So I got in my car this morning, and after the habitual stop at Costa's to wake myself up, I arrived at a set of wooden security gates at the entrance to Rosie's house. As they opened and I drove in, I parked the little Mini Cooper between the Ferrari and the Porsche and was greeted by a pair of dogs who were both bigger than the car I was too nervous to get out of. They are, for the record, named Panther and Bear; which did little to quell my worries about them eating me, or even worse, my camera. But I do them an injustice, as they are two of the sweetest and funniest dogs you are ever likely to meet. One, the aforementioned Panther, is a labrador the colour of milk chocolate and the other, Bear, a Rottweiler with a head larger than my camera bag. Luckily for me, they seemed to like me and I was allowed to proceed towards the converted barn with an furry escort on either side. However, I digress, as it was not them I was here to work with.

Rosie makes a mean cup of coffee (even if it did expire around the time of the Russian revolution (1917 for anyone who cares). And it was over this cup of coffee that we spent at least the first two hours of hour shoot doing nothing else but sitting there talking. See this is the problem when a model and a photographer get on so well - they never take any bloody photos. I arrived at 11am and it was at least 1pm before I even fired off a test frame. We talked about everything, from the size of the universe to the problems with contemporary music. She listened, I spoke, I listened, she spoke. We talked about the big things, the little things, and the big things. I read her some of my book (Im an author too), we sat, we joked, we got sat on by dogs. The only thing we didn't do, was take photos.

As the hour arrived somewhere around 2pm, we finally decided to take some photos and even though the light was incredibly erratic, we managed to capture some fairly authentic looking images in the various rooms in her house. Actually, its not so much of a house, rather a villa. Its a huge barn conversion with original beams littering the ceilings and a light and airy feel with allows an enormous amount of light to perforate the windows and cut its way across the room. We worked in her lounge, her landing, her hallway, her bathroom - everywhere. We got about 400 photos in all and in my opinion, they are better than the previous set we did the other day. They are more real, more believable and I think the viewer will feel part of the image. I think you will feel like her boyfriend. And speaking of her boyfriend...