When you’re an artist people know you for your art. Your art is your front of house and very very often artists become a name, screened from public gaze by their art. That can in itself be a brand. Anonymity can fuel fervent interest in who you are and what makes you tick. Banksy would be a perfect example.

But largely people want to know who the artist is and have some engagement with their creative process. A glimpse of the drive that pushes their imaginations and skills to produce their art can help with increasing their following and interest in investing in their pieces.

Nicola Godden came to me some years ago needing studio based photos of her Icarus bronzes. They are particularly striking and range in scale from 18 inches to, well my studio ceiling is 9’ high and I’ve had two in here not far off ceiling height. Nicola does I believe have an outdoor installation reaching four meters so the scale range is pretty wide.

Icarus bronzes are not Nicola’s only focus and I have photographed a variety of her creations but photos of Nicola herself have been harder to encourage. She did ask me to photograph her with her daughter and we got some lovely photos, but they’re not for her work profile and that was where we were stuck. Then one day out of the blue Nicola wants me to photograph her for some branding photos.

Branding photoshoots are not new by a long shot but they have started to become more fashionable with many more small business and enterprise driven people. Branding shoots are more than headshots or portrait sessions and are designed to tell your story and create a visual narrative. In Nicola’s case we wanted to show her in her studio space, so the aim was for some obvious portraits sprinkled with candids of her working.

One of the thrills I get from being a photographer is seeing behind the curtain. I’m fascinated when seeing the processes going on behind the scenes. I like to see people working at their jobs, being their creative selves, directing operations, making the world around us work when so often we walk past, oblivious to the mechanics which provide us with our lives. Being able to access, usually by invitation, the back room activity as well as the ‘front of house’, gives a braoder appreciation of how we all function to create the the world in which we live.

In Nicola’s case I got to see her studio and let’s be honest, any artist studio is going to be a visual feast.