Mr Paparazzi. Darryn Lyons
snapped me with Caine, Winner and Roger Moore. I was always a huge James Bond fan and meeting Agent 007 was truly an ambition realised. I look back at that photo with some regret. Maybe I can get my tech guys to get rid of that pathetic little moustache I had …
As well as cutting my teeth on the night circuit, I was also shooting a lot of studio images for The Mail. I met some interesting people, but lining them up against a background was too boring for me. Innovation is my watchword. The pop group Right Said Fred came in for a shoot just as their huge hit ‘Deeply Dippy’ was charging up the charts, and I was struggling to produce something memorable. To the horror of the studio manager, after a lot of thought I ended up taking a knife to the background and slashing it into a huge star shape, open down the middle. I shot them emerging from the star, and it looked brilliant. This plumber and his mate who had suddenly become famous really looked like pop stars. I syndicated a couple of negs myself and made pretty much every teeny magazine. In fact, that picture was published all over the world.
‘If people relax and work with you, then the shot is always better’
Relating to the subject is important. If people relax and work with you, then the shot is always better. Many of the professional models really know how to work a camera, and shooting beautiful women has always been a passion of mine. I had the opportunity once to take pictures of Cindy Crawford on a freelance shoot. While we got some incredible images, I missed a huge scoop. Cindy kept disappearing into the back room of her suite and talking to someone. I could just see a grey-haired head and thought it was some old bloke. Later it became obvious that it had been Richard Gere. Shame we didn’t nail that shot. The story of their liaison wasn’t out at that point and it would have been worth a fortune.
Cindy is enormously tall and has quite a ‘horsy’ face, but she photographs amazingly well. There are lots of women like that: they just shag the camera. Look at Sophia Loren, Liz Hurley, Kate Moss and so on. They are real stars, but the problem with modelling is that if you have the looks, then other personality deficiencies are not important. That explains the success of models like Naomi Campbell. I’ve never taken a shot of her when there wasn’t an incident. For every person like her, however, there will be someone wonderful. I got to shoot Cheryl Ladd for The Mail; by then she had taken over from Farrah Fawcett-Majors as my main fantasy. I could hardly keep the camera still.
Simple jobs with lovely people were by no means the staple. I got myself into serious trouble at the High Court during the Jason Donovan libel trial that had resulted from The Face magazine claiming he was gay which Donovan contested and won. Perched above the masses on my longest ladder I had a brilliant view, but I ended up getting arrested on assault charges. A police superintendent was jumping around in front of me demanding that I get down and out of the way. It was a simple situation – I was either going to get the picture or not, and failure never really appealed to me. The situation quickly descended into farce as he accused me of hitting him. I ended up in the slammer for hours. I got the shot off, though. The paper sent a bike to the nick to collect the film. I was shitting myself, but The Mail had excellent lawyers and I ended up with a suspended sentence – and the front page. I wanted to fight the sentence, but in the end we lay down just to bring the affair to a close.
The Mail always looked after me. I was grateful and I respected them. David English and managing editor Brian Vine offered to sponsor me when it looked like my visa was going to run out. They thought I was important to the operation of the paper and would have been there for me, but in the end I married Mel and no longer needed the visa.
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