The day my Nikons died in front of David Bowie Pt2
So there I am, Eton Square Hotel, central London, fancy boutique place I’d never worked in before. I’ve worked in most of the top hotels in London, so I know the drill, I know the light, I know the dance.
Except this suite wasn’t built for photographs. It was built for “important people talking”. Dark, cramped, cluttered with ornate furniture that looked expensive and photographed like a funeral. Perfect for the interview. Awful for me.
And the room was busy. Properly busy. Ten people, at least. PR, management, the journalist, agents, and a couple of extra bodies who seemed to exist purely to watch.
That’s the bit people forget when they imagine celebrity shoots. It’s not you and the 'talent' in a quiet room. It’s you trying to look calm while a small committee silently judges whether you deserve to be there.
Normally, I can handle that. Hotel shoots are a craft. I scan the room fast, then choose the best three options. I then give the 'talent' three simple scenarios. It settles them down because you’re leading. It settles PR down because you’re not guessing. And it settles you down because you’ve created choices.
Nine times out of ten, the best picture is scenario two.
But on this occasion, there was only one scenario. And it was a winner! Or so I thought.
The bedroom had this shaft of light coming through the curtains, high right, landing perfectly on the edge of a large bed. Not vague, “we’ll fix it in post” light. Real light. The sort of light painters spend their whole lives chasing.
In my head, the picture was already taken. Bowie perched on the corner of the bed, sunlight hitting the side of his face, a halo around the great man, bathed in gold. Caravaggio couldn’t have asked for anything better. A sure-fire, career-defining frame of one of the world’s great musical icons.
So I do what I always do. I walk over, confident voice on, shake hands and introduce myself and say: “We’ll do the pictures here, if that’s ok with you, David?”
99% of the time, I connect with the 'talent' in front of my camera, both professionally and personally.
He looks at me and smiles, a huge smile, genuinely warm, and then, calmly: “Err… no. I don’t think so, do you?”
Shot down. Not gently, but like a pheasant at a Boxing Day shooting party.
You could literally hear a pin drop on the lush shagpile carpet of the hotel suite.
"You got two more minutes John", came the next words from Alan, the PR.
Now I’m back in the ugly room, frantically looking for a decent spot to place Bowie. Ten or so people waiting for me, and I’ve got to pull something out of nothing. So I pivot. Headshots. Clean. Simple. Get the job done.
"Let's just use this spot, does this work for you, David?" I ask. He nods and says fine, then gives me the biggest smile I've ever seen. And he looks a million dollars.
I lift my camera. Nikon D3S. A proper workhorse. This camera had followed me around the world on difficult assignments, some of them genuinely dangerous. It had never let me down. I trusted it like you trust my legs.
I take a frame, and another.
Then the battery dies. Dead.
Not one bar left. No blinking message warning. Just gone. Dead!
My first thought is, don’t panic. I’ve got the back-up. I reach for my second Nikon D3S. I’m trying to stay calm, but I can feel the seconds draining out of my hands. The room is getting tighter. The vibe is shifting. I'm getting warmer.
I fire it up. That battery dies too. The info screen is blank.
That’s the moment my insides turned to water.
I’ll own my part in it. I hadn’t charged the batteries overnight. I’d come straight from photographing a young chef called Jamie Oliver that morning, and I’d been tinkering with the camera settings for a while outside David's hotel room, which probably didn’t help. But still, for both bodies to fail like that, right then, in front of Bowie, in front of everyone, it felt like the universe having a laugh at my expense.
I did the desperate thing every photographer pretends they’d never do. I turned it off and on again. Twice. Like the camera was going to suddenly apologise and show a full battery icon out of guilt.
It gave me one bar.
And at that point, you have two choices. You either flap or you swallow your pride and ask for one last thing.
So I asked, "Can we move over to this chair, David?"
Bowie gave me a feeble little smile, not cruel, not annoyed, more like, “right then, let’s finish this,” and he beckoned me over. He sat down, turned toward me, and I managed two more photographs before the camera stopped the session.
That was it.
Four barely usable frames in total.
I can’t remember what was said next. It was like I'd lost my hearing and senses, my world just folded in. I walked out feeling physically sick, not disappointed, sick, carrying two dead cameras and one dead dream. In my head, I’d already taken the winning celebrity picture for that year, the one I was meant to make. Then reality came along and binned it. Because in my head I’d already seen the picture I was supposed to make, and now it was gone.
But here’s the twist.
Three of those images ran. They did the job. And they have been reproduced many times since. The public doesn’t know what you didn’t get. They only see what you did.
But I knew.
The real disappointment wasn’t “only four frames.” The disappointment was missing the one great picture I’d already taken in my mind, over and over again, in that perfect shaft of light Bowie wouldn’t pose for me in.
And because life enjoys a punchline, I was invited back to photograph Bowie again, about 4 months later, this time in Paris at the start of his European tour. I photographed him in concert, which was terrific. I was also told I’d get backstage pictures with David, too. But no, no backstage pictures.
Instead, it was another dark corner, this time in a trendy Paris restaurant. Bowie was difficult again, not nasty, just… withholding. But at least this time my camera worked like it was supposed to, which tells you everything about how low the bar had become.
Do I regret meeting him? Not once.
I’m glad I shook his hand (twice). I’m glad I stood in the same room as him and tried. I’m glad I’ve got those frames, imperfect as they are, because they hold the truth of the day. And weirdly, fifteen years on, I can even smile at it.
Not because it was funny at the time. It wasn’t.
Because it taught me something brutal and useful: you can be experienced, prepared, confident, and still get humbled in five minutes flat. That’s not failure. That’s the job.
If you’ve read this far, I want to hear yours. Which Bowie track has stayed with you for years, the one that does something to your nervous system every single time? I'd love to hear your favourites. Do drop me a line sometime. Proper answers only.
John Ferguson
John Ferguson Photography
I help and assist commercial and corporate clients with personal branding portraits that look like you mean business, without looking like you’ve been Photoshopped into someone else.
