WORKING WITH PAUL

When the pandemic hit in 2020 during my animation degree my neatly planned career path collapsed faster than a badly assembled IKEA wardrobe. One week I was forging ahead with my final year project ready to dive into professional life; the next I was a graduate with no graduate showreel, no film day to introduce us to industry and no aid from the government. Like so many of us at the time I had a choice: keep slogging away at the few opportunities left, or hit the reset button.

The man, the myth, the legend.

I went for the reset. I returned to my first love of classical art — taking commissions for anything from architectural water colours to digital portraits and fiddling with a camera I hadn’t touched since my A-levels. Photography had always been more of a side fling than a serious relationship, but during the pandemic that would shortly change.

Then, came the conversation that changed everything. I was moaning (politely) about the state of the country especially when it came to those demographics largely ignored by officials in the way of aid when I mentioned that maybe, just maybe, I should give photography a proper go as it felt my other skills just went cutting it. By sheer luck, a friend happened to know a photographer looking for an assistant. A few weeks later, I was working with Paul Massey — an absolute crack shot of a photographer who had gone from snapping news and celebrity portraits to shooting high-end interiors for the likes of House & Garden and Architectural Digest.

Hanging silks outside to defuse the light.

From 2021 to 2023, we travelled across the UK photographing the work of top interior designers for the designers themselves, magazine editors, and for others that might have had a horse in that race for whatever reason. It was incredible… and occasionally ridiculous. My role went far beyond holding a camera or laptop. I was the guardian of the “before” — memorising (or photographing) every last detail so that, once the shoot was over, I could return the room to its exact original state. And I mean exact: the precise slump of a cushion, the angle of a half-drunk glass of water, the placement of a random crumpled scrap of paper — all the way up to hauling furniture to entirely different sides of the room. Paul even wrote in a letter of recommendation once, “She was by far the strongest of any of my assistants, of either gender, over the years. She can single-handedly lift a three-seat sofa, as I found to my astonishment on more than one occasion.”

I spent a lot of time hiding in strange places — behind chairs, under tables, crouched behind curtains — holding a corner of fabric in place while pretending I didn’t exist. There’s probably a House & Garden cover somewhere with my legs poking out from behind a sofa if you look closely enough.

Hiding behind a four poster bed.

Screenshot of me holding up a picture that needed to be added in post, note how my fingers weren't aloud to cover anything that would make it into the final shot.

And then there were the more “Athletic” moments: climbing on to rooves and scaling the sides of buildings to attach enormous white silks to any nook or cranny that would hold them; Trying to resist the urge to pet a property’s guard dog decided I looked suspicious; leaning dangerously far out of a first-floor stately home window to wipe the dust off the outside of the glass (Later, upon reflection, Paul mentioned how “That was probably a tad dangerous” but promised me a Mars Bar as hazard pay…..I happily took it).

It was chaotic, funny, exhausting, and, honestly, brilliant. I learned more in those two years than I could have ever imagined — about photography, about patience, and about the weird and wonderful things that happen just out of shot.

To this day I still hold Paul in the highest of regards, he helped ignite my passion for photography and for that I say thank you, now and always.

-Abbey Broughton Lloyd