If you happened to be walking through Cambridge one drizzly afternoon in late October, your day may well have been brightened by the sight of a fully-decked Christmas tree being wheeled down the road. This was the day of Cambridge Magazine’s festive front cover shoot. It had started with a casual conversation – ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we got a tree, dressed it up, and took a shot of it somewhere in town?’ – and spiralled into a full-scale two-location photo shoot.

Mounted on a trolley, the 6ft tree, kindly donated by John Lewis, heavily baubled and strung with fairy lights – was pushed through the city centre followed by a crate of lavishly wrapped presents. Doing the donkey work were John Lewis’s Sarah McCann, Chris Cant and in-house Chronicle editor Sarah Adams (with a little help from the
Cambridge Magazine team). First stop was the grounds of St Benet’s, the oldest church in the city, where my wonderful assistants James Linsell-Clark and Dee Reidy-Vince helped with lights and a smoke machine to set the scene for model (Frankie Dubery) dressed as a wood nymph.

Second stop was the river, where, with the help of the team at Scudamore’s, the tree was loaded on to a punt and propelled down to the Bridge of Sighs, where our second cover shot was captured.

Here is the selected front cover together with other the final shots submitted to the client – which would you have chosen? The Christmas cover is here along with my previous shot for the first edition.