Regan Cameron on Madonna: 'To me you couldn't get anyone more famous'

Regan Cameron on Madonna: "Pour moi, vous ne pouviez avoir quelqu'un de plus célèbre".

Shooting stars
By Rebecca Barry
2:00 PM Friday Feb 4, 2011

Regan Cameron is one of New Zealand’s most successful exports, yet most of us don’t even know his name. Rebecca Barry discovers how he went from wannabe fashion photographer in Paris to photographing the world’s biggest celebrities in New York.
Madonna. Kate Moss. Cameron Diaz. The digital photo display blinks through a who's who of supermodels, pop stars and film stars. The man who photographed them all is Regan Cameron. Leaning over a desk in his Manhattan office, the affable Kiwi flicks through the December issue of Teen Vogue, for which he shot the cover image of Glee stars Lea Michele and Cory Monteith. This week he's busy working on the next Victoria's Secret campaign, a job that has meant he's spent the past day staring through a lens at lingerie-clad supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio. Next he'll get stuck into a fragrance campaign for Donna Karan. As well as the celebrities he photographs for Vogue, he regularly shoots campaigns for brands such as Ralph Lauren, Estee Lauder and Elle Macpherson. Along the way he's photographed Gisele Bundchen, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Nicole Kidman, Scarlett Johansson, Christy Turlington, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow - the list goes on.
"In the studio, shooting is where I like to be," says Cameron.
For now though, the 45-year-old's doing admin in the office down the road from the studio, parked between art galleries in the Chelsea district of New York City. Two doors down, bizarre green figures glare from an austere white space.
To get to Cameron's office you have to take the world's slowest lift, which leads to a small labyrinth of creative spaces. Cameron and his Australian wife, Kate, built their Manhattan townhouse two streets away.
If that's not enough evidence of success, there are plenty of images to choose from, including one of Madonna and Missy Elliott in the True Blue jeans commercial for Gap sitting in his office.
(...)
The turning point, the moment when Cameron really knew he'd made it, was when he shot Madonna for InStyle magazine in 2001. Madge liked one of his images so much she used it on her tour posters.
"To me you couldn't get anyone more famous. The Pope maybe. You lifted up the camera, and suddenly they're in your camera and it's quite odd."
Despite his predictions otherwise, the star let Cameron direct the shoot.
"It was really interesting because I was quite nervous, thinking, 'she's not going to listen to a word I say' but she was totally, 'what do you want me to do?' Obviously that's why she's at the top - she works with people she trusts. A big part of [this job] is working that trust level up as fast as possible, otherwise if they think you're going to make them look like a sack of potatoes, it's not going to work."

Source: NZ Herald News.

Full interview here: interview with Regan Cameron