Claire Pepper

Aged 23, Claire Pepper is a multi-award winning London-based freelance, with an impressive portfolio and a style all her own. She speaks to David Land

So much of my work has come through assisting", says Claire Pepper. "Photographers I work with pass work onto me. Having a website is important too, but probably the biggest thing is just to take lots of pictures, because the more work you have, the better it gets. There are loads of people who want to be photographers but who don't have anything to show, so if you
do have something to show, it marks you out.

"My parents aren't particularly bohemian or anything, but they're very supportive. I've always been quite arty, so I don't think my fam- ily ever expected me to have a conventional employer. My brother's an athlete, so he's gone into something unconventional as well."

Born and raised in Hertfordshire, Pepper lived in the Seychelles between the ages of six and 10, while her father worked on a radio station there. "I always took pictures there", she says, "lots of beaches and turtles. I'd send them to England for processing, and it would take about two months to get them back. I had a 110 camera – one of those little flat ones - that I think my grandma found in her loft and gave to me. I threw it away when I was about 13, which is a massive regret, because I didn't realise I was going to become a photographer, and I would like to have it now.

"I was interested in art in my teens. When I was about 17, I started taking photos for my artwork, and also pictures of my friends who were in bands, boys skateboarding: all the sort of stuff you do at that age.

"I did an art foundation at Camberwell, and specialised in photography because it was much more interesting than painting. I'd also realised by then that I wasn't particularly good at painting, sculpture or drawing. I was quite into them at school, but then there were about 400 people on my foundation who were all amazing, and I realised that they weren't really my niche, but that photography was.

"Then I did a photography degree at Brighton, where we did a lot of darkroom colour printing, using the RA-4 process. I'm lucky, in that I'm old enough to have caught the end of film when I was at college."
It seems surprising that Pepper, who graduated in 2008, should have been taught darkroom processing. I put this to her.

"Colleges and universities took a while to catch up with the whole digital thing", she says, "largely due to funding, and maybe because the tutors weren't working digitally so they weren't teaching it. All the way through university, I shot pretty much everything on film. I started work- ing on digital in my last year, but I still shot my final project on 5x4 colour film.

"It has definitely been advantageous to me to learn silver photography. When people start learning photography now, they learn Photoshop at the same time, so they think about Photoshop when they're shooting. Whereas, if you start learning with film, you don't do that: you think about the picture, and Photoshop comes later, which is proba- bly as it should be. But I can't afford to shoot on film anymore; it's not commercially viable, especially when you're starting out."

Pepper assisted all the way through university, largely for commercial photographer Chris Gloag. "I found him on Google and sent him an email", she says. "He gets lots of speculative emails, but he liked me because I'd photographed bands when I was a teenager, and because I had a website with hundreds of photos on it. He thought it was good that I'd done something before I started university, so he took me on."

Upon graduation, Pepper spent a couple of months working in a café in Brighton, then made the move to London. "I knew that it was really important for my development as a photographer", she says. "My boyfriend was living here, and I moved in with him, so it was quite an easy task.

"Then I got a job as an assistant in Street Studios. I sent emails round to lots of studios, but Street was pretty much the only one that responded. Even though I'd done a lot of assisting in Brighton I'd heard real horror stories about studio assisting, but they were actually really good. They were long days, but they'd pay overtime: it was something like £50 for an eight hour day, and then overtime. It was generally just making cups of tea and painting backdrops.

"I worked there for a bit, but it was just at the point when the recession was really starting to hit. They didn't really need that many staff, and I was one of the new ones, so that petered out fairly quickly.

"It was a shame, but I got a bit of experi- ence from working there, and a bit more knowledge about studio kit and the practicalities of assisting. So I went into freelance assisting, but was working as a waitress as well until last May.

"I registered as self-employed pretty much when I moved to London. It's not too complicated. When I registered, they invited me on a course about being self-employed. They're free and really good, so I would recommend them. They're very boring, but you do get to know where you stand."

Pepper continues to assist Chris Gloag, and has worked for a variety of other photographers, including Alison Jackson, who is well known for her Lookalikes series; advertising photographer Matt Harris, with whom she's been photographing baby products; sports fashion photographer Eddie MacDonald; and fashion photographers Annie Bundfuss and Timur Celikdag. In addition, she does production assisting work with the Lisa Pritchard Agency. "You don't really get to be involved with the photographer in any way", she says. "You just sort out lunches, organise people, and generally help out. Most of the things I assist on are quite small scale, but the Lisa Pritchard Agency does big shoots, where you've got a team of 20-30 people, which is good experience.

"Fashion photography is an over saturated market, but so is photography in general. And someone has to do it. There are new photographers that come up every year, and people do make it. You've got to think that, with the right combination of luck, tal- ent and hard work, there's no reason why it can't be you. There's no harm in being ambitious, especially when you're young and don't have kids to look after, so I can do what I want and see how it goes.

"I also started shooting a lot more recently. I really wanted to get into fashion, but I didn't have a fashion portfolio, so I began doing a lot of test shoots. Most of the work in my book has been done over the last year. You have to have a good team with fashion, because it's a collaborative process: you can't do it by yourself. I found a couple of stylists, and hair and make up people at www.ModelMayhem.com, and once you start meeting people then you meet others.

