bring. With Jo Marie, I kept it minimal because there wasn't a plug socket within a mile radius. But when I'm shooting corporate CEOs, I will bring lots of gear, set it up in the boardroom, and turn it fully into a studio. When they walk in, they realize it's serious and it adjusts their mindset. I'm also very chatty during the shoot. When I take the first shot, I always say, "The first one's just a test run to make sure the lights are working," and I keep talking to distract them. I ask them things I'm genuinely interested in. I did a job at the Christie Hospital in Manchester photographing cancer specialists, and as I was setting up, I just asked the lady, "So, have you cured it yet, or what's going on?" Because it was a subject she was passionate about, she immediately relaxed and chatted away. With musicians, I always take one shot where they are holding their instrument in front of them because it acts as a nice physical barrier that makes them feel safe. I also play music a lot when I'm shooting.

Dave: Oh, you play it on a Bluetooth speaker?

Drew Forsyth: Yes, I have a little Bluetooth speaker. I try to play stuff that they don't know, because when you're shooting, there can be these long silences while you're solving a creative problem, and music fills that gap. A friend of mine, Madeleine Penfold, who is an amazing sports photographer, sprays a nice scent in the area she's going to be shooting in because moving heavy equipment can get sweaty, and a nice smell helps people relax. There are loads of little things you can do, but the big one is just acknowledging the awkwardness of it all. Recently, I've been doing some celebrity portrait stuff. I shot for a major TV project that's about to come out. In preparation for it, I listened to his Desert Island Discs episode, which is the nicest introduction to someone. When he came into the studio, I had The Beatles playing, and he turned to me and said, "You've done your research, Drew." Suddenly, all the tension completely disappeared.

Dave: Does that ever make you feel intimidated or nervous for someone like that? Are you still pushing through with confidence?

Drew Forsyth: I only get nervous about 30 seconds before it's about to start. When the famous person walks into the room, that's the peak of it, and then it starts to wane. By the time they get in front of the camera, it's fine. I think about the power dynamic a lot. If I go up to them and say, "Oh my God, I'm your biggest fan," suddenly they are back in control of the situation, and I don't want that. We should be equal collaborators working together to get a good image.

Paul: It takes real belief in yourself. If you see someone famous, you just have a reaction.

Dave: I'd be totally starstruck. I would be the worst person. Paul and I have been at weddings where there might be a famous Irish celebrity there, like Paul Mescal, and I wouldn't know what to do with the camera. I don't want to feel like the paparazzi, but I have to photograph everybody. There's that element of hoping I don't have to talk to them or put them into a group shot. I'd be the worst.

Drew Forsyth: What really helps me is that often I'm photographing people who are famous in a world I have no knowledge of. For the BBC, I photographed Millie Bright, who was the captain of the England Lionesses Euro-winning squad. To some people, she is an absolute goddess, but to me, she was just a colleague I was working with that day. The opposite of that was a project I did for The King's Trust where I photographed Naomie Harris, who played Moneypenny in the recent James Bond films. I kept it together the whole time, and then at the end, after we finished the shoot, she was leaving and I said, "By the way, I loved you in Bond." She just looked at me and said, "Thank you very much." Then my assistant joked, "Oh yeah, that's where I know you from!" which diffused the situation.

Dave: There's a well-used Irish phrase: "I have you now, I have you now." Like, I know where you're from. [laughter] But that is funny. A friend of mine who is a big football fan was in a bar in Ireland, and Packie Bonner, the former goalkeeper for Ireland, walked into the toilet. My friend went in, saw Packie Bonner, and felt he had to say something. As they were finishing up, he just froze and said, "My dad's from Donegal too." That was the end of the conversation. He thought they were going to be best friends.

Drew Forsyth: One thing that helps me is that I have one phrase I use whenever I meet a famous person outside of work. I shake their hand and say, "I just want to say, I love your work," and walk out the door. I met Chris Morris that way at the V&A cafe in London. I walked past him, recognized him, and before my brain could stop me, my body was already walking over. He was having a coffee on his own, and I just said, "Hi, I'm so sorry to disturb you, but I just wanted to say I love your work." He shook my hand and was very kind.

Dave: I'd say he's a gent, but he's someone whose reputation precedes him as an intimidating character. You could have gone around asking if he's got any "Clarky cats" or "cake" from that drug episode of Brass Eye. If you had overthought it, he might have just thought you were weird. I went to a Rufus Wainwright concert years ago at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and was sitting right behind Neil Hannon, the lead singer of The Divine Comedy. We're both from Derry, and the entire gig I was trying to figure out what to say. I decided that at the end of the gig, I'd nod toward the stage and say, "He's good, but I'd like to see him write a song about cricket," because Neil Hannon had a whole concept album about cricket. I thought he'd get the reference and it would be great. The time came, he stood up, and it was just me, my ex-girlfriend, Neil Hannon, and Cathy Davey standing there as everyone else left. I went, "Hi Neil," and he turned around in his very confident voice and said, "Yes?" I completely froze and said, "Oh, maybe I'll see you in here one day." It was so awful. Then we had to walk past each other again in the foyer. Five years later, I saw him play at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre with The Divine Comedy, and I wanted to shout, "See? I told you so!" [laughter]

Drew Forsyth: Oh my God, that reminds me of those plane crash videos where the cockpit audio is just screaming, "Pull up, pull up! Terrain, terrain!" and the controls aren't working. My hands are sweating just thinking about it. Nightmare.

