I’m pleased to announce I am now one of the Norfolk wedding photographers featured on a great new wedding suppliers site – The Wedding Secret. It’s a great UK-wide resource for wedding supliers and venues, well worth a look to help with planning your wedding.
So, as of today my business is a teenager but don’t expect any stroppy mood swings, it’s all celebrations here!
13 years ago today my business was registered as limited company and came into being. What initially started out as an escape route from working in IT at Virgin One Account has become one of the best decisions I have made in my life. It’s taken me to places and introduced me to people I couldn’t have imagined I’d be meeting and provided me with a lifestyle and creative occupation I absolutely love so with 13 being my lucky number I thought I’d better celebrate this one.
I commissioned the talented Emma Thorburn at Buns of Fun to make this fantastic cake replica of one of the Canon 5D MKIII’s that I use on a daily basis. The tools of my trade.
Thank you to EVERYONE that has supported me throughout the last thirteen years, whether that is through the encouraging words & lovely feedback or hiring me to photograph various fantastic events, properties and people and providing me with some amazing opportunities and fun along the way. Thank you also must go to my amazing children Charlotte and Will for being understanding when I’m not always there for them as I’m out shooting a wedding and of course to my far better half, Leanne, for her ongoing support and sounding board for my various crazy ideas.
Happy Birthday to me, here’s to the next 13 years, onwards and upwards!
Below is a timelapse video I made of Emma creating the masterpiece…
The Pigs, Edgefield – photography refresh for this unique Norfolk establishment
The Pigs at Edgefield has a serious following and it’s clear to see why, a truly unique place offering luxury accommodation in their amazing spa rooms and an innovative menu. I have friends that travel the world and still say that The Pigs is their very favourite place. Such character and friendly service with all sorts of little treats and surprises in store.
Last week I spent a couple of days back at The Pigs to do an image refresh featuring their new Spa Suites, the spa treatments, jacuzzi and some more of their mouthwatering food. The perks of being a commercial photographer in Norfolk eh?!
Chef Ben knocked up some masterpieces for me to photograph. I’m a sucker for slow-roasted pork belly and this is the best I’ve had. With a new way of preparing the pork belly, Ben has found the most succulent and tasty way I’ve yet seen and when it’s served up with black pudding, crackling, homemade apple sauce and their bacon & beans it’s an absolute triumph!
Another great addition to The Pigs is their custom Shuffle Board, we booked a table there for lunch last Sunday for Mother’s Day and the Shuffle Board was a big hit with our gang!
Anyway here’s a selection of the shots from last week…
To view more of my work as a commercial photographer in Norfolk please follow this link to my commercial gallery. You’ll see I am also a food photographer, property and interiors photographer and much more! This year’s clients alone include the BBC, Gresham’s school, Bacton Gas Terminal, Sheringham Golf Club, Blakeney House, Arnolds Keys, Waterside Estate agents, Brown & Co agricultural agents, Price cabinet makers, renowned artist Brian Lewis, and many more.
Path building by helicopter on the North Norfolk coast
In a first for Norfolk’s Coast Path today a helicopter was airlifting heavy path building materials on Beeston Bump/Hill at Sheringham on behalf of the Norfolk County Council Trails team. I popped along to get some shots for the local press and was amazed by the speed of the operation. This pilot, for Skyhook Helicopters, certainly knew his craft, it was a very efficient process from collecting the one ton bags to depositing them at various stages along the hill.
Below are a few shots and a short video showing some footage I filmed. Please excuse the soundtrack, I couldn’t help myself!
Norfolk Property Photography – a high-end start to the year
It’s been a very busy start to the year with various property photography commissions and there have been some really incredible places for me to shoot.
I enjoy property photography, I have a system and a gear set-up that I know will get the results I want time after time, I get to see some amazing houses and inspiring interiors. My work as a property photographer is pretty much split 50:50 between shooting for estate agents and photographing holiday homes. The basic principles are the same in that I need to make the rooms look bright & inviting, cosy or airy, spacious & welcoming but with estate agents it’s all about enticing people to book a viewing. Unless there are specific fixtures and fittings that will be sold with the house it’s mostly about the wide shots of the rooms, a few exteriors and if appropriate some aerial photographs to show the grounds and location.
With holiday property photography it is obviously important to still get those wide angle shots of the rooms but I also make a point of getting lots of ‘Detail Shots’, or cameos, of the various features which give the property it’s character. For the Detail Shots I generally use a 50mm lens with a wide aperture (usually around F2.2) to get a nice shallow depth of field (you know, a blurry background!) sorry, I’ll try to avoid getting too technical here.
Below are a few of the properties so far this year (is it really March already?!) which really stood out for me.
