Weddings
Most of my wedding work sits in East London: Hackney warehouses, converted print works, the odd City livery hall with an eleven o’clock curfew on camera kit. I shoot documentary through the day, with twenty minutes set aside for portraits. The gallery runs from a register office in Islington to a marquee in Richmond, not only the polished middle.
Headshots and portraits
Corporate headshots for teams in Canary Wharf and the City make up most of this set: forty people in a day, one light, a reflector, rarely room for more. Personal portraits run slower, often outdoors, in Victoria Park’s October light or a Shoreditch stairwell. A gallery like this should show:
- Individual headshots against a plain background
- Team grids shot in the same light, so they match
- A few environmental shots for something less formal
Events and conferences
Conference photography is mostly about being invisible: a fast 35mm, no flash once the lights go down, and a habit of never blocking a speaker’s view of row one. Corporate parties and product launches are the opposite: flash bounced off a low ceiling, moving fast through a room already three drinks in.
Food and hospitality
Restaurant sets are shot before service, usually 7am to 10am in a Soho kitchen already prepping for lunch, working fast before the light through the front window changes. Plated food, an empty room, a few frames of the chef that don’t look posed. I’d argue food reheated for the camera photographs worse than the truth ever does.
Property and interiors
Property work covers everything from a one-bed conversion in Walthamstow to a Marylebone townhouse, HDR-bracketed to hold detail in both a bright window and a dim hallway. Interiors lean on a tilt-shift lens to keep verticals straight, critical in a period building. Turnaround here is 24 hours, because estate agents don’t wait.
Products and commercial
Product photography is studio work almost every time: seamless paper, controlled light, the same setup repeated for a catalogue. Commercial shoots are looser, a workshop, a shopfront, people doing the job rather than posing at it. Both need consistency across a set more than any single frame.
Branding and content
Branding shoots build a small library rather than one hero image: a founder at their desk, hands on a product, a wide shot of the studio for a website that needs six images, not one. Social content work is quicker to turn around, built for a phone screen rather than a print.
Video and film
The showreel here runs about ninety seconds, cutting between wedding films, corporate work and drone footage. Wedding films run four to six minutes, cut from the same day I’m photographing when both are booked together. Corporate video stays shorter, thirty to ninety seconds. Drone footage, flown under a CAA Operational Authorisation, appears through most of it. See the services behind this work.
What to look for in a portfolio
A wall of twelve perfect images tells you less than one full gallery from a single job. Harder to fake is eighty images from one job that hold together: consistent colour, no gaps, people who still look like themselves by frame sixty. I’d rather show a complete set with a few ordinary frames left in than curate away real work. When comparing galleries, weigh:
- A complete set from one job, not a greatest-hits selection
- How the photographer handles bad light, not only good light
- Whether the people in the photographs look at ease
September gives an hour less than June, and October rain is a fact of shooting in London, not an excuse. A full set shot on an overcast afternoon in a north-facing flat says more about ability than a golden-hour rooftop anyone could manage. Notice, too, whether people seem comfortable rather than arranged. Stiff, staring-down-the-lens portraits usually mean the sitting felt stiff at the time.
How to judge a photographer’s portfolio goes further into this, and what each of these costs sits alongside it if budget’s the next question.
Tell me the type of job you’re comparing me for and ask to see something specific. I’ll reply within one working day with a complete set that matches it.