Now and then I get what feels like a one-of-a-kind commission, and photographing Jesse at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance was one of them.

Jesse is 18 and an astonishingly good musician. He is also autistic.

I had spoken to his mum a number of times as part of the planning for the session. Although communicative, his preference was to work through her for the majority of the planning and for much of the shoot. When we had first spoken, she’d talked with me about Jesse’s nature and assured me that any apparent lack of smiles, passion, enthusiasm etc. shouldn’t be taken as a reflection of the success of our shoot, it’s just how his condition can manifest. I’d assured her that as a photographer I wasn’t a brash David Bailey type. That instead, I typically took a quiet and measured approach to my portraiture, a working style that would probably suit Jesse quite well.

The portrait session took place in Greenwich, at Trinity Laban’s rehearsal spaces in the grounds of the old Royal Naval College, just across the river from the City of London. The light in the room was incredible, the evening sun reflecting off the building opposite and streaming in through the high windows.

We spent a short time using this light to get some standing headshots. Everyone is uncomfortable with this type of portrait and Jesse seemed more comfortable being closer to the piano.

I like the vibe of this portrait, the contrast of a modern young man in a classically architected space and yet a serene calmness to how the two times merge. He seems deeply comfortable, the piano and extension of him. Jesse had chosen this room to work in as it’s his favourite rehearsal space.

My big regret of this shoot is not bringing my audio recorder with me. After taking some softly directed but staged shots, I asked Jesse to play and said I’d work on making images around him. I wish I had a recording of the next hour or so of some of the most incredible musicianship I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing up close. As a Christian, Jesse believes his talent is a gift from God, and credits his faith as an important part of his creativity and musicality.

As the sun went down outside, the room was filled with classical, jazz, and moments of the blues. It washed over me as I photographed, my daughter sat with Jesse’s mum. Listening and talking quietly about schools and GCSEs.

Although I’d bought a full lighting kit with me the room was so amazing I didn’t set it up. It would have been too cumbersome and too much of a distraction from the mood. As the sun dipped I introduced a little flash on a stand to add some subtle fill light. This was easy to move as I changed position and allowed the shoot to flow naturally. With a remote on my camera I was able to create flash-lit and naturally lit versions of every shot.

I think I shot for about an hour, although time got lost. Slowly working around Jesse as the light changed, his music washing around us until I felt I’d got what we needed, so I stood and watched. And when Jesse was done, he was done. The last notes faded into the wood of the room, the sun dipped a little lower still, and the audience of three offered a grateful ripple of applause.

I don’t typically impose a time limit on portrait sessions. Placing a limit of one-hour on a session is, to my mind, an unnecessary creative constraint. A photo shoot is a collaboration between the photographer and the sitter so it’s better to just let things run their course, to allow both parties to be comfortable with the work being made and for each party to experiment a little.

In this session with Jesse I experimented with some Lensbaby filters to try and capture the focussed yet dreamlike state his playing seemed to put him in. The Lensbabys are more like refractors or ‘prisms-on-sticks’ than full on lens filters. They float in front of the lens with the aid of magnets and can be moved to adjust their effect. Used subtly they can introduce a little blur to a corner of the image, in more extreme cases they reflect parts of the room that are out of shot back into the image. The results are always curious but not always entirely successful. They are a playful tool though and I liked working them into some of the images from this series.

My favourite image from the shoot is this final one, it just captures the serene nature of the environment and some Photoshop cleanup of wires, dust, and fire escape signs above the doors gives puts Jesse in his element. I hope one day to see this in a book or on a gallery wall.

A Piano Portrait

MPTS Shooting the show that changed my career.