Dave: It's one of those moments where you're driving on the motorway years later and you just cringe. Anyway, you haven't done anything too horrendous by just saying, "I love your work."

Drew Forsyth: Nothing too horrendous. Though about six months ago, I went to see the performance artist Marina Abramović in Manchester. Her show was called Balkan Erotic Epic and it was all about sexual energy and featured a lot of aggressive nudity. It was a five-hour durational piece with a hundred performers, very intense. I looked up across the room, and Louis Theroux was standing right there looking straight at me.

Dave: No way. "Oh my God, it's Louis Theroux." That would definitely be another one of those moments where you wonder what to say.

Drew Forsyth: I had to leave, it was too intense. I couldn't handle it.

Dave: Our podcast is actually sponsored by a camera shop in Dublin called Bermingham Cameras, and they did an event recently with Louis Theroux. I remember thinking it was a pity one of us wasn't there to photograph it, but then I realized I would have made an absolute mess of myself meeting him in the flesh. But if you have a camera in your hand, you're in your comfort zone.

Drew Forsyth: We need to get you over this, Dave.

Dave: I know, we need to work on these social skills. If you've got a camera, it's a comfort thing. Aren't you much braver when you're shooting?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, definitely.

Dave: I wanted to ask you about that brilliant helicopter shoot over New York on your website under personal work from September 2024. That first shot looks like something out of a James Bond movie. How did that come about?

Drew Forsyth: About three months before that trip, I went through an absolutely catastrophic, world-ending breakup. The first thing I did was book a flight to New York to get over it. My head was a mess, and while looking at TripAdvisor for things to do, I saw a helicopter tour company that flies with no doors on so you can take photos. I emailed them, but because it's America, you can just throw money at things to make them happen; the company was completely indifferent to my creative idea as long as I paid. Then I reached out to about 30 or 40 modeling agencies in New York, and eventually, one agreed to provide a model, and we found a makeup artist. In the air, my legs were hanging right out of the helicopter.

Dave: Did you have insurance for this? You signed a waiver the thickness of a Bible.

Drew Forsyth: Exactly, it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. She was wearing a serious safety harness that I removed in Photoshop afterward to keep the magic alive. If you look at the behind-the-scenes video on my Instagram, we are both harnessed in, but you still think you're going to fall out. I felt brave because I was focused on the camera in my hands. We were up there for 18 minutes, which worked out to about $100 a minute, but it was worth it. I fired off about 3,500 images on burst mode because her hair was flying everywhere. She was wearing a beautiful Tom Ford gown and shoes, and she was sticking her feet out as we banked around Central Park. It was funny because she had to wear all that gear during the safety briefing next to regular tourists in shorts who looked at her like, "You told me we didn't have to dress up!" [laughter]

Dave: Was it just you and the model in the helicopter, or was there someone else shooting behind-the-scenes?

Drew Forsyth: It was me and two of my friends who came along to do the behind-the-scenes content. That helicopter photo shoot really took the edge off the breakup—I'd recommend it to anyone over regular therapy. When I got back and edited the images, it was all my clients wanted to talk about.

Dave: How long were you in New York for that trip? About a week?

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, about a week.

Dave: And did you pack it full of things to shoot? Was that the same trip where you shot the ballerina on the Hasselblad X-Pan?

Drew Forsyth: Yes, Profoto connected me with a rental house in New York. When I told the guys at the rental house I was shooting dance on an X-Pan, they were shocked. I shot the main project digitally, but the X-Pan frames turned out to be the best ones. I did three massive production shoots in that single week, which I wouldn't recommend doing while jet-lagged, but shooting somewhere entirely different is so inspiring. New York is incredibly cinematic.

Dave: Do you explicitly schedule that personal time to create work, or does it just happen?

Drew Forsyth: No, I have to be really vigilant about planning. If I'm not careful, I will only shoot commercial paid work for months, and then I'll hit a specific creative burnout where I ask myself why I don't love photography anymore. Your brain gets unhappy even if you're shooting dream commercial assignments.

Dave: How do you structure your day-to-day work life? The wedding industry gives us a lot of free availability at different times of the week, but does commercial work give you that same free time, or are you editing until midnight?

Drew Forsyth: I am very strict now about my work-life balance. In the first four or five years of being self-employed, freelance work was gaseous—it filled every available space and I was working all hours of the day and night to get the business off the ground. Now, when I'm not shooting, I sit down at my desk at 8:30 or 9:00 AM and finish around 5:00 or 6:00 PM. I am really militant with my workflow and processes to get everything signed off efficiently. Generally speaking, it's a nine-to-five, manufacturing a structural balance that is the opposite of you guys.

Dave: Yeah, we are weekend warriors to an extent. How many weddings are you doing a year, Paul?

Paul: I'm probably close to 50 weddings a year. That's my maximum. Having two of us in the business helps split the editing and workflow.

Drew Forsyth: Is that mostly concentrated on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays during the summer?

