Melanie Reid Portraits

Portraits of Journalist and Author Melanie Reid

Over the last few months I’ve had the opportunity to photograph the journalist and author Melanie Reid for various clients. She has now finished up at The Times and has lots of new projects on the go, some of which I have taken the portraits for.

Portraits and headshots for her new freelance existence
Her last piece for the Times about her new accessible home
Byline portrait for her new Observer column
SCIS Annual Conference where she was a keynote speaker

and the last frame I grabbed as she came down the tunnel at Murrayfield!

Overcoming adversity

We first worked together on a few stories for The Times many years ago before her accident, which many of you will be familiar with….. Her Spinal Column in the Times Magazine had a huge following.

It’s an incredible story of true grit and determination. Even today, she continues to have to adjust to the constant challenges being thrown at her, 15 years after she fell off the horse.

Mel was keen to have some upbeat and happy portraits to go alongside her new work, even though the theme of what she often writes about is about as dark as it gets.

In her first column in yesterday’s newly relaunched Observer, I was delighted to see that the picture they used was of a very happy, smiley upbeat woman.

They contextualised it with a quote from the piece on the kind of dark humour you hear in a Spinal Injuries Unit…. “Normal rules do not apply in the community of the damned”.

At the SCIS conference last week, Melanie spoke to an audience of Scottish Headteachers. They were totally rapt as she talked on the subject of overcoming adversity. It’s hard to imagine a better case study on this topic. Although tragically, she meets many people in the spinal injuries unit who don’t have it anywhere near as good as she’s got it.

It was a great event to photograph and I am planning a blog post about it. The theme will be – get professional photography at your corporate event! There are so many brilliant ways you can use the pictures.

Here’s a link to some of my other Portrait work.