"I started organising shoots for my portfolio, and I've been doing that up until now. I had quite an intense burst in the spring, when I produced a lot of work, and that's been the most valuable thing I've done in the last year. I learned so much from doing that and it being a non-pressured environment - I didn't have a brief or a client to please - I just had to try out things technically and creatively."

I comment that, looking at her work, Pepper seems to not only have got the photography right, but to have all the other elements, like styling, hair and make up, right as well. "That's totally down to being lucky enough to find good teams to work with", she says. "You have to be really selective, and think about whom you work with. It will let your work down if you have bad make up or hair. It's important to work with people who have the same vision as you, developing their work in the same way, because within fashion photography there are so many different styles, and it's important to have your own identity. If you're working with someone who's barking up a completely different tree, then that's going to be difficult to achieve.

"I sort out all the photographic elements like the lighting, then leave the hair and make up to the other collaborators, although we normally have a chat about everything, and everyone will have their input. We make ref- erence to lots of other shoots.

"Most of the paid commissions I've had have been off the back of doing test shoots, updating my website fairly regularly, and sending out emails to PR companies. Also, I'm trying to make myself a bit more search- able on the web. I've done quite a few little look books for small fashion brands, and some jewellery and accessory stuff. I do a lot of other commercial work that isn't fashion related – for businessmen, lawyers, events, that kind thing.
"I did an event a little while ago, the Artangel Dinner, which was amazing: there were all these massive artists there, and I had about an hour to take social pictures of them with champagne. I've been doing some jobs for Topshop, shooting its store windows and in-store displays, and street style pictures of shoppers, which then go on its website. I got that job through assisting: I assist Jason Lloyd-Evans twice a year at Fashion Week, where he is one of the backstage photogra- phers. He has a lot of clients for Fashion Week, so he needs a lot of assistants. We shoot social stuff while he shoots backstage. The venue where I normally work with him is sponsored by Topshop, so I got to meet the Topshop.com girl through that.

"I do weddings, which are good money and quite fun, but it's a lot of pressure and responsibility, so I don't do many. I try to keep it limited to maybe 10 a year. I get quite a lot of recommendations, which is always really nice. I'm doing one in a few weeks, it's the sister of the bride that I did last year. Also, their brother-in-law is getting married next year, so I'm going to meet him and his bride-to-be at the upcoming wedding and have a chat about next year's wedding - so from one comes three.

"I like to keep my wedding work separate from my fashion work, so I have different websites: www.clairepepperweddings.co.uk, and www.clairepepper.co.uk or www. clairepepper.com."
While much viewing and sharing of photographs is now done digitally, with the website having an important role in any photographer's armoury, Pepper makes the point that having a paper-based portfolio is a great excuse to go and see people. "You can email someone and say, 'I'd like to come and see you and show you my book'", she says. "It's much better to meet people than to say, 'I'm a photographer, here's my website', because they might look at it for a few minutes, or they might not. If you actually go and see them, you make a basic connection, which is much more valuable."
Pepper shoots on a Canon EOS 5D Mk II, and has a Bowens portable lighting kit. For her age, she has had a prodigious run of successes in competitions, and has used her winnings to invest in kit. Most recently, she won The Royal Photographic Society's Jeff Vickers FRPS Genix Imaging Bursary 2009, which is a really significant prize, worth £15,000 over three years.

"With the first instalment of my prize money", she says, "I bought a Canon 70-200, f/2.8 L image stabilised lens, and a Mac lap- top, and a few odds and ends that you think would be great to have, but which at £400 or so I couldn't have afforded, like a couple of nice portable hard drives. I also bought Photoshop CS4 to go on to my new laptop. "It's important to enter competitions. Because I'm now focusing on fashion, I find that I don't have much work to enter for a lot of them, as they are more conceptual or por- traiture orientated, but if you're doing that kind of work, or documentary photography, then there are so many you can enter. Some of the prizes are really worthwhile, as are the exposure you get, and the people you meet. I won the Clothes Show Live Young Fashion Photographer of the Year last year, sponsored by Nikon, around the time when I graduated. That was a £2000 cash prize, plus loads of equipment and a week of work experience with a fashion photographer. That was such a good prize to have when I was just out of university." A portrait of Pepper's was included in the 2008 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition. "The piece I entered was something I shot at university", she says. "It was a really encouraging thing to get straight after graduating.

"My boyfriend and I have our own flat now; we lived in a big shared house before. You have to have a space with a desk and somewhere where you can keep all your stuff, rather than just a corner of the sofa."

Pepper had work in the Royal Academy's Summer shows, both last year and the year before. "In both cases, they were collaborative pieces I made with my boyfriend, who's an architecture student", she says. "We made black and white, large format works of bunkers in Jersey, where he's from. We sold some prints as well, which was great.

"I don't want to be a starving artist. I'm quite happy to work, do commercial things, but it's really important to love what you do. If you don't have the projects that you really care about, what's the point in doing any of them?"

Top Tips

•Enter competitions. Use your winnings to invest in new kit
•Having a paper-based portfolio is a good excuse to meet people face to face
•It's important to work with people who have the same vision as you
•There's no harm in being ambitious, especially when you're young