jessica
I shot Jessica Chastain at Toronto International Film Festival - TIFF. It was my first time inside a real film festival, I had managed to convince a photographer from Associated Press that I had met at Cannes that he needed my help. He probably didn’t, but I put myself in Toronto during the festival so I he let me follow him around.
It was a lot of running between the poshest hotels in town and photographing whatever director or actor was in the running for 5 minutes. I saw what it was like to be shown a rather grey room, given 2 minutes to “set up” and then 3 minutes to photograph the talent and make the space, and most importantly, the talent look red carpet worthy.
Jessica was a little different, she was walking the red carpet, not posing for him. TIFF is fairly small carpet so the photographer went to take his main position. I didn’t have much to do so I was going to hang around and wait to grab a beer with him afterwards. Instead he handed me his spare body with a 70-200mm lens on and said to snap away from the crowd.
I did what I could and got shots of her getting out of her car, interacting with the waiting fans etc. The layout of TIFF also allows you to watch them be interviewed as the various famous people make their way down the carpet to see a film they’ve watched many times before. I followed her journey through way too many interviews where Jessica smiled her way through various questions. As she got to the last position with CTV, the presenter started asking her something. As this happened I found a small wall which gave me a good foot of extra height. This is one of those moment where the universe lines up. As I stood above everyone, Jessica took a second to think of her answer to a question, and her eyes met mine. I smiled as I raised the camera and I managed to get a clean shot of her looking right down the lens mid interview.
Considering this was my first time trying to play pretend as a press photographer, it taught me the importance of luck. But mostly the fact that you do in fact, make your own luck. I didn’t have to ask to assist the photographer, I didn’t have to offer to wait around for him, I didn’t even have to follow her as she made her way down the carpet.
But all those things happened - and now I have the shot. Looking forward to the next time.