Paul: Most weekends are packed, but we spread them out and take time off. Wintertime is usually a lull with a lot of downtime.

Dave: Weddings are very seasonal, so there aren't many bookings in January, February, or March. This year in particular, a lot of wedding photographers have found the start of the year incredibly quiet.

Paul: Yeah, I haven't shot a wedding since New Year's Eve. My first one of the year is this Saturday. A couple of other busy wedding photographers I know don't have their first wedding of the year until April. Ever since COVID, the regular structure of bookings has changed. There was a massive backlog of postponed weddings mixed with new bookings that made it crazy busy, followed by a quiet year. It hasn't fully settled back into the old routine.

Drew Forsyth: What was it like working around the COVID lockdowns for you guys? Commercial work came to an absolute halt.

Dave: It came to a halt.

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, it's not the kind of thing you can shoot remote photography. I mean, yeah, it was an unmitigated disaster. I was fortunate that some clients paid me in advance for shoots that didn't happen until two years later. I did campaigns shooting ballerinas through their front windows while standing out in their gardens, and I even did a shoot over FaceTime where I was tapping the button on my screen to take pictures, but it was rubbish. 80 to 90 percent of everything I shoot is on a 35mm lens, so I like being physically close to people. During COVID, I had to shoot full-length portraits on an 85mm lens from a million miles away, and I hated losing that physical proximity. Things didn't properly pick up financially until spring 2022. I'm only just now getting back to my pre-COVID turnover levels.

Dave: The only good thing about COVID was the weather; we had amazing sunshine. Aside from that, it was quite crap. Do you have much planned for this year? What is your average lead time for booking a commercial job?

Drew Forsyth: The average lead time for a small to medium assignment is about two to three weeks. For something massive, like when I did the new season for the English National Opera, it takes about three months from the initial inquiry to the shoot day. Commercial work is quite seasonal too. January is always dead, things start to heat up in mid-February, and March is crazy because companies are trying to spend the rest of their budget before the tax year ends on April 6th. May is very busy, August is dead because everyone is away on holiday, the first half of September is quiet while people plan, and then October and November get crazy busy again before December goes dead.

Dave: Wedding photographers find it very difficult to take time off in the summer because you're losing out on prime weekends of work.

Drew Forsyth: One of my wedding photographer friends blocks out every January and goes to Bali for a month. Good for her, but I don't like her for it. [laughter]

Dave: That is the way to do it. It would be brilliant to shoot weddings here in Ireland during the summer, and then from October to March, live in a warm country and shoot weddings there. But this year in Ireland, the weather has just been horizontal rain. We had three nice days of weather recently and everyone got happy again.

Drew Forsyth: We had the same thing in Manchester—everyone was walking around with their tops off in 15-degree weather because it rained every single day for the first six weeks of the year.

Paul: Always, Dave, we want to give a quick shout-out to Brian and everyone at Bermingham Cameras in Dublin. Our partners here at the RAW podcast, they've been our go-to for years, whether it's new gear, trade-ins, or just a good natter, Dave.

Dave: Just a good natter. I mean, who doesn't love a good natter? And they have been long-time supporters of the Irish photography scene through the IPPVA and Doc Day. They're at the top of the pile with us now.

Paul: The top of the top. So we have got plenty of exciting bits coming your way. We are going to plan photo walks, prizes, exclusive meetups, and some merch. That's merchandise. So if for the photo walk we're cycling...

Dave: Yeah, it's fine. I mean, if I'm on a Segway, no, you can't have a go because of insurance. Make sure you follow Bermingham's on Instagram and the RAW podcast to stay in the loop of all that kind of exciting stuff.

Paul: Yeah, it's coming. It's coming.

Dave: So back to the pod. Tell me, you do... you were saying there earlier on, I mentioned about your studio work and you were saying, oh, that's about 30 or 40 percent of my work. Are these the headshots just for all sorts of various like these actors and models and...?

Drew Forsyth: Yes, it's for all sorts of campaigns and yeah, yeah.

Dave: And where did your... how did that skill set develop, like studio work? Because you obviously don't have your own studio, do you? Or do you?

Drew Forsyth: No, just hire a studio. Just hire a studio.

Dave: How did it like, so... can I give you a couple of examples? There's some of your shots here. The directing of the shots is so good as well. Like there's one with a lady and she's got like red glasses and she's wearing this orangey silky thing. She's kind of... she's being playful, you know, in front of the camera.

Drew Forsyth: Yes.

Dave: And then there are shots where there's like... there's the guy and he's like, oh, you know, got his hands on his face and he's like, oh. So like that obviously is... are you giving direction there or are you working with a team of people to kind of try and get something?

Drew Forsyth: So, OK. So to kind of answer your first question a little bit, like the reason like for ages I shot like 95% of my work on location. I had a regular theater client, and they brought in a celebrity production. I was shooting everything for them, but when the studio poster came out, they hired someone else to shoot it. I asked the head of marketing why they didn't use me, and they said, "Oh, we didn't know you shot in the studio." I realized I could do it, but I didn't have any examples in my portfolio because I never put it out there. After that, I spent a huge amount of time practicing in the studio to bring my studio lighting up to the exact same level as my location work.

