My first Job for the London Sunday Times was to photograph the Bee Gees. I was expecting an easier first job rather than a high profile portrait. This made me pretty nervous because if I screwed up I wouldn’t work for the Sunday Times again.

The photo editor wanted studio style portraits, but the band was in a small hotel room with no space for setting up lights and a background . I was allotted a short time slot between other journalists and photographers interviewing and shooting them. I needed to find a space that would work and managed to borrow the hotel ballroom for my setup. I ended up getting about 5 minutes to shoot Maurice, Robin and Barry.

My favorite shot is the black-and-white version above which I used in my Portfolio. The Times published a colour version shown below.

I kept a Polaroid book back in the day and saved a couple from this shoot showing another pose before I got them in an order that I liked.

The contact sheet shows some different variations including the crop I chose for my portfolio. Barry and Maurice are goofing off a bit in some of the shots which is fun to see.

I guess the photo editor was happy with the photos. I ended up shooting for the Sunday times a number of times, including shooting Margaret Thatcher. Once I moved to the US I shot for them a few more times. My last shoot was a portrait of Erin Brockovich which was also my very last job I shot on film.