Dr Megaphone

Dear Kim

I'd like to have an interesting headshot for professional purposes and I'd like to get a non-boring portrait of my ten year old son.

Would these be things you could do?

I love emails like this!

We met up for hot chocolate to discuss what non-boring might look like, and during the discussion it turned out Dr Ian Johnston also has a touring show of science, music and entertainment, along with his son, Sandy, and local musican and songwriter, Alan McClure. So a publicity shot for “Dr Megaphone” would also be required.

Ideas were bounced around and we settled on the concept of the three of them standing at a table with various bits of science equipment on it, possibly with smoke or bubbles coming out of jars.

Shortly before the shoot, another email exchange:

IAN: I have just ordered 20kg of dry ice which will arrive with me on Friday and add eerie mysticism to our get-together on Saturday.

ME: I hope you know how to use it - I never have…

IAN: How hard can it be? I used to use liquid nitrogen in work, by the gallon. Dry ice is warm!

I also invited make-up artist, Jade Jamieson, who worked with me on the Manga and Comlongon Castle shoots last year. She set about applying a blackened face look on Sandy to imply he’d been exposed to explosive experiments.

It was a lot of fun. Bottles were filled with water and food colouring and then a few seconds before each shot, cubes of dry ice were poured into them, with an extra large scoop into a cauldron of water up on the shelf behind them to add an extra bit of atmosphere.



Once the photos were edited, I alerted Andrea Thompson of Dumfries and Galloway Life magazine, who then arranged an interview which has now appeared in the April edition:



It's shoots like this when I'm reminded why I decided to become a photographer.