Dave: Looking at your website, the direction of your subjects is so good. There's one shot of a lady with red glasses wearing an orange silky dress being very playful in front of the camera, and another of a guy with his hands on his face. Are you giving strict direction there, or are you working with a creative team?

Drew Forsyth: Often, the people coming into the studio bring a natural energy with them, and it's my job to translate that onto the camera and enable them to be themselves. People naturally freeze up as soon as you lift the camera. You guys must see it every weekend at weddings—you're chatting away with someone friendly, you lift the camera, and they instantly tense up. I work really hard to reset them back to their normal selves. I shoot a lot of comedians, so I can get them to do a funny face or voice. Often I'll say, "We're not going to use any of these, let's just fire off a load of frames," and they lose that self-consciousness. I keep talking the entire time to distract them. I'll even say, "I would hate having to do this, it's gross, I would hate to be you," which gets a laugh. One client arrived completely hungover, so I suggested he fold his arms and lay his head down on the table, and he loved it. That was the exact shot they ended up using for the poster. I try to meet people where they are and bring them into the right lane for the shoot.

Dave: Do you still actively practice the technical aspects of lighting, or is it purely intuitive at this stage?

Drew Forsyth: I still develop technical concepts. I actually have a lighting map right here for a recent shoot showing the light placement and modifiers. Testing in the studio is a great opportunity to try out things I see out in the world. I used to be addicted to Instagram Reels, but I've been clean for about a month now because the algorithm got weird and it was specifically designed to stop me from working. I see interesting techniques and give them a go, but because I've been doing this for so long, the technical setup becomes muscle memory. The camera should just be an extension of you, like a musical instrument. A first violinist isn't thinking about how to hold the violin; she's thinking about what sounds beautiful. I know my gear inside out so I don't have to solve technical problems on set; I can focus entirely on the person in front of me. I shoot with a Sony A7R III, and when people tell me that's a legacy camera, I tell them it's because I know it perfectly.

Dave: You're obviously not super gear-oriented then, always wanting the next best thing. Personally, I shouldn't be allowed to watch YouTube because I instantly think, "Oh, what do I need now? That would make my life a lot easier." I'll buy a camera, keep it for three months, decide I don't like it, and sell it. I have Gear Acquisition Syndrome—GAS—and need a self-help group.

Drew Forsyth: I am fully diagnosed with that when it comes to personal projects, but when I look at my commercial work, the problem is never the camera. If I have £3,000 to spend, I would much rather spend it on flights, a hotel, and a helicopter shoot because I can turn that project into thousands of pounds of future commercial work. When I was at the photography show in Birmingham, the Sony representative tried to convince me to upgrade to the A7R V. But a single uncompressed RAW file on the RV is 130 megabytes, whereas mine are 40 megabytes. I already buy a 4-terabyte hard drive once a quarter. Upgrading means buying a new hard drive once a month. My criteria for gear is ease of use and workflow efficiency, which is why I use Profoto lights. They just turn on and work. I don't need to know if it's at 1/256th power; I just want to adjust a physical dial at the back to make it brighter or darker. The best gear purchase I ever made was a production cart because instead of making five trips to the car, I only make one. When I met an ex-girlfriend's father who was a gear hobbyist, he asked me about the pixel density on my camera, and I told him I didn't know. I could see the light drain from his eyes because he wanted to talk about dynamic range, and to me, it's none of my business.

Dave: If I were in your shoes, I would have spent hours researching the ten best production carts. I love the X-Pan format, and I thought if I bought a Fujifilm GFX 50S II or 100S II, I could use the built-in X-Pan crop ratio which blacks out the rest of the frame. I bought the GFX, realized the files were too big, and sold it, but I kept the lens just in case I buy another GFX. Now the algorithm bombards me with GFX content. If you sat here and told me the virtues of a Hasselblad digital medium format system, I'd probably go out and buy it. Do you own a Hasselblad?

Drew Forsyth: No, I would love to have a Hasselblad, but I don't need one yet.

Paul: Sounds like you do.

Dave: I'll look through your website later and pinpoint exactly what gear you used. I did a workshop in New York years ago with Lois Greenfield, who is one of the best dance photographers ever, and she shot on an original Hasselblad 500C with a digital back where you had to wind the frame manually after every click. It was incredible, and for a long time afterward, I convinced myself that buying one would make all the difference to my work.

Drew Forsyth: Exactly, you think, "My work right now is rubbish, but if I had the Hasselblad..." [laughter]

Dave: When did you last switch camera systems?

Drew Forsyth: Weeks ago.

Dave: I recently switched to shooting weddings on two Leicas—a Q2 and a Q3 43.

Drew Forsyth: Whoa, that's a baller move. That's bougie money.

Dave: I ended up selling the Q3 43 because it's a lot of cash tied up in a single camera and fixed lens. I felt limited to those specific focal lengths for commercial work, so I sold it and bought a body and four lenses secondhand instead.

Drew Forsyth: You're talking to a man who shoots on a Sony A7R III that has done nearly half a million frames.

Dave: You should try a brand-new camera body; it's unbelievable what they can do.

Paul: Dave would make a brilliant camera tester. He should be working in a camera shop reviewing the new models, putting them through their paces, and moving on. That would be his perfect life.

