Patrick Heagney // Atlantan Magazine

Atlanta, Georgia-based photographer Patrick Heagney photographed James Beard Award-winning chef Hugh Acheson for Modern Luxury’s The Atlantan magazine.

I photographed Hugh at his new restaurant, Achie’s, in the Omni Hotel in north Atlanta. I had requested to arrive early to scout and set-up for Hugh since I’d been told by his team that he had a very tight schedule and I wanted to maximize the time I had with him. I expected to get 30 minutes to set up before he arrived. Traffic was light that day so my assistant and I ended getting there an hour early. We walked into the restaurant and to my surprise, Hugh was already there. My assistant and I quickly took a look around and identified three good areas to shoot and began prepping lighting and rearranging furniture. I always work pretty quickly so we were able to get started 30 minutes before I even thought Hugh was going to arrive. He was a complete pro in front of the camera and needed very little direction from me, just one of the reasons I love working with celebrities and people with on-camera experience. By the time the shoot was supposed to start we had finished all three set-ups. The editor had just arrived and after some initial surprise that she’d missed most of the shooting was really happy that all she had to do was flip through the images on my laptop and approve the shoot, and Hugh’s team seemed equally pleased that he was done an hour earlier than expected.

Credits

Subject: Hugh Acheson

Photo Editor: Lisa Gombert

Editor in Chief: Lauren Finney

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