September News

This time last year I took a trip to Melton Mowbray to photograph Master Cheesemaker Anne-Claire for Waitrose Food magazine. Long Clawson Dairy is a co-operative of farmers and the UK’s biggest provider of Stilton. Photographing Anne-Claire in the dairy wasn’t as straight froward as you may think as I first had to get myself and my equipment past a very strict hygiene protocol which involved disinfecting all my equipment and wearing all of the correct PPE (I looked lovely). Once through, the smell of ammonia nearly knocked my socks off! Afterwards we took Anne-Claire and lots of the lovely Stilton for an outdoor shoot against some nice rustic backgrounds. You hopefully can’t tell, but it was such a windy day we were nearly blown away. I had plenty of helpers that had to position themselves as human wind breaks. It was also very sunny which we didn’t want (for the November issue) so we kept having to wait for a big cloud. And I must point out that the gorgeous top left and bottom right images of cheese are by the very talented photographer Hannah Hughs and not me.

This was a really fun shoot with Marie Thom for Good Housekeeping magazine entitled ‘In my experience – Midlife dramas in pyjamas’. Marie made myself and make up artist Charlotte really welcome. I set up a little ‘photo booth’ in her front room and started unpacking all of the fab props sent by the magazine. Marie was a really good sport and threw herself into the photoshoot with gusto. She’s got a big Facebook following where she shares her midlife and menopause experiences and keeps everyone smiling and feeling good.

Off to a much more sensible photoshoot now for Barclays in Ormskirk. Speak Media asked me to photograph Mary, who is a customer care specialist for Barclays Bank based in a community branch in The Chapel. The building houses an art gallery, a cafe and is home to lots of events as well as the bank. Mary was really lovely and nothing was too much trouble. I tried to capture the cafe as well as the bank area in the shots to tell the story and give a sense of place. The article needed close up detail shots, posed story telling portraits as well as reportage ‘doing’ style shots.

Lastly, I photographed the lovely Cheryl Devine for a short branding photoshoot over in Manchester. Cheryl runs her business ‘Devine Health Education & Coaching’ and needed some images to use across her website and social media. Cheryl was super organised brought a range of outfits and lots of props to populate her desk. We only had a two hour session at the beautiful Bonded Warehouse, but we squeezed every minute out of it getting lots of options.