Jen Armstrong

Everyone has dark employment days. Mine came a few years after graduation, once my stop gap to put off adulthood was over. (The bar I worked at—and dearly loved—closed, so I temporarily became a sales assistant for a concession in House Of Fraser and Harvey Nichols.) I was lucky to have an incredible manager and coworkers, but selling dresses was not for me. 

I secretly sketched and wrote poetry on the work notepads. I worked out how much time had passed by the store playlist. I imagined where I would be once I got out of there. One of the better things to come of the job was getting to know Jen Armstrong, a talented singer-songwriter. She needed some portraits—for Myspace? For Facebook? I can’t recall—so we had a photo session at my place.

Slideshow: Jen in the garden

It was golden hour. Jen barely needed direction to move into a good shot. She seemed to be super aware of herself, her angles, her incredible profile. Everything was fluid. In fact, I recall feeling a little nervous, since she approached everything so professionally and I was a charlatan with a semi-decent DSLR.

Slideshow: Jen in the "home studio"

Once the light started failing, we moved into the "home studio" I had set up. This essentially consisted of a red curtain, a 500w security light fastened to a tripod, and my Sony Alpha 200. I used a smaller light to backlight her hair. Somewhat embarrassingly, now that I look back, she also wore a lot of my homemade fascinators and jewellery. How embarrassing.

Despite the lack of equipment, skill on my part, and really much knowledge of what I was doing, I still love some of the shots we got. These are a few of the better ones.