Hi everyone. Hope you’re all surviving the winter weather. I’ve had a busy January and am now looking forward to Spring. February tends to quieten down and is a good time to catch up on all those endless office jobs and never ending to-do lists.
Here is a flavour of what I was photographing this time last year.

I love these portraits for SMRS in Manchester!
SMRS, a culture, brand and communications business, are usually sending me on corporate photoshoots all over the country to photograph their clients. However this time the camera was turned on themselves! I had fun photographing about 20 employees and they didn’t need much encouragement to be themselves and let their personalities shine! I shot using a plain white background and then art director Daniel Kevin worked his magic to transform the background into lots of different versions of their brand identity. I was thrilled with the results 🙂

My last visit to Stockport Grammar was to do a day of education promotional photography. SGS is always a pleasure to visit and the pupils are often keen to get involved. Swimming is one of those tricky subjects to shoot, where I can often suffer from ‘lens steam-itus’ and the very real danger of getting wet legs for the rest of the day, not to mention nearly passing out from the heat. I do like a challenge though!

Over to Salford to photograph the North of England mentees for the Women in Film and TV of 2024. The mentoring scheme is very prestigious. After chatting to these seven women, I realised what a hugely talented cohort they are. I photographed them on their induction day at the university of Salford’s School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology and I loved it there. I wanted to stay. It felt like I was back at university (but a very souped up modern version!).

This was a busy half day photoshoot for Greater Manchester Institute of Technology. GMIoT commissioned me and videographer Abbie, to capture students at Bury College Health and Digital Centre. I had a willing bunch of volunteers and support from the college to capture images of the students interacting with each other and the equipment in order to illustrate their learning and the modern facilities on offer.

Lastly, Wilson Cooke asked me to visit Garic’s site all the way up in Falkirk to capture imagery to use for their marketing. My brief was to capture their people working away doing their everyday jobs, servicing, maintaining and cleaning the mobile welfare units and making them ready to go out into the world again. Unsurprisingly, Scotland in January provided us with gale force winds and rain. As such, we had to brain storm and come up with ways to shoot the outdoor scenes inside! One of my good friends happens to live in Falkirk so it was a brilliant opportunity for a long overdue visit and a good pub meal.
Bye for now, enjoy the rest of February.
Claire
Hello everyone - welcome to my June newsletter. We make a start with my return visit to Lancaster and Morecambe College. We dedicated some time to the adult education side and visited the beauty therapy and the photography courses. Then concentrating on the 16-18 year olds....
I still remember having to fight my way through heavy snow to reach the most isolated of venues on the moors in Marsden, Huddersfield! It was so snowy and dark that I could hardly see the building or the turn off. I was there to photography the Needi team who were having an annual team building get together...
Morning everyone - hope you are all doing well. Welcome to my April newsletter. We start with a trip to Liverpool for a commercial photoshoot with Arc Hospitality Recruitment. Arc supplies temporary staff to the hospitality industries, such as restaurants and festivals. They are a really friendly, welcoming bunch...
Just over a year ago I was commissioned to produce photography for Greater Manchester’s NHS CAMHS. The purpose of the photoshoot was a recruitment campaign for mental health practitioners. To photograph current practitioners in their place of work, in a positive light, enjoying their work.
Well done everyone, we’ve managed to get through the long, dark, dreary January days and into February, which is at least a little bit closer to Spring and brighter times. Just a warning to anyone squeamish - be careful scrolling down! I’m featuring a photoshoot I did for Red Cross First Aid Training...