In October last year I was approached by a magazine and asked if I could make a day trip to Paris to photograph Johnny Sticky Budden. I’ve been photographing Sticky since 2003 and have made some unforgettable trips together. Back in the day, he used to head down to my student house in Birmingham on a Friday night, crash on my floor and then we’d get up at 5am, pick up Blue Devil, and to drive to London to jam with the likes of Kerbie, Asid, Bam, Cable and M2, hitting locations like the Leap of Faith and the Shell Centre. Back in the day.
Last summer I invited Sticky to join the team for the job in Nicaragua, and before that we had a surreal day spent trespassing on an enormous, abandoned boat in a very obscure and distant corner of the UK, finding stuff that hadn’t been seen in thirty years. There’s no one quite like Sticky and we’ve had so many adventures together that he’s probably one of my favourite people to photograph, as suggested by the fact that he has appeared in a fair few of my photographs over the years.
The weather forecast was dreadful and the budget was tight, but a random trip to Paris to hang out with Sticky was an exciting prospect, as was the premium class travel on the Eurostar. Sticky and his girlfriend Niki (an amazing illustrator) came to met me at Gare du Nord and we jumped straight on the Metro to Bercy, one of the best training spots in Paris.
As you might know, just because a training spot is good for movement does not necessarily mean that it is good for photos. The brief that I’d received from the magazine commissioning the shoot was fairly loose but we still had a list of shots that we needed to get and I didn’t feel that we would achieve any of them at the Palais Omnisports, a bizarre building with grass walls. We passed Laurent Piemontesi as we decided to move on, saying a quick hello and confusing him greatly as we briefly distracted him from teaching his class of dedicated traceurs.
I’ve photographed in central Paris on two previous occasions: for Stern magazine and with Parkour Generations alongside Majestic Force. Despite this, I don’t know my way around and we had no list of spots to hit. For me, architecture is everything, and not having a reccy was going to make the day quite a challenge. I had photographed Stephane and a few of the Art Du Deplacement team on the bridge next to the Bibliotheque Nationale de France back in 2008 so it made sense to repeat the set-up and get some shots in the bag, especially as the gathering clouds were starting to look particularly ominous. Sticky always gives it his all but I knew that he was far from fresh, having recently moved to Paris and started a hectic new job.
Photographing in France can be a tricky business and whilst I’ve never run into any problems, my sketchy French, the need to fulfill a brief, and the train that I needed to be on that evening all meant that I couldn’t risk an unpleasant encounter with the authorities. I’d packed gear that would allow me to be as mobile as possible and used a very lightweight lighting kit to grab these first couple of shots. Thankfully, Nikki was happy to help out when needed.
Shooting with lights when it’s dark can be a real challenge. Effectively, you are creating two exposures: one created by the natural light, and one created by the strobe. If your subject is moving too quickly, the body can create a smudged effect as the portion lit by natural light is not as crisp as the strobe-lit portion. This often means lots of repetitions which can be tough when you have limited time and the prospect of rain.
We wandered along the banks of the Seine grabbing a few random bits and pieces and ended up at the Notre Dame. Having already imitated one of my existing photographs, it seemed logical to see if it might be possible to replicate another. The photograph of Williams at the Notre Dame was taken during the Stern shoot back in 2008 and as much as I wanted to create some fresh images, there was a need to get more shots done and it made sense for me to repeat stuff that I knew would work. As it turned out, the shot at Notre Dame was never going to happen again. Firstly, the manner in which Williams moved for the Stern photograph was something that was completely original to him. In addition to that, there were too many people in the way, plus that particular corner of the square was too dark with the encroaching clouds and setting up lights in such a cramped space was never going to happen. A short distance away, Sticky spotted a low wall that he thought was perfect for a side flip and we started work. Typically I like to have clean, empty photographs, but there was no way that we were about to ask large groups of tourists to move out of the way for each shot.
Wandering along the banks of the Seine again, the rain started. I was conscious of the time; my train wasn’t as much of an issue as the fading light. Kerbie would have called our mission a ‘sponsored walk’ and that’s how it felt. We were wandering vaguely towards the Eiffel Tower with half an idea that we might repeat another of the Stern images. We snapped bits and pieces as we walked and on arriving, I knew that the shot I had in mind wouldn’t work as it was the wrong season and wrong time of day. Instead, we walked up through the gardens next to the Trocadero and Sticky spotted a small stair set that seemed like it might work well for a wall spin. After the heavy showers, late afternoon sunshine was a godsend.
All that was left was a series of portraits, something that Sticky doesn’t really enjoy doing and a part of my photography that doesn’t get practised too often. I was pleased with the shots and hoped that the magazine would like them also. As it turned out, the shot of Sticky made the cover of their December edition, albeit with some heavy editing on their part to make it look like it was shot under blue skies and glorious sunshine.
My thanks to Sticky for an awesome day in the French capital and for providing me with some slightly forced but ultimately pleasing results.
