On the day of the shoot, typically, rain was in the forecast, but our moods were full of sunshine since we were getting to photograph the great form that is Cate Harrington again. [Yeah, that’ll brighten your whole day.] Two hours later — after a trip across London on the subway and a train journey up to the Midlands — we arrived at the local train station. We grabbed a cab and arrived at the studio about forty minutes before our booked time. At that point we noticed that the studio covered the "top" of a converted mill on the second floor. Okay. We waited back out on the main street and Lee, the owner of the studio, shortly arrived. Whereupon I greeted him, and we headed up to the studio space. We got a quick tour of the studio, which from the pictures on the website, I thought would be much bigger. But no worries, as I would later learn, for in this case, size really doesn’t matter. Just as Lee had made some tea, I got a text from Cate saying she was here, so I headed down to greet her. [You know, that’s what we miss in America. … When you get to a studio in Los Angeles, no one ever makes you tea.]
Walking across the parking area behind the building, I smiled as I saw Cate taking out a very big bag from her car. I wasn’t smiling about the bag so much as seeing Cate in person again after such a long time. I heard her say that I hadn’t changed and still had the cheeky grin. [Hmm. In our opinion the 247 team has definitely changed since 2008, but, then again, Maverick doesn’t usually give any of us a check later in the day either. Also, odds seem extremely good that Cate happens to be a much nicer person than I am too.] I was enjoying this shoot already, and it hadn’t started yet. Of course I helped take Cate’s bag up the stairs as we headed to the studio. Lee greeted Cate and they caught up with the changes in the lives since they’d last met. Lee gave Cate a quick tour of the studio, and Cate was saying she had great outfits for this and that set. [What happened to all that prior planning? Did they not cover this? … Amazing what one forgets in the presence of a beautiful woman. … Some day we should publish the lists of questions Maverick “meant to” ask in his interviews but somehow “forgot” when he got in front of her naked. Hey, it happens. We understand.]
Now, Cate looks great anyway, but since the last time we’d seen her in front of a camera, Cate’s grown more into her looks if you get my meaning. [Even if we do not, we remain perfectly happy to look at all the pictures and video so that we might discern your meaning from a careful analysis of them. We’re givers. We know.] Shooting her when she was around 20, Cate was a beautiful, young girl. Now, she’s 24, and she’s morphed into a beautiful, young woman. We’ve seen her at parties between then and now, but when we looked at the new sets we’d shot, a difference between then and now struck us that we hadn’t noticed before. [Yeah. That happens too.]
Now Lee was very good in that he gives people fifteen minutes before and after their booked time for setting up, packing up etc., so with both Cate’s and the location’s papers completed we headed into the shoot. Since this was my first experience shooting in this studio and everything that comes with it, I decided to think of it as more of a learning experience. In practical terms this means that you won’t see as much BTS coverage as we would normally take, but as we would discover going over footage on the trip back down to London, Cate would (to use an American Baseball sporting term) hit a home run in everything she attempted on this day. [For the record, all of us here remain willing to go watch Cate play baseball any time we are nearby.]
If future plans come to pass with another well known UK model, we might also find ourselves back at the studio again. Since we will have already shot there, we’ll know better how to plan things to really maximise our time. [Somehow finding different women to pose naked for you makes practice seem not so bad, really.]
The first set we’d planned to shoot was the retro rock set. We let Cate get into her outfit in the changing room while Lee and I worked out the lighting of the set .(Yeah, I know, that damn light thing … .), At least I had the idea of leaving one of the camshow cameras on in the dressing room in order to film Cate as she got ready. Don’t worry: We told her the camera would be filming. [Aw, dang. That could have been really fun. … True, Cate would likely never speak to Maverick again once she found out, but none of us live in London. That’s a risk we’d be willing to take.] We didn’t review the footage of her changing till we got back, but believe me when we say Cate played up to the lens while she was changing and even gave our camera a new name. [Hmm. OK. So we might forgive them. …We will probably also read page two. … Long sucker, this entry. Ain’t it? … Cate gets Maverick very excited, which makes a lot of sense really.]