Dave: If you were to open up my Lightroom catalog and sort by camera, you'd have a heart attack. I hope my wife does not listen to this podcast. You can speed this bit up in edit, can't you, Paul? What was your favorite camera ever, Drew?

Drew Forsyth: My favorite cameras have been the Leica Q2 and the Fujifilm X100V. I loved that little X100V.

Paul: Dave made it a feature where clients could hire him specifically to shoot their entire wedding on just that little X100V, and loads of people went for it.

Drew Forsyth: People do want that because they don't want a photographer coming in with a massive camera rig setup. Plus, it saves you from lugging heavy gear up flights of stairs. That's why I only use 250-watt strobe heads on location; the 500-watt heads are just too heavy to carry.

Dave: On your Breaking Ground project, that shot with the lady on the horse features a beautiful canvas backdrop out on the ranch. Did you hire that out there?

Drew Forsyth: That's an Oliphant backdrop. Annie Leibovitz uses them. They are hand-painted canvas backdrops, and my friend in Austin happened to own an XL one. I told her we were taking her $4,000 hand-painted canvas backdrop out to a muddy ranch. We rigged it up on a C-stand with one battery-powered light and a big umbrella with diffusion. Everything I own is battery-powered because on my first ever location shoot at a theater, I brought lights borrowed from the university. The theater technician asked if the gear had been PAT tested for electrical safety, and since it hadn't, he wouldn't let me plug anything in. The shoot was a total disaster, so from that day on, I went fully battery-powered. For the shot with Jo Marie, she was maneuvering the horse in loops while we fired off two or three frames at a time. At one point, the horse walked behind me, stepped on my tethering cable, and yanked it straight out of the camera, completely destroying the USB-C port on the motherboard. I went to a camera shop in Austin in a panic, and luckily, the local Sony tech rep was there and lent me an A7R IV to finish the rest of the trip. I shoot almost everything tethered straight into a laptop.

Dave: Shooting tethered into a laptop builds instant trust because the client and subject can see the images immediately. I had to do a studio shoot last year and felt completely out of my depth. The lady renting the space told me most photographers shoot tethered, and I had to pretend I just didn't prefer it, while secretly thinking my camera probably didn't even have the ability to shoot tethered. What is tethered? Do I hook myself onto something? We shoot with a harness anyway. [laughter]

Drew Forsyth: When I did the English National Ballet shoot, we piped the tethered feed from my laptop into a 60-inch TV screen 15 feet away so the creative team, agency, and choreographer could all watch the frames land in real time while my assistant and I watched their reactions.

Dave: The pressure of having everyone see the images instantly must be immense. When you're shooting a wedding, someone will always come up and ask for a quick picture of something random, and unless it's the bride or groom, you can safely slide it away and say, "Yes, absolutely," and walk off. Studio environments are structured and controlled, whereas a wedding involves a lot of trial and error and uncontrolled moments where you have to accept you will miss things. Have you ever missed a massive moment during a shoot?

Dave: I feel like I've embarrassed myself enough on this podcast, Paul.

Paul: Personally, I haven't missed anything on that catastrophic level.

Dave: I have completely missed one major, unrepeatable moment: the bride and her dad walking down the aisle. The videographer and I missed it together, so at least there was safety in numbers. It was a complete miscommunication. The church had two entrances, and we were there half an hour early. My final words to the bride at her house were, "Stay in the car until I get to the church door because I want to get a shot of you and your dad arriving." It was a rainy day, and all the guests and bridesmaids entered through the short side entrance near the door. But the bride's car stopped at the far entrance around a curved bend out of our sight line. We kept walking back and forth checking the door, and the next thing we knew, everyone was inside singing the opening hymn. When I get into highly stressful situations, my natural reaction is to laugh. I couldn't stop laughing. I looked at the videographer, who was early in his career, and his face had completely drained of color. I had to sit on my haunches reading the order of service to try and stop my shoulders from shaking. We had to hold our hands up to the bride afterward and admit we missed it due to a genuine mistake. She understandably wasn't very happy.

Drew Forsyth: Did they get any content from guests' phones, Dave?

Dave: I told her that since everyone on the aisle had their phones out, she should ask her guests to send their photos to me and I would edit them to look as close to my style as possible, but it didn't end up happening. Last year, I had another close call because I got too caught up chatting with a guest during the downtime before the evening reception. I suddenly realized I needed to set up for the first dance, ran into the room, and the couple were already in the middle of the dance floor. I didn't have time to set up my off-camera flash triggers, so I just grabbed the camera, shot ambient light off the band, and managed to get three usable shots. You can get too comfortable when you've done it too many times.

Paul: Paul's never made any mistakes in his entire life.

Paul: That is exactly why I haven't missed anything—I carry too much anxiety in me. When people are talking to me during a wedding, I'm only half-listening because I'm constantly scanning the room wondering if the next event is starting. I always expect at least one thing to go wrong, and if it doesn't, I sit in the car afterward feeling paranoid.

Dave: Oh, and you knocked a kid over.

Paul: The kid walked out in the middle of the aisle playing a Game Boy and I tripped over him, which broke my 35mm lens. But the worst was when I was hanging up a wedding dress on a chair in the States; the chair slipped out from under me, and I fell directly onto the passing bride. My camera hit her on the head, and her forehead started bleeding.