The first is Thatched Barn in Mundesley which I photographed for a regular client of mine: Arnolds Keys. Thatched Barn is a beautifully refurbished 4 bedroom barn conversion available for a cool £670K, check it out on RightMove here.
Next up is Liberty House in Suffolk, they don’t have a website built quite yet for the holiday let but as you will see from below it is a huge and stunningly decorated property with extensive grounds and even has it’s own private indoor swimming pool! What an amazing place.
The next property in this post is Tolly House in Wells-Next-The-Sea, a bright & airy holiday property in the town of Wells, maybe not quite as extravagant as some of the other properties featured here but a lovely place to stay for a holiday in North Norfolk nonetheless…
The property below was a real treat to photograph, this time for a new estate agency to me – The Norfolk Agency. Verona House at Ashwicken is a beautiful home, built and lovingly furnished by the current owners. As previously mentioned, since it is a sale property I didn’t do too much in the way of detail shots, so these are just wide room shots but you can see what a lovely place this is…
Keeping on the theme of amazing holiday lets check out this place below. What a stunner! This property is Barn Drift on the North Norfolk coast near Cley. A 7 bedroom 18th century barn conversion decorated and furnished to the very highest standard. Obviously this was taken in winter and I should be heading back in late spring/summer to get some more flattering shots of the exterior, gardens and aerial shots from the drone but the photo below gives a good idea of the unique location of this property right on the coast at Cley.
Wye House, below, is a property I photographed for another regular client, the lovely Susie Hartley. Susie manages (and owns) a number of very high spec properties on the North Norfolk coast and the renovation of this holiday let in Blakeney had literally just been completed when I arrived to do the photography. As with all of Susie’s properties, Wye House has been developed with such care & attention to detail. It’s an absolute pleasure to photograph properties for Susie as I know they will always be beautiful. I have the easy job of going in once all the hard work and thought has been put into making these houses look amazing, I just have to capture all that amazingness as well as I can for the rest of the world to see!
Just look at this bathroom! How cool is that wallpaper?!
Last but not least is a charming little holiday cottage I photographed today in Sheringham for another regular client of mine, Mark Ashby. Kits Beck is in a great location close to the town & beach in Sheringham with off-road parking spaces for two cars (important in the busy summer season!) and again decorated and furnished to a really high standard. I was there today for a refresh of a few of the rooms that have recently had an update but I still thought it was worth including on here as it’s such a charming little holiday cottage.
Mark, the letting manager was kind enough to write me a glowing testimonial recently…
“It’s simple: Great photographs absolutely sell holiday properties. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Chris over the past few years and he has provided me with fantastic photography for four of our holiday homes here in beautiful North Norfolk. I know, from the feedback from guests and the immediate impact on bookings, that our investment in professional photography has paid absolute dividends and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Chris to any holiday home owner”
So there’s a few of the properties I’ve been lucky enough to photograph in & around Norfolk & Suffolk so far in January & February this year. If you are looking for a Norfolk holiday property photographer then please do drop me a line to discuss the options. I use a very simple pricing structure and guarantee a 24 hour turnaround time to provide the finished high resolution image files after photographing the property.
Good quality, professional interior photographs are essential to market properties whether for selling or letting. Many of my clients remark on what a big difference they see in viewings and bookings after uploading my photos to their websites. For the sake of a fully booked cottage or a quicker house sale it’s a small investment to make.
Snow Day! Making the most of the first decent snowfall in Norfolk in years
I don’t often post up family shots here in my business blog but we had a great day today and got some lovely shots so I thought I’d share a few.
Between myself and my partner Leanne we have 5 children so we get to be big kids ourselves as often as we like but we haven’t had a decent snowfall here in North Norfolk for a good few years. Five maybe? Possibly more.
So when we woke up this morning to see a good 3-4inches of snow had fallen and the schools were closed we grabbed all the warm gear and headed out to make the most of it. We spent the morning making snowmen, an igloo, a snow cat and hurling snowballs at each other. After an hour thawing out, drinking hot chocolate & having some lunch we got kitted up again (warm from the tumble drier!) and headed up to the golf course/cliffs at Sheringham for some sledging.
The conditions in the wind were pretty much Siberian, with bitter blizzards blowing across in the 45mph winds but we found some good runs in the shelter of Skelding Hill and spent the next few hours hurling ourselves down on various contraptions. It was so much fun! Here’s a few photos of our twice in a decade afternoon….
Kate & Tom – a wedding in Ireland
In October last year we headed over to Ireland to photograph the wedding of Katie & Tom – Katie is a Norfolk lass and Tom a Cork lad so the Norfolk contingent got to sample the Emerald Isle’s hospitality and plenty of the black stuff!
