Ian Derry has seen some of the world’s most famous faces pass before his lens. We catch up with him to talk photography.
© Ian Derry
Thanks for talking to us, Ian. To start with, how would you describe the kind of photography you do?
I would say I’m a celebrity portrait and sport advertising photographer. My background is actually in newspapers. I was staff on the Daily Mirror and I left there in 2000 – I’d just had enough of newspapers, and I wanted to start shooting portraits one to one. So that’s what I did.
I also wanted to do something a little bit more dynamic. I’d shot sport in the past, football matches and boxing for the newspaper, so I’ve got that quick eye. I didn’t want to just do events, I wanted to bring it to life in an advertising way, so that’s when I started working for people like Speedo. Now I do some female sports brands as well, and I shot Usain Bolt for Puma.
These two things go together, because the situation is that in portraiture of celebrities, you don’t make much money. It’s mostly editorial, so I make more money in syndicating the pictures for years after than I do from the actual shoot itself. So I need to find ways of advancing my income, and that’s what advertising does, and that’s how it’s worked out.
That’s not to say it doesn’t cross over – I’ve shot David Gandy for Johnnie Walker, and Charles Dance for another whiskey campaign, so it does cross over sometimes, but not all the time. Not as much as I’d like.
© Ian Derry
You must have to deal with quite a few big personalities, is that a challenge?
Well, If I’m honest – I’m going to sound quite boring now – I’ve probably photographed some of the world’s most famous people, in acting terms… and they’re always nice! I think it’s the professional attitude they have to have, the more quick and affable they are, the quicker and more professional they are, the better it’s going to be for everybody.
Still, when you meet your heroes it’s quite daunting. When I met David Bowie, for instance, it was something quite amazing. I shot Gary Oldman as well, a couple of times, and he’s one of my favourite actors of all time.
© Ian Derry
Did you get a little starstruck?
I did a bit. You’re sort of sitting there thinking, “Shit, it’s Gary Oldman!” They had an exhibition of pictures at BAFTA, and Gary Oldman came and so did John Hurt, who’s another hero of mine, and I had my picture taken with them and with my pictures of them. It was quite a special place to be.
© Ian Derry
You’ve shot promo images for Game of Thrones – I noticed when I looked through them that I recognised quite a few, as they’d popped up on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, unattributed to you. Does that sort of thing bother you?
Yes, it does. It does bother me, but these things are out of control. I don’t mind if the fan sites do it – in fairness to them they do actually ask permission. But for instance I had a situation once where a thing called Mumsnet, which is quite big on the internet, used some of my pictures, and they took all of the Game of Thrones characters, cut their heads off and put babies’ faces on them! Which I thought was completely out of order.
I do like to help people. So if it’s the Cumberbatch fan website, I’ll help them out as much as I can with outtakes and stuff like that. But it frustrates me when people just steal stuff, put it on their Tumblr, put it on their Twitter. What annoys me more though is when they manipulate it, fiddle with the colours and mess about with it so it doesn’t even represent your work. And then it goes one stage further, and they change the whole picture, and then they credit you!
© Ian Derry
And that could damage your professional reputation…
Exactly, it could indeed. But there seems to be no way out, the internet seems to just be wild. No one seems to want to take control or police it in any way.
I have a syndicating agent, and if they see stuff they will pursue people, but often you end up in a dead end so it’s kind of a waste of time.
© Ian Derry
I see on your website as well as categories for your work in advertising and portraiture, you have a section simply called ‘Concepts’. I’m intrigued – can you tell us more?
Well the reason they’re called concepts is that they don’t really fit in portraits. For instance, I did a shot for Channel 4 for the Paralympics a few years ago – for that we sat down and came up with a concept where we’d have three or four pictures of the background, which they put together to look like one, and then we photographed each individual person at different angles and then they were all comped together.
Sometimes people come to me for ideas. At the moment for Channel 4 I’ve got a new contract to do the Formula One racing, and they’ve asked me for ideas on how to do it. It’s nice when it’s like that, I much prefer when I’m asked to have some input rather than just: “We’re doing this, this is the brief” and it’s more like painting by numbers. I prefer to have creative input.
© Ian Derry
I understand you’re also planning to make a move into filmmaking?
As well as photography, because I’d never give that up, I’m trying to move into directing. I’ve just made my first short film, which is called Felix. It’s had about 300,000 views already [you can see Ian’s film here].
We talked about ideas and creative input earlier, and essentially that’s what a director does – come up with ideas and make them come to life. So it’s like a natural progression for me to do that. For instance, Felix is a yoga master who I originally shot for an ad campaign for Fujitsu. I thought it would make an interesting film, and wanted to make a video but Fujitsu weren’t really interested at that point. So I made it myself. I got a director of photographer, a sound man, a studio, lighting. And all I did was direct; I didn’t touch the camera at all. It’s a direction I really want to go in.
© Ian Derry
Ian Derry was speaking to Jon Stapley.
You can see more of his work at ianderry.com. Ian is in the process of of editing his second film, Johanna, a short film about about a world record freediver who dives under ice. The film was shot in northern Finland and will hopefully be finished in May 2016.