Friday 27th March was Brain Tumour Research’s “Wear A Hat Day”, a nationwide charity event raising funds and awareness for Brain Tumour Research. It’s a charity that means a lot to me, and I’d been wanting to do something to support the cause for a long time.

What I came up with was Headshots & Hatshots - my first-ever charity photography event, held in Leamington Spa. As a headshot photographer, I’ve always felt that portraits would fit particularly well with the Wear A Hat Day theme. So that was the idea: a professional headshot in return for a donation to the charity, and an optional, hat-themed portrait to tie in with Wear A Hat Day, hopefully adding a bit of fun to the end of each session.

This post is a look behind the scenes: how the event came together, what the day was like, and some of my favourite images from the sessions.

Friday 27th March is Wear A Hat Day, a day dedicated to raising money for Brain Tumour Research.

I’ll be running a special fundraising event at the Town Hall in the centre of Leamington Spa. I’m calling it Headshot & Hatshots - a day-long photoshoot where people can book a headshot mini-session in exchange for a donation to Brain Tumour Research.

A headshot photography case study describing the process of creating professional headshots for Valpak, a leading environmental compliance service provider.

The headshots were photographed onsite, with the brief of creating fresh, clean images of the staff on a white background, ideal for use in a variety of applications including email signatures, internal communications, and for the individual’s LinkedIn avatars.

Example photographs and a timelapse of the whole process are included.

A recent article in Digital Camera World highlighted the issue of treasured family photos becoming inaccessible as time and technology march onwards. Hard drives can fail, image formats go obsolete, cloud services can shut down at short notice. Our precious images might be easily retrievable one day and lost forever the next.

Obviously, family photos and commercial images are very different, but the value of a company’s visual history shouldn’t be overlooked, either. Every year, businesses generate thousands of photos. New product launches, high-level employee appointments, award ceremonies, staff events, and dozens of other milestones all get recorded, whether formally or informally.

As a brand grows its history becomes ever more important. But, without due care, those legacy images can disappear.

So how do you safeguard this valuable corporate resource?

A product photography case study describing the process of creating ecommerce and brand imagery for Acoori, who sell a range of room diffusers. The brand’s tagline is “sustainable luxury”, so the images needed to reflect that, and highlight the unique design features of the product, to help establish the brand and attract customers.

Product photography can represent a significant investment for a small or new business. If you haven’t been through the process before, it can also seem something of a mystery. How do you make sure the images your product photographer delivers show your product at its best? What about ensuring they align with your brand values? Read on for a guide to the process behind a successful product shoot…

Does the idea of a headshot session fill you with dread? You’re not alone - I’d estimate about 80% of clients tell me they hate having their photo taken the moment they get in front of my camera. So what’s going on, and what can we do about it?

Bella Rosa Books approached me for some lifestyle product photography. They already had catalogue-style product imagery of their books, so they were looking for something more engaging and appealing to customers. The idea being that the photos would attract more attention, showcasing the products in environments that both suited the individual books and made sense in terms of the holiday / souvenir concept that applied to the range as a whole.

One of the joys of being a product photographer is that you’re never entirely sure what you’ll be taking pictures of next. This was certainly the case when I was approached by Leamington Spa-based artist Amber Stephen, who needed photographs of her art project - a handmade sterling silver “grub grinder”.