Dave: That's way worse than mine.

Paul: Yeah, that was one of my worst experiences. And I was in the States shooting a wedding at the time, so I had nowhere to go really, but I did leave...

Drew Forsyth: Yeah, just fly straight home. Go, "Right, I'm off to the airport. See you later." [laughter]

Paul: It was worse when she started crying on her wedding day with a bleeding head. The saving grace was that the celebrant for the ceremony turned out to be the biggest idiot I've ever encountered. He tried to be a comedian, gave a terrible service, and the couple got so annoyed with him that nobody even remembered me assaulting the bride with my camera.

Drew Forsyth: Did they think they were funny?

Paul: Thought they were funny, was giving it all that... nobody remembered me assaulting the bride.

Drew Forsyth: The blood smears on the bride's head—oh my God. [laughter] I feel like I should share a mistake now that you guys have opened up. I did a massive wedding with about 350 people at a castle location. The night before the wedding, the Father of the Bride got into a massive bar brawl and lost his front tooth. The next morning during the big "reveal" moment, he smiled at the bride with a massive gap in his teeth, and they had a huge argument. Photoshop back then wasn't what it is now, and it took me weeks to manually clone a front tooth into every single prominent photo of him giving his speech. On my first ever wedding, I was in the Rolls-Royce with the bride, and she mentioned she felt incredibly nervous. I tried to reassure her by saying, "Well, in the pictures, you don't look nervous at all," and she formats into a burst of tears and ruined her makeup. They had to delay the wedding by 40 minutes so the makeup artist could completely reset her face.

Dave: Have you ever accidentally formatted a memory card before backing it up onto the laptop? That's a classic.

Drew Forsyth: No, I've never done that. That's a mistake an inexperienced photographer would make in 2013. I did once book a whole creative production team for the wrong day on a big commercial campaign.

Dave: I've heard of wedding photographers turning up to the completely wrong church and wondering why nobody is there. The absolute dread.

Drew Forsyth: I used to have terrible wedding stress dreams about dropping a camera off a high balcony. Before a big commercial campaign now, I'll still wake up once an hour on the hour through the night. I always advise younger photographers starting out: do not go out drinking with the client the night before the shoot. From the client's point of view, the shoot is a fun day out of the office, so they'll want to buy espresso martinis. You have to draw a professional line, have one drink to relax, and then politely leave because sleep anxiety will ruin your performance the next day.

Dave: You mentioned doing guest lectures at universities. What is the main thing young photographers ask you during those talks?

Drew Forsyth: People always want to know how to figure out pricing and rates, what a day-to-day freelance schedule looks like, and what celebrities like Holly Willoughby are like in person. She was an absolute professional—she walked into the studio and introduced herself to every single member of the crew, which is a very classy move. The vast majority of high-profile people I shoot are delightful and professional. Sometimes people mistake intense focus for rudeness, but these celebrities are just time-poor and want to get the job done efficiently. I mirror their energy on set; if they want to run straight through the setups without taking a break, we go straight through.

Dave: Pricing is definitely something that just comes with industry experience.

Drew Forsyth: Yes, the mercenary answer is that you have to test the waters to see how much you can get. When you're starting out, the best thing to do is just ask the client directly what their budget is. Now, I have my portfolio reviewed regularly by industry consultants whom I trust, and I ask them what my standard day rate should be based on my current client base. Beyond the standard shoot day rate, I always tell young photographers to bill for pre-production, editing time, studio hire, assistants, makeup artists, and equipment rentals rather than letting those expenses eat into their personal fee.

Dave: I'm going to start adding an on-set masseuse to my wedding photography packages. Do you think they wear Meta glasses while doing the massage?

Drew Forsyth: Absolutely, everything is content. "Here we have Drew on the table carrying a lot of tension in his body; it's like massaging a walnut cabinet." [laughter]

Dave: I go to a sports massage therapist to treat my right shoulder because carrying heavy camera gear around all day creates a massive imbalance. I tell them not to bother touching the left side because I only use the right side of my body. We've all got our best sides. How do you avoid creative burnout and keep yourself inspired? Are you looking at a lot of other photography?

Drew Forsyth: I barely consume any contemporary photography. If I look at work that isn't very good, it annoys me, and if it's incredible, I get envious and think, "I should have come up with that idea." I love looking through classic archival photography books like Life magazine. Peter Lindbergh's last exhibition, Untold Stories, was the only photography exhibition that ever made me cry; it was spectacular. Mostly, I stay inspired by traveling, going to live gigs, and listening to music. Creative concepts usually come to me when I'm taking a long shower or going for an early morning walk through the Peak District forest. I purposely avoid looking at other photographers' work on social media because I don't want to subconsciously copy their style or get discouraged if someone else executes a similar concept first.

Dave: It naturally irks wedding photographers when a client sends a Pinterest mood board of images taken by another photographer with a completely different style, because it makes you wonder why they hired you in the first place. Or when a venue coordinator insists you take the couple's portraits in a specific spot because that's where everyone else does it.

