My phone goes off, it’s Penelope, she can’t find us and is parked in a layby with no idea where she is, ‘please, carry on without me’ she suggests! No way thinks I; I don’t fully know what is required for the shoot and Penelope was going to provide direction – I’ll come and find you I suggest.

Penelope says she can see a white house but other than that there are no landmarks – I think I know where she means, I’m sure I passed a white house on the way through, so off I head and after around 200 yards, I see a young lady standing by her car in a layby. I pull over and open the passenger door to just check I’ve got the right person and in she pops. I may as well come with you and leave the car here she say’s….that’s fine but just checking, you are Penelope, because if not I’ll have to leave you here and go and find the lady I’m meant to be looking for – oh, sorry, yes, how do you do Penelope replies! :D

We head back and meet up with the rest of the anglers. The anglers take us on a short walk to a beautiful river location, fields, woods, blue sky and sun.

While we are walking Penelope takes me through how she would like the shoot carried out and explained a little about Fish Legal.

There were to be no smiley faces as this was a serious matter and the photos would be used for a campaign….. no smiley faces, that would prove harder than I would imagine. Penelope went into the detail of Fish Legal and the fights to get the legal establishment to sit up and take notice as the regulatory bodies are failing their environment responsibilities – as Penelope explained….

“Fish Legal (initially the Anglers Co-operative Association and later the Anglers’ Conservation Association) was set up by enlightened anglers over 70 years ago. They were not prepared to see their fishing destroyed with impunity by polluters.  Their vision is that, through joining together and pooling their money they could fund an organisation with the expertise and financial strength to support members in taking legal action against those who damage our rivers, lakes and waterways.”

Penelope could not detail too much as the campaign had not started but in short they were all meeting here to protest over a pipeline that was going to be built to take sewage discharge from an existing outlet to this river because this river had less legal protection.

So, with everyone in place, it was a case of working with Penelope and the anglers to get the required shots, no smiley faces, that was such a hard ask of one of the angling crew, he was just bursting to smile at every click of the shutter – but we got there in the end.

I also managed to get the drone out for some ariel shots and considered using the flash to counter the sun but that was not required in the end as the location was so natural I did not want to add to the image a look that made it look like this was anything other than a company commercial shoot