As planning began for the special Shakespeare 400 issue in April, my mind started swarming with images of skulls, swords, Elizabethan Era attire and dramatic lighting. Knowing I was going to be shooting some of Western’s top scholars, I tried to replace this excitement with realistic expectations, in the likely case they weren’t open to indulging my wilder ideas. They could not have proven me more wrong. The passion and open-mindedness they brought to the shoot made it my favourite project of the year. I learned that if you give anyone a fake sword, they go right back to being a kid. By the end, it was me toning down some of the more extreme concepts – a bottle of ketchup to recreate Lady Macbeth’s murder scene, anyone?