Drew Forsyth: That instantly makes me want to avoid that spot out of principle. Last summer, I went to Paris for a long weekend specifically to shoot personal work on my X-Pan film cameras. My friends told me shooting Paris on film had been done a hundred times before, but my arrogant creative brain thought, "Well, it hasn't been shot through the artistic vision of Drew Forsyth." I ended up visiting all the classic tourist spots anyway and had a wonderful time.

Dave: There's nothing wrong with that. Looking through your portfolio, how did the shoot with the GT3 racing driver come about?

Drew Forsyth: Most of my casting comes down to two options: Instagram or networking. Instagram is a great leveler because if a subject has a modest following, you know the direct messages are going straight to their phone rather than a social media manager. I recently used Instagram to pitch a portrait project to an Antarctic explorer whom I hope to shoot in Norway next year. Having a verified profile adds instant legitimacy so they know you're the real deal. The other method is simple networking—you would be amazed how close you are to fascinating people through two degrees of separation. I told my friends I was looking to photograph people with extraordinary jobs that feel normal to them but fascinating to the public. A friend mentioned he was working with a driver named Kelvin who races GT3 cars on weekends and passed along his number. Once you shoot one high-profile subject in a specific field, like a principal ballerina, it gives you the industry cachet to approach others in that world because they see you can be trusted. People are incredibly accessible if you offer them a high-quality creative service for free to appeal to their self-image. Getting the physical access is always the hardest part of the job. I shot Professor Brian Cox backstage at the Royal Opera House last year because his tour promoter had seen my official portrait of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak taken two days before the general election. That portrait was a major turning point in my career because it signaled to high-profile clients that I could handle high-pressure, tight-turnaround assignments.

Dave: I love that whole backstage portrait series, it's brilliant.

Drew Forsyth: We shot all of those frames in the 30 minutes leading up to his performance. I love positioning my work in that raw, introspective backstage environment, whether it's surgeons, athletes, or performers. It can be a very tense time for the artist right before going on stage, especially if there were technical issues during the afternoon rehearsals. I mirror their energy completely—if they are quiet and reflective, I remain quiet and completely out of the way. I don't want to be an obstacle or a distraction right before they perform for an audience who paid for tickets and childcare.

Dave: Aside from classic archival books, are there any contemporary photographers who genuinely inspire you?

Drew Forsyth: Yes, my friend Madeline Penfold is an absolutely brilliant sports photographer. She was embedded with the US Olympic team for the Paris Olympics and shoots major international footballers. We shared an office space during the pandemic, and she is a massive inspiration. My friend Georgie Glass is an incredible commercial food photographer. I assisted her on a cookbook shoot after my breakup just to get out of the house, and her digital workflow was fascinating. She had a live camera feed of the dish and a real-time Capture One tethered feed broadcast to a client on the other side of the world who was signing off on the images instantly. My ultimate inspiration is the LA celebrity photographer Art Streiber. If you follow him on Instagram, he posts in pairs—the first image is the final polished Hollywood movie poster or magazine cover, and the second post contains a dozen detailed behind-the-scenes photos showing his exact lighting setups and crew. His transparency is amazing. During the pandemic, I paid for an online Palm Springs Photo Festival workshop with him. There were only 16 of us on the Zoom call, and he had meticulously reviewed every single one of our individual websites beforehand to critique our portfolios. He shoots serious global celebrities like Ryan Reynolds and Michael B. Jordan, yet he takes the time to personally respond to portfolio emails within an hour. His attention to operational detail is incredible—every single Peli equipment case in his lockup has a reusable whiteboard checklist taped to it so any assistant knows exactly what gear goes into which box. His iconic group portrait celebrating 100 years of Paramount Studios featuring 100 celebrities on a single stage was a massive technical blueprint for how I executed my BBC Philharmonic Orchestra shoot.

Dave: Looking at the ensemble setups on his website is unbelievable. Can I ask you one final question about the rise of generative AI tools? How do you feel about AI affecting commercial photography?

Drew Forsyth: I think it's a fascinating shift, very similar to music piracy in the early 2000s—it doesn't matter how you feel about it ethically because it's happening regardless, so you have to make your peace with it. On a practical level, the AI denoise tool in Lightroom is unbelievable and has completely changed how I shoot; I can comfortably shoot an entire project at 6400 ISO knowing the noise cleanup will be flawless. Generative AI fill in Photoshop is a brilliant tool for extending backdrops in post-production. However, looking five to ten years down the line, entry-level catalog jobs and top-end commercial modeling shoots are going to disappear. A major clothing brand recently fired their entire internal photography and makeup team to pivot entirely to AI generation. If you're a startup bootstrapping a fashion brand, why pay a crew £2,000 a day when you can take a photo of a t-shirt on a smartphone and use AI to generate a flawless lookbook around it? High-profile athletes who only have 90 seconds of availability for a commercial shoot will choose to simply license their scanned 3D facial likeness to soft drink or sportswear brands instead of showing up to a physical set. The top and bottom of the commercial market will get squeezed, leaving narrative, human-centric photography in the middle. Some of my clients are doubling down on marketing the fact that they use real people and capturing heavy behind-the-scenes video content to prove authenticity. I also use AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude by Anthropic daily to handle my emails and client scheduling, which has been an absolute game-changer for administrative efficiency.

