Each portrait session brings its own challenges, I’m discovering. In the past my own self-consciousness has been my biggest handicap. This is something I am now trying to mask as far as possible – essential if I’m going to help others feel at ease. Living in Manchester – known as the Rainy City for good reason – presents obvious challenges. Even when the weather’s fine, wind causes me problems when I want to use my simple set-up of an off-camera strobe, lightstand and brolly. Today’s attempt at a portrait shoot was hard in another way. It was beyond quick – I got maybe five minutes before my subjects’ attention was gone, so the lights couldn’t even come out of the bag. My volunteers – users of a street drop-in centre where I have just been given the go-ahead to do some work as this course enters its next phase – were a bit all over the place in terms of following directions, but I managed to get a few pleasing shots which I hope at least show a bit of personality. Compositionally, they could probably be better, and I didn’t manage to tick all the required shot types off the list, but you have to work with what (or who) you’ve got…