Gold rooms and handshakes

State visits are mostly choreography. You learn where people will stop, and you pick the one corner that has any light.

Uniforms, brass and a red poppy

Early starts. Wet pavement. A hundred people in identical coats. The trick is looking for the one face that isn't identical.

Not every assignment has a headline. Many are just rooms: a reception, a library, a podium with a banner behind it.

Charity events are the easiest and the hardest assignment. The room is friendly, but there are 300 phones in it.

Negatives and film stills from the archive, scanned over a few weekends this spring. The dates are from the contact sheets.