Dave: You fired your secretary.

Drew Forsyth: Pretty much. As long as we're using it to streamline our own administrative tasks and aren't the ones on the receiving end of the job cuts, it's a fantastic tool. It gives you more time to focus purely on human craftsmanship, because brands built on heritage and artistry will always require real photography to tell their stories.

Dave: Someone could theoretically set up a fake photography portfolio website entirely using generated AI images, but they wouldn't be able to deliver that same quality on a real-world shoot because they're selling a lie. Plus, organizations like the Association of Photographers (AOP) are lobbying MPs because copyright regulations should require tech companies to opt-in rather than forcing artists to explicitly opt-out of having their intellectual property scraped for training data models.

Drew Forsyth: Exactly, tech companies are profiting off data created by photographers who went out and shot that work for free. But it's an exciting time to be at the bleeding edge of new technology, and you just have to adapt to stay relevant when the dust settles.

Dave: Yeah, there's no way you're beating it, in a way.

Drew Forsyth: No, it's the hot thing right now, but I think who knows what it's going to be like in the future. You just want to make sure that you're still around when the dust settles.

Paul: The thing is, as well, I know that a lot of young people actually have a real pushback against AI because it is seen obviously as a threat to them and their careers when they're still in school and haven't actually established themselves yet. My daughter, who's only eight, saw a segment on a children's news program about AI being dangerous and insisted I delete all the AI apps off my phone immediately. She told me, "No, dad, AI is really bad, please just delete it right away." It's wild.

Drew Forsyth: Hopefully, the next generation will keep us safe and ensure we all still have creative jobs. Until then, we can enjoy having our emails and calendars automated.

Dave: Eventually, we'll just feed old episodes into an AI model to generate this podcast for us, add 20 percent more banter, make it funnier, and remove my embarrassing failure stories. [laughter]

Drew Forsyth: People love hearing about the failures. You should publish a book called Failures by Dave.

Dave: It would probably turn out to be a total commercial failure, which would just add another chapter to the book. Well, Drew, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you.

Drew Forsyth: Great to talk to you guys. Sorry I babbled on for ages.

Dave: No, it has been one of the few interviews where I didn't even have to look at our prepared question sheet because your website portfolio is so engaging. Before we wrap up, is there anything we missed that you wanted to share?

Drew Forsyth: If people want to see more of the work, they can just find me on Instagram.

Dave: Everyone should genuinely check out his website because the fluid layout and portfolio categories are brilliant.

Drew Forsyth: I hired an amazing photography business consultant named Zoe Wishaw during the pandemic who helped restructure the user experience of my site. She organized it dynamically so clients hit Location work first, then Studio, Projects, Commissions, Motion, and then the SEO blog. I highly recommend her services.

Dave: It loads beautifully fast. I get incredibly frustrated by clunky portfolio sites that hide their email address behind long contact forms; I just want a direct email line or a mobile phone number.

Drew Forsyth: I feel like you're describing the current state of my website right now. [laughter]

Dave: One final piece of advice you mentioned is having your own headshot taken by another photographer once a year.

Drew Forsyth: Yes, it's a vital reminder of how uncomfortable it feels to sit in front of a lens, which makes you far more empathetic to your subjects when you're the one directing them. I had mine shot by the brilliant photographer Anna Snead.

Dave: Paul, you do mine and I'll do yours.

Paul: No, thank you.

Dave: I'll just travel over to the UK and get mine done professionally by Drew instead. I'll send you a low-budget Zoom screen grab of me doing two thumbs up and you can use your AI tools to fix it. [laughter] Thank you so much for coming on the show, Drew, it's been excellent. Check out all of Drew's details and portfolio links in the podcast show notes description below. We'll sign off here.

About Drew Forsyth

Drew Forsyth is a Manchester-based commercial photographer and director. He works with brands, arts organisations, and advertising agencies on location and in the studio, across the UK and internationally. Clients include the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, English National Ballet, the Hallé, Phoenix Dance Theatre, and the Science & Industry Museum.

Drew shoots commercial campaigns, environmental portraits, editorial assignments, and performance photography. He also works in motion, taking a directorial role on video content that runs alongside photography commissions. He is AOP Accredited and an RSA Fellow.

The BBC Philharmonic rebrand shoot referenced in this episode — a full orchestral group portrait for around 80 musicians, conceived as a visual sound wave — was planned over three months and executed across two shoot days in Manchester. It is one of several large-scale production commissions Drew has led for major UK cultural institutions.

For commercial photography and campaign enquiries in Manchester and the North West, Drew can be reached at drew@drewforsyth.com or +44 7791 425 591. His full portfolio is at drewforsyth.com.

Drew Forsyth

Drew Forsyth is an Award Winning Portrait Photographer & Director, working for commercial and advertising clients in the UK and around the world.

https://drewforsyth.com

Interview with ‘RAW’ Podcast

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Drew Forsyth

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Interview with ‘RAW’ Podcast

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Spring ‘26 Newsletter

Interview with the ‘PhotoBizX’ Podcast

Drew Forsyth

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Threads
Linkedin

+44(0)7791 425 591
drew@drewforsyth.com