Teaming up with Gather.ly favourite, Gavin Strange (JamFactory) and the gorgeous Annie Kilner from Mode, Photographer Rick Nunn took a very different approach to his 24 hour opportunity to Lee Kirby and Phoebe Cheong, and jumped on a train into London.

With the ethereal backdrop of St. Dunstan's in the East, the team captured an amazing day in the life of one of our favourite young photographers. Canon hooked him up with all the best kit and Gather.ly made it all happen.

We gave Rick complete freedom to express himself through a shoot and what a result he came up. Even if things didn't go entirely to plan...

With a brief entitled 24Hrs with your DSLR, a small budget & access to some of their amazing kit, Gather.ly and Canon simply asked me to produce some images with a behind the scenes video over a period of 24 hours — the rest was up to me. I teamed up with my buddy Gavin Strange, aka JamFactory, to produce the video and we planned a high-end fashion location shoot with an iconic vintage fashion company.

Unfortunately the shoot completely fell through days before it was meant to happen and I frantically had to organise something else at the last minute, coming up with a Plan B in record time. I’ve worked with Mode models a few times in the past and they’ve always been great, so I called them up and told them what I had in mind. They were thrilled to be involved and supplied a great model, Annie, and make-up artist, Tashan. I now had a model, a makeup artist and my own body weight in camera gear, but I just needed to get all those people to the same place at the same time.

My challenge was set in London, the city I love to hate. I had a pretty awesome location in mind - a church that had been bombed in the 2nd World War, which has since been turned into a stunning gardens. What I didn't realise was that there are two churches in London with the same name… I frantically googled the postcode and sent it out to everyone with a meeting time. Yes… I managed to grab the wrong postcode and sent everyone to the wrong place! Nice work Rick.

A couple of short taxi rides later we managed to get to the right place! Due to this delay we lost some of best light but that never stands in my way — I make my own light! I carry a set of speedlights with me at all times, as I love mixing ambient light with synthetic. It gives you so many more possibilities.

I also had access to Canon’s 85mm F1.2 lens, which was personally delivered to me by Gather.ly’s own Holly Smith, directly from Paris! I’d not shot with this lens before but I knew I’d love it and I was not disappointed. Opening that lens right up to 1.2 is breathtaking.

The wide open aperture, along with some well balanced flash and gloomy surroundings worked out really well. For a bit of extra impact I added an orange gel to one of the speedlights give a sort of golden hour feel to the shots.

Working on this project with the Gather.ly team has been awesome. They really are creating unique opportunities with extraordinary people and I am so stoked to be involved with what they are doing. I can’t wait for the next project.

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Behind The Scenes of Rick's 24Hrs by Gavin Strange

We were gobsmacked with Rick's results from this project. Especially working with a crew that were new to him and having only an hour or so of daylight left after the preparation for the day. Rick's technique of mixing flash with ambient light really shines with this set of images. Shooting at f/1.2 takes some balls!

Rick has been a part of the Gather.ly family from the start and has played a massive part in how we work with creatives today. Rick has a fantastic website offering strobist tutorials and lighting set ups, and he's a great guy to chat to if you're starting out in photography or wanting to learn new techniques.

Check more of his work here including his project Fifty Two Weeks

Thanks for being involved with this project Rick.