Photography can lead you into all sorts of strange places that you wouldn't normally visit. Over recent years, my 'office for the day' has included the cockpit of a police helicopter, a snow-capped mountain in the Arctic Circle and a London sightseeing bus crammed full of dogs! For this commission though, my office for the day turned out to be just that, an office. Actually, to be more precise, it was a boardroom.

I was shooting a portrait of a chairman and it wasn't until I arrived at the location did I discover that the boardroom wasn't as big as you may have expected. What's more, I had a very limited time with the subject, just ten minutes to shoot multiple portraits. This is actually pretty common with jobs of this type. After all, chairman don’t have the time to stand around for pictures, they have business to run!

My creative salvation came in the form of the boardroom table. I noticed straight away that the cool looking (and no doubt expensive) table had a mirrored element in the middle. I sat the chairman at the end of the table, right in the centre to make use of his reflection. One Lencarta strobe fitted to a softbox was used to deliver some soft, but not completely gentle, light.

In post-production, I sharpened up the image for that classic ‘business portrait’ style and the image was published in Automotive Management, which is published by Bauer Media. So, all in all, a good day at a rather plush office… I wonder where the next location will be!