RIP John Button

I learned with some sadness that Jenson Button's dad John button, had passed away suddenly this week

I have photographed Jenson Button on several occasions and I've always found him to be a really great guy, the archetypal British gentleman racer, polite and highly professional.

The sad news took me back to the first time I met Jenson and his dad at his very first Formula 1 test for Williams F1 at Jerez in Spain in early 2000.

Much was riding on the test- it was a shootout between Jenson and Bruno Junqueira , whoever was fastest would decide who got the Williams seat.

While Jenson was tied up in team briefings and seat fittings etc I got to spend a little bit of time with John Button.

My memories of him was a very warm, straightforward guy who was justifiably very, very proud of his son and just wanted him to do very well, and who was only too pleased to be photographed with his son while he had his shot at the big time.

The next time I photographed Jenson was when he won the F1 world championship and I actually remembered to take the photograph that I took with me the photo shoot, so often people don't actually get to see the photograph is shot of them - the media just move onto the next thing and promises to send photographs so often forgotten

Jenson was pleased to see it and thanked me - you could see he was pleased 'I shall have to give this to the old man' he said with a smile.

It's nice to say thank you sometimes.


Technical note

Looking at the photograph on the system it once again made me realise how far things have moved on.

I shot on film Fuji100 ISO neg film, and as so often is the case these days when I go through my archive I'm shocked at how 'bad' film was, though in fairness quite a bit of this could be down to struggling with a kettle to process my C41 film in difficult circumstances at the circuit, never mind the scanner which perhaps wasn't the best there was.

I seem to recall shooting the image on a Canon EOS 1 with a 24-70 zoom lens, I lit the shot with a Norman 400b through a Chimera Medium softbox, under exposing the sky by around one F-Stop by the looks of things