Jamie Oliver
GQ Food & Drink Awards

What an awesome fun shoot this was – Jamie Oliver photographed for British GQ to celebrate his lifetime achievement award at the GQ Food and Drink Awards. Taking inspiration form Philippe Halsman’s incredible image ‘Dali Atomicus’ we updated the idea for Jamie using an Italian restaurant as our starting point. It’s not easy getting something like this to all come together, but thankfully Mr Oliver was brilliant at balancing on a chair whilst pouring his tea with perfect accuracy, and I had an awesome team behind me.

So what ingredients do you need for a shoot like this?

• 1 Jamie Oliver
• 1 photographer
• 1 stylist
• 1 prop stylist
• 1 art director (slightly hung-over from a Christmas party)
• 3 assistants dressed head to toe in black
• a handful of crumpled napkins
• a pair of salt and pepper shakers
• 1 reinforced chair that can hold a national hero
• 1 table cloth
• 1 menu
• 1 bucket of tea
• 1 teapot
• a bunch of flowers
• a good pinch of luck

Of course having the right ingredients is only half the challenge; you still have to actually make it happen. So after travelling to the other side of London at 7am we settled down to a day of rigging salt shakers up with fishing wire, finding the perfect way to spill a vase of flowers all over the floor and discovering the best poses for standing on a chair that’s falling over.

It turns out that Jamie Oliver is really good at pouring things, he can hit just about anything with tea from a pot. I couldn’t believe how at ease he was balanced on a falling over chair whilst I told him to do various ridiculous poses.

A massive thank you to the whole team involved:

Robin Key – Picture Editor
Keith Waterfield – Art Director
Stylist – Halima O’Donnell
Prop Stylist – Dawn Weller
Groomer – Julia Bell
Assistant – Oliver Mayhall
Assistant – Angela Dennis
Assistant – Alex Ingram

Behind the scenes film:
Mateo Notsuke – Producer
Lloyd Willacy – Filming and Editing