Mascolo, a team from Clynol, and Umberto Giannini came to shoot collections. “It was a boutique luxury studio and as there was only one room I had lots of time on my hands to chat to people! Soon enough I was invited to be second assistant to a photographer, and started shooting beauty.” Says Andrew. “Hair has always been secondary to the whole image and the intensity of the beauty. Whether photographing a man or a woman, this becomes the most intense relationship you can have with someone for 20 minutes. It’s amazing and it’s exhausting, quite addictive and it’s challenging too.” Known internationally, Andrew is responsible for a minimum of 25-30 collections a year with fewer in the UK and a lot more here in Australia. Most hair collections he says he treats more like an ad campaign for a company where you ask, ‘What’s the core essence of your brand?’ “If you do that well, and you represent it well then you will get the best results. “ Andrew has recently being doing more video work and find’s this area really interesting both inside
and outside the hair industry. “I love the challenge of being way out of my comfort zone but it takes so long to do – if we do a shoot tomorrow, we can retouch it a day or two afterwards. But with video it goes on for months and it drives you nuts. I’m not sure if I’m ready for the headspace it takes!” Without a doubt, Andrew is definitely the sum of every visual thing that he sees. Whether it’s graffiti he noticed while travelling, the pictures he was taking of the rain in the cab to pictures taken out of a plane. At the end of the day, Andrew O’Toole’s name is synonymous with arguably the most beautiful and award-winning photography in hairdressing. He works prolifically particularly in the UK and Australia. As well as being artistically gifted, he has the reputation of being a pretty nice guy too so all in all, who else could have possible been inducted into the 2017 AHIA Hall of Fame!