The resort at Castlemartyr was beautiful, surrounded by woodland and horses put out to pasture. Unfortunately, it being October in Ireland it was pretty wet & windy for most of the time, thanks to ‘Storm Brian’ so we didn’t get to take many photos outside but we made the most of it and an amazing day was had by all.
The day’s coverage started in the presidential suite, no less, previous occupants include actual presidents of the United States, films stars, musical legends and Kim Kardashian & Kanye West! On this day the occupants were far more important though – our bride Katie, mother of the bride Sue and Katie’s bridesmaids Leila, Ellie, Jess & Carina.
I’ve got a bit of a crazy day today (nothing new there) so will let the photos do the talking but I’d like to say a huge thank you to Katy & Tom and their families for their wonderful hospitality and for inviting me to be their photographer at this amazing event. As much as I really love the beautiful and varied wedding venues in Norfolk and Suffolk it is always great to get away & shoot somewhere totally new.
If you are planning a destination wedding and would like this Norfolk boy to do your wedding photography please do drop me a line, apart from accommodation & travel it doesn’t cost much more than I would charge to shoot a wedding in Norfolk and I know how much people prefer to have a photographer that they can trust!
The 2018 Scira Viking Festival in Sheringham
Last weekend saw the annual Scira Viking Festival held in Sheringham. The festival is the brainchild of amazing Sheringham-based artist and all round lovely chap Colin Seal. If you’ve been to Sheringham in the last 5 years (at least) you’ll have seen Colin’s beautiful murals adorning the town & seafront. The viking festival has gone from strength to strength with 2018 being it’s 4th year and hailed by many as it’s best year yet.
In a change from recent years the vikings vs anglo saxons battles were held on the beach and it was an amazing spectacle to behold, the sun shone, the crowds filled the promenade for a front row view and the re-enactment chaps beat the living squit out of each other! Centrepiece for the festival each year is a handmade replica viking ship which Colin and his merry band lovingly build and paint over the preceding months only to then burn it to the ground at the end of the festival! Seems a shame but what an amazing sight.
This year Colin had asked me to capture some shots and video using the drone and since I had recently gained my CAA Night Flying permissions it was a great opportunity to see what the drone could do at night. Actually it wasn’t quite night, more twilight. Owing to the early evening high tide the burning had to be brought forward by an hour or so which actually helped the filming as it meant we had a bit more ambient light to work with.
Below is a short film I put together for the Viking Festival organisers…
Happy Tuesday – a lovely card from Pip & Wil!
Last August I had the pleasure of photographing the wedding of Pip & Wil at the wonderful Cley Mill.
It was a real pleasure to work with Pip & Wil and to meet their families, the sun shone and they had an amazing and unforgettable day. Pip & Wil were kind enough to email me shortly after the wedding to say how much they loved their wedding photos and left me a glowing Google Review so it was a lovely surprise to receive another card from them today, six months later, to say how much they still loved their wedding photos and custom-designed album.
I’m not sure that I had a chance to actually blog any of their photos at the time so thought now would be a good time to share some of their wedding images, some excepts from their thank you card are included below too…
“The more we look at our albums and photos, the more we appreciate the amazing job you did for us”
“You really captured our wedding day”
“We are just thrilled with the result!”
“Everyone who has seen the album is just blown away”
“We are so appreciative of your friendliness and professionalism”
“We couldn’t recommend you more”
So there it is, a little splash of sunshine on a drizzly February Tuesday, thank you again to Pip & Wil for your lovely gesture, it really is appreciated.
For more information about how you can book me to photograph your perfect wedding day at Cley Windmill please see my Norfolk wedding photography info page here.
Now accepting Bitcoin payments – Norfolk photographer looks to the future
As of today I am pleased to say I will be accepting cryptocurrency payments for my photography services.
Using Coinbase‘s new Merchant Payment system I will be accepting Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin payments for my wedding photography and commercial photography commissions.
Over the past couple of months I’ve become really interested in cryptocurrencies and despite their current volatility I can see that they are the future of banking. I’ve personally invested in BTC, ETH and a number of altcoins and although we did see a significant dip (a crash some would say!) in late January, I believe over the future the long term for cryptocurrencies has amazing potential.
If you are planning your wedding and would like to pay in BTC/ETH/LTC please let me know, it’s a very simple process – all you need is a Coinbase account.
If you are interested in getting involved in cryptocurrencies and would like to open a Coinbase account simple follow this link and we’ll both get $10 when you open your account! https://www.coinbase.com/join/5a5fe6c7e115a7011fd4537c
If there is enough interest I may produce a blog post explaining how to go about buying bitcoin and even trading in altcoins. It certainly isn’t without risk but the potential to make huge returns on relatively small investments is definitely there!
