Paul Rider

Day 91 of Project Portrait. Next up we have Paul Rider. Paul is a creative director at We Are Social. I’ve known Paul for years as we both started at ShortList Magazine together way back in 2007. I remember us sitting on the freelancers desk together in that dingy office in Islington. We both moved to Wired afterwards - and have stayed in touch ever since. Photographing Paul was an absolute joy. We both totally geeked out on our love for beautiful, considered photography - he’s even had his portrait taken by Dan Winters - see my previous shot for more on him. This was taken in the We Are Social offices, which had an amazing array of walls with great textures and muted colours. There were about six or seven photos that I loved during this shoot, but it was this one, and the ever so slightly out of focus face that jumped out of me. It was also a great learning experience as Paul directs photo shoots for a living and knew all the cool ways to frame each shot. I’ve also learned over the past few months that I’m a sucker for photos in focus and even get upset when I’ve used a too narrow depth-of-field meaning parts of people’s features aren’t razor sharp. But with this one, the slight blur adds a lovely warmth to the image that I don’t think I could have got if it had been any other way.
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