It’s the assignment he was hoping for, shooting one of the National Portrait Gallery’s commissions on the preparations for the 2012 Olympics. But despite his years of experience, Brian Griffin admits to feeling the pressure, not least because it’s no easy task to shoot a series of outdoor group portraits to a tight timetable during the worst winter in three decades. But on a more basic level, the pressure is on himself to deliver something special. “My name’s on the line,” says the photographer, who is famous for going beyond the call.

A commercial photographer for more than 30 years, he’s perhaps best known for his music photography from the 1980s, but has tackled more challenging subjects in the corporate world for Management Today, and more recently Reykjavik Energy and the Channel Tunnel, shooting people unused to being photographed, and often quite unenthusiastic about it.

He’s particularly good at shooting people in groups and pairs, says Anne Braybon, and that’s been useful on this assignment. The commissions curator at the NPG, she’s in charge of organising the whole project, and as the former art director of Management Today, has worked with Griffin for many years. “We invited Brian to be the first photographer because he’s so good at shooting groups,” she says. “It opened up that possibility. It’s a very difficult thing to do, and we aren’t casting so we have some very disparate collections of people. But Brian’s experience makes him extremely good at managing people.”

Griffin has shot 17 of the 20 images so far, and will finish his part of the project in the next few weeks. The next photographer on the ongoing project is Bettina von Zwehl, who will take a markedly different approach shooting large format images of athletes. A third photographer will start work next year. In total, six photographers will contribute to the project, which will finish in spring 2012 and go on show at the NPG when the games start progress. Titled The Road to 2012, it is envisaged as a record of the build up to the games, including the men and women who helped to prepare the bid and build the stadium as well as the actual participants.

Braybon thought it essential to reference the whole construction process, which is why Griffin’s images are shot in offices and the Olympic site itself. In one of the images you can see the blue hoarding that surrounded the site during first stages, for example, and in another the as yet unfinished Olympic Stadium. “Anne knows I like to shoot behind the dustbins,” laughs Griffin. “One of the things she specified was that she didn’t want the subjects standing in front of infinitesimal space as if they’re in a studio. She wanted sculptural elements, and elements of the park relevant to what they do.”

Shooting in this way means Braybon and Griffin are subject to construction site safety requirements, however, so they can’t wander around it looking for good locations. Griffin has to think on his feet, finding interesting images in previously unknown places with people he’s only just met. He gets a couple of hours with each group or pair, and generally prefers to see how they interact before trying to direct them.

“We photographed Sir Keith Mills, deputy chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee and Sir Craig Reedie, board member of the International Olympic Committee, at the London 2012 Organising Committee, in some empty offices, where they’d prepared the bid,” says Braybon. “They were very touched to be back but it was just an anonymous office space. They’re good friends so Brian just sat and waited to see what they would do together, and it took an hour and a half, but then they made this gesture, like a high-five, and Brian said ‘That’s it!’.”

A shot of Alison Nimmo, Olympic Development Authority Director of Design and Regeneration, showed how she supports Jason Prior, Olympic Park master planner, in his sometimes wild ideas  after she commented to Braybon and Griffin, “He has the vision, I make it happen”. A shot of Mike Dobriskey, who is working on the soil on the site, shows him literally supporting Lisa – his daughter, and a 1500m hopeful. Other images reference Victorian oil paintings or, as Griffin puts it, “reach for the skies” cinema heroes. He’s drawing on the history of portraiture on show at the NPG, both to root the images in the gallery and keep the viewer interested.

He’s lighting all the images with three Broncolor heads and two battery packs, shooting on a Mamiya digital, all loaned to him by Johnson's Photopia, who have also provided radio slaves, light meters and even a stack of paper to print the images.

“Because we’re shooting on site I’ve had to whittle down the kit,” says Griffin. “Sometimes I’d like a little more, sometimes it’s more than enough, but it’s about the right amount. It would be so easy if I could do the same old thing over and over for 20 images, but people would look at the first two or three then skip over