This is one of my favourite portfolio images, probably because I attempted to make a dramatic image of contrasts without crossing over into absurdity (and felt that I succeeded). It’s also because as I look at it there’s nothing I want to change – as a perfectionist this is a rare pleasure.

Even without a client looking over your shoulder shooting this kind of scene can be stress-inducing – a model, your assistant/makeup artist and the site staff waiting for instruction and you have 15 minutes to find a scene, set up, take the shot (including backups, variations, etc), pack up and leave to do it all again somewhere else. In this case the concept came quickly but the details were difficult – the hair on her cheek, the stance with more weight on the forward foot, where she should look, the height of the tripod to locate the height of the rubble in the background, etc.

I’d show you the location of the worksite but as you’ll see from other images in this series, we took images only metres from fast-moving, rock-crushing machinery and I dare say that this was not in full compliance with work safety requirements …