Who or what has been your favourite subject to date? There isn’t one specific thing, to be perfectly honest. Every time I get to photograph a dress rehearsal is a privilege and continues to be my favourite subject. I’m a huge fan of any subject that allows me to learn something new. In recent years, I’ve had the opportunity to join Scottish Ballet in rehearsals, a situation where I’m still on my toes (ha!) more often than not. Photographing dance doesn’t quite work unless you understand it, and learning this whole new visual language has been absolutely fascinating.

Who or what would you love to photograph but have yet to pin down yet? A really gory production of Macbeth. Or a Sarah Kane. Something visceral, uncomfortable and drenched in fake blood and real sweat; something quite European. Loved shooting The Duchess [Of Malfi] at the Lyceum in Edinburgh a few years back. Promise I’m not a serial killer, just extremely dramatic . . . I’d also dearly love to have time to shoot some personal work. Started some of it back when none of us in the arts had a job during the pandemic but have yet to pin down any time to continue.

‘A picture is worth a thousand words’: discuss . . . This is perhaps something that absolutely cannot be answered in a few sentences here. They’re separate but not mutually exclusive means of communication, each offering their own merits and drawbacks. In an ideal situation, they’re complementary things. I’d probably argue that words hold more power than a picture; the right (or wrong) words can alter our perception of an image entirely.

What tactic(s) do you use to put a subject at their ease? Chatting shit. To quote Hamilton, ‘overwhelm them with honesty’. Can’t get nervous about the photos if I’m telling you all about my horse in overwhelming, unnecessary detail (hi Ollie, you’re in the paper, mummy loves you!). I’m joking to an extent, but also not really; having an open dialogue before a single photo is taken is absolutely crucial. I find environments where that’s not possible quite challenging to work in. It’s about remembering everyone is a person and to treat the interaction as a conversation instead of an exchange of services. It’s about obtaining consent on a deeper level than someone simply stepping in front of your camera. You’d think someone turning up to a shoot implies they’ve agreed to have their photo taken but there’s a difference between gritting your teeth and giving me the practised photo-face versus fully opening up to the process. So it’s chat first, photos later.

Who was the biggest influence in making you pick up a camera and become the photographer you are today? Truly wish I had an inspiring answer here but it was the big emo wave of 2005 and photographers on deviantART and Flickr: quite the groundbreaking proliferation of young women taking ownership of their own image, creating these gorgeous conceptual portraits of themselves and other young women in their lives. Between that and making (and photographing) student theatre at university is how we’ve ended up here.

‘The camera never lies’: discuss . . . Definitely bollocks. Even without getting into the post-processing aspect, there are so many ways to lie using a camera. Every time we choose our framing, there are elements we decide to leave out and others we highlight as important; we’re lying by omission.

Is AI a threat to your business? I wouldn’t say so specifically and have embraced it quite gleefully myself, from the extremely clever Remove Tool in recent versions of Photoshop, to Midjourney that I use as a creative exercise tool: it can visualise concepts much faster than I can mock them up myself. That said, the live element of my job makes the perceived threat of AI much less serious. The position in which it puts fine-art photographers, visual artists and illustrators is absolutely more precarious. We’re already seeing AI-generated content used in places which would previously have featured a purchased or commissioned image, and it marks a negative societal shift in the perceived value of the work artists do. It’s sort of like how we just buy mass-produced clothing instead of something made by a tailor, the fast fashion of visual communication. It makes the imagery more easily available but removes the artistry from the process.

What’s your favourite bit of photographic kit? The Nikon 50mm f/1.8G lens. Small, light, and almost always the right tool for the job.

What would be your main advice to an aspiring photographer? It’s really tempting to say ‘just don’t do it, find a job that’ll let you have a weekend now and then’, but at the same time, I really don’t think that’s an option for some people, myself included. So, if you really have to do this to yourself, I’d advise to carve out a space for yourself that exists outside of the work; it’s so easy to lose yourself in this completely. On the practical side of things, build a portfolio of the type of work you want to be doing (through collabs, photo calls, whatever, each side of this industry has its own access route) and then send it to places that can pay you to do it. I promise you the worst they can say is no, and if it’s no, it’s often not a reflection on your work: it’s an insular industry and people resist change. And get in touch, I’m always happy to chat.

My Favourite Photo

This is a production photo from an early-development sharing of Jenna Watt’s How You Gonna Live Your Dash, featuring Jenna and Ashley Smith. This isn’t technically or artistically the best image I’ve ever taken (no such thing exists, really) but this remains burnt into my mind as the turning point in the sort of work I wanted to make: imagery of theatre that erases the performer and becomes entirely about the scene and the character, and also has the potential to exist on its own merits, outside of its marketing and documentary context as a production photograph.

Read more of our photography special by reading our interviews with Tommy Ga-Ken Wan, Kat Gollock, Jess Shurte and Andrew Jackson; visit Mihaela Bodlovic's website.