August 2021

These shoots were for an advertorial for Pinterest. The client wanted to show how senior creatives in the media and advertising industry use Pinterest to promote brands and build networks.

Like many photographers I use Pinterest primarily to create quick mood boards for shoot ideas and looks that I can share with a client or the photo team. But Karen Blackett and Rob Pierre, both high profile CEO’s in the advertising industry, use it for creative promotion as well as inspiration.

Karen Blackett, is very impressive, having risen to CEO of MediaCom and now UK CEO of Group M its global parent company, is one of the most influential people in the advertising industry.

Rob Pierre is co founder and CEO of Jellyfish a global digital partner to some very big brands including Google.

We were still shooting outdoors so the choices were parks near where they work. Rob’s offices are in The Shard so we were in some small park in Bermondsey, and Karen is based in Chiswick so we shot in Chiswick park.

The Guardian Labs styling for this was a portrait and various incidental shots to give a sense of place, which they run overlapping in their house style. Oddly Chiswick park had a bunch of easels to frame the location of old photos of the park, and in a random serendipity there was a painting class going on in the park in Bermondsey. So the frame / easel / picture idea slipped into some of the shots.