The Round Blog

Published assignment!

I am a great supporter of the digital age, nevertheless feeling the paper under my skin has always been a fantastic feeling. The books, with their scent of paper and ink, always attracted the attention of a digital man like me. Moreover now that my attention is drawn to photography and to see our own photos published, one thing is to see them in some website or in some PDF files, but feeling the paper carrying your photo under the skins of your finger is completely another thing, another emotion.

For our second publication we were contacted from the magazine HER, a Bulgarian publication. This time, as it happened for our first time, we were seen on flickr, but this time the magazine editor was not interested in reusing an already published photo, they wanted to offer me an assignment. The job was pretty simple, some shots of a Bulgarian lady living in London for a series of interviews based on successful women living abroad. The editor wanted us to portray her in the streets of London, but without covering the stereotypical landmark of this city. I have always read that location scouting is a very hard task while shooting outside, luckily our experience in Street Photography and the countless mile walking up and down this beautiful city made this task exceptionally easy.

I have also to say that being a foreigner myself I have always been impressed by the differences between the colours and the buildings of London and those of the European cities. The idea of shooting close to Seven Dials, framing the shot with some dark red bricks, was immediately accepted by our subject.

Plamena Petkova, the very kind lady we portrayed, has been a fantastic subject. A good smile and an initial shyness that were covering a professional woman, with a great strength in her eyes.

I promised her we would have needed three quarters of hour to have everything done, and we went over of just few minutes, counting an initial briefing and a good coffee. Plamena has been a fantastic subject: in few minutes she relaxed in front of our cameras and she did not mind the people storming around our flashes in the streets close to Covent Garden. Few days after the session I had sent the edited photos to the magazine and few days go I received the magazine. It has been a real pleasure to work for HER and for Ms Petkova.