About me

I’m based in the wonderful Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham where I do the vast majority of headshot sessions. This is also a very central location to travel to theatres up and down the country for production, rehearsal and PR pictures.

As well as having a love of theatre from a very early age I’ve also worked in theatre extensively in my life, mostly as a stage manager.

But photography came to the fore when a chance to become the production photographer for the Crescent Theatre, Birmingham coincided with a desire to forge my own creative path. I quickly discovered that my experience of working onstage helped enormously with theatre photography which is quite demanding. Not only do I know what it’s like to be working on or backstage during a dress rehearsal (say) but I also feel that I have an instinct for unrepeatable moments in the action.

So … in short. If you need a photographer for rehearsal, PR, production images or are an actor in need of a new 10×8, it makes sense to choose one who understand the industry and the hard work that goes into producing the ‘magic’ on the stage.

‘Word Matters’ – a journal for teachers of speech and drama

I was asked to write an article about headshots for the magazine ‘Word Matters’ about the work that I do and was asked for an introduction about myself. I thought I’d put the beginning of the article here which might give you more of an insight as to how I’ve arrived at the sort of the photographer that I am.

“In 1988 I attended Middlesex Polytechnic and was lucky to attend one of only two Drama degrees in the UK at the time (it sounds ridiculous now, I know). It was the perfect course for me. We were let loose in the studios and acted, directed, lit, stage-managed etc to our hearts’ content.

I discovered two talents whilst at Middlesex and both of them unexpected. The first was for stage-management and this became my career for the next 15 years. The other talent was for photography which I’d studied as a secondary module.

Photography, and theatre photography in particular, gave me the perfect second career when I felt that I’d got all the enjoyment I was going to have from many years touring the country and the world as a freelance stage manager. (It’s a “job for young people” as I was told by the flyman at Brighton Theatre Royal).

I’m vastly proud of a lot of the work I did as a Stage Manager. Probably the highlight was in 1998 when I was lucky enough to work on the National Theatre’s ‘Oh, What A Lovely War’ tour in an Italian circus tent. But the time soon came when the need to be creative on my own terms, rather than serving the creativity of other people, grew too insistent and I moved into my second career.

Looking back on my time as a stage manager I realised had been studying actors’ 10×8s for 15 years.

In the larger theatres, a few days before the actors arrived, time would be spent preparing for rehearsals: marking out the rehearsal room floor, gathering rehearsal props and buying tea and biscuits in bulk. Another job to be done was to produce an A4 word document with the actors’ headshots so that the stage door keepers can recognise them when they arrive.

Every stage-manager I know prays that they will have a nice company. One that gels, works hard and isn’t precious in any way doesn’t take the process too seriously. By studying the faces of the actors you haven’t met yet perhaps you can discover whether the next 2 – 6 months, or more, is going to be an enjoyable journey or just very, very hard work.

Despite the fact that experience taught me that you won’t know an actors true character until they are put under stress, in a prolonged technical rehearsal or they can’t find any digs in Billingham, it didn’t stop me from looking for clues in those glossy 10×8s.

These days, because of my work in the theatrical industry, I’m very aware of who looks at headshots and why they are needed.”