usher
Yeah, it’s ya boy Ush, Honestly, I wish 12 year old me knew that I was going to meet Usher one day. He would have gone crazy.
This shoot came as Usher was perfoming a Live Lounge session before he went to the real deal and played the Halftime show at the Super Bowl. Who knows which was the bigger deal to him. This was another shoot where the higher ups I was trying to impress with the 3D photography had given me a strict 3 minutes with him to myself. But this meant I was given the studio, time to set up and actually make a plan. The actual shoot time isn’t important if you’ve got a fully formed idea and can be ready the second your model arrives.
My brother was working at the BBC at this time so I managed to wrangle him to be my stand in model for usher before I started. I also wanted to give him a reason to be in the room when I shot the big man.
My moment came and Usher came through the door to me. We smiled and sat down and I launched into my pitch of what we’d be doing. I’d put together a small moldboard of 6 images, but importantly they were all images of him. He laughed at this and nodded that he understood. As I was shooting in 3D I wanted to make sure I got portraits with good depth to them so I had him use his hands a lot. This gave me the chance to play with being able to see through his fingers and around them, really selling the depth.
I barely remember shooting but he was a total pro. Held the poses I needed for there 3D whilst the camera made its 11 second journey past him. I then grabbed as many normal stills as I could before my internal stopwatch went off. I felt that I had the frames I need, so I stopped, put my camera down, held out my fist and just said “Done”. Usher smiled and gave me a fist bump before he stood up and left the room. His PR smiled at me on the way out, I think my stopwatch was accurate.
After this all there was to do was enjoy the show. I followed him into the Live Lounge studio and photographed the rehearsal they do before the show goes live. I realized my brother was still in the studio so I took the last chance I could ran back and told him to follow me. I brought him into the main Radio 1 studio and told him to stand in the corner. And thats how I got to watch Usher perform to 10 people with my brother, just days before he did it to millions around the world.
