Rosamund Pike

Working instinctively during a portrait shoot is often better than trying to create images to fit pre-set ideas, says Harry Borden

- Harry Borden

For me, improvisation is a vital part of the creative process. When I’m shooting a portrait, I enjoy looking for something that hasn’t been done before and ending up with images I hadn’t anticipated. Tampering with the instinctive approach and plundering pre-existing ideas is likely to produce images that are contrived and hackneyed. I believe it’s better to react to what’s around you and riff off things, because then you get the unexpected.

That’s what happened when I did a portrait shoot of the actress Rosamund Pike in September 2006. I had been commissioned to photograph her for the Sunday Telegraph magazine, to illustrate an interview. At the time, she was 27 and in the early stages of her successful screen career, following her debut in the Bond film Die Another Day four years earlier.

The shoot took place in Jasmine Studios, which was a studio complex in Shepherd’s Bush, West London. It was a great location which had really good daylight, which I generally prefer to use, and was equipped with lots of other light sources. There was nothing chintzy or retro about the studio, which is much more the fashion these days; it was just a cold, empty and very functional space.