5 June, 2015

A shoot with Darrin Zammit-Lupi

Darrin is an excellent photographer, his most renowned work is ISLE LANDERS which covers the stories about the migrants from Africa. His work is a part of European history.

He had an solo exhibition last year in December. Before the exhibition, the magazine Sunday Circle wanted to do a story about him and they needed some good portraits of him. The magazine already has some photographers who they work with but they thought about Darrin is a very good photographer and being in the field for so many years, they asked him if he would like to recommend someone to take the portraits for him.

Darrin asked me.

One day I met Darrin, he told me about the magazine and said, “Would you do it?” Imagine the good old 17th century Dutch painter Rembrandt, asked another painter to paint his portrait. How stressful the painter would be? Darrin didn’t want to put pressure on me, he said to me that it would be o.k. if I didn’t want to do it, he would understand.

“Of course I’ll do it. I’m glad that you ask me.” I said.

“That’s great.” Darrin seemed relieved.

I took the job happily. I am confident about what I do. I can take good portraits for everyone. If I fail, I would try it again and again.

We had fun during the photo shoot. David from Sunday Circle came to the shoot, input their ideas and it was great. David and Darrin are friends for a long time, they joked a lot and it was fun. There were shots when Darrin holding his camera and looked through the view finder. He had the chance to click away and it was like two photographer’s duel — we both were shooting.

There was a moment that the two guys were whispering and I was concentrating on adjusting my camera setting. Later Darrin sent me a footage and found out he was taking a video. It was funny, here is the link to the video:

(If you can’t see the video, click here.)

Darrin, Sunday Circle and I are all happy about the result. I was glad to see they chose the same one as I would choose to be the cover photograph.

After the magazine was published, Darrin got so many good comments from women, so many swear words from men. ( According to what Darrin said, the swear words mean well and they were compliments.) His colleagues were calling him, “James or Bond.” It lasted about a month people still were talking about Darrin’s portrait.

One day a client who knows Darrin came to my studio, I showed her the magazine cover of Darrin, she said me, “I thought it’s Darrin’s self-portrait. It’s your work? Well done Amanda.”

I think it’s another way of a compliment. 🙂