Duncan Raban

The Real Spirits of the Press Association

Today I was photographing some portraits of corporates, who work at the London Press Association, for their new website. At our first meeting I told them that I thought that the portraits of people on company websites do not reflect who that person really is and that companies would be better to have photographs that capture the true spirit and soul of the person.

The Press Association is a fantastic company full of hundreds of wonderful people and they wanted portrait photographs that would inspire new customers to really be excited to meet the person in the portrait.

So I had a think and said how about we photograph everyone with something they truly love and adore? I asked them what their biggest passion or hobby was and they came alive and all said what they loved most and this in turn made for an interesting conversation.

I always ask people I meet what their biggest passion in life is and people really open up; they were all now animated, as they were more relaxed.

I knew now I was going to photograph them all with the item they loved most and if it was a sport I would get them to wear the kit they use and shoot them in motion doing their sport.

Some loved drawing, some loved chocolate cake. One loved surfing, so he was ordered to bring his surfboard (all 10 foot of it) to work.

I took them outside the building and we had such fun, they were all laughing out loud especially MR SURF who I made stand on his board in the road I asked him to really feel the waves out in a tropical blue see like a Hawaii five surfing pose, this made a great picture with the buses and taxis passing by. This is why I believe its so important to capture the pure spirit of every person I photograph.