I always like casting shadows in my pictures and not just casting light, which is something that I don’t think people think about closely enough. There is always the moment of the big reveal that has the most incredible power and dynamism.

I decided it would be fun to shoot in my garden as it was looking particularly good and I had some interesting lighting ideas. I decided to back light all the foliage in the garden so I could capture the the translucence quality of leaves and branches, which gave everything a more mystical look.

I was sinking further into disappointment as the art director leant forward said in an almost intimate whisper “and a lingerie shoot.” At that moment I heard Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ in the background

In my absence I later learned that the minute I left the Manga people, the flash unit gave up the ghost and ‘the capacitor burnt out and melted down’.

Steven, Gary and Karl worked away and Steven would say to me, “What do you think?” and I would say “Yes, but even more, go even further” and he would then come out with even more extreme things.

Willy also asked me to come up with a concept. I had been reading a lot about Egyptian mythology and was particularly fascinated by the falcon headed Egyptian God Horus . This fascination had begun after reading the Egyptian Book Of The Dead and taking acid with my assistant (affectionately known as The Wasp) at a friend’s manor house in the country, where I saw a vision of Horus.

Ritz Newspaper asked me to photograph a selection of stunning 1920s jewelled dresses. Somehow the stylist (forgive me I have … More

The scene reminded me of an Andrew Wythe painting that I had always adored and had influenced me so much in my own painting and into photography. I felt the extraordinary poetic beauty of the synchronicity of being in the same landscape he had viewed and which had inspired him and now inspired me.

The suspended box idea was influenced by the box in Francis Bacons paintings, his tryptic of portraits of Lucien Freud (1969)  (see below). The set designer and my assistants dashed of and got some chrome effect plastic tubing and cobbled it all together while the GHD Sirens were in hair and make up.

I could never recall seeing pictures of her laughing so I was hoping that it would be a fun shoot and it turned out to be great.