I love to share my knowledge and I hope that’s clear from the number of newsletters and podcasts on this website. I also really, really love to teach at workshops and inspire at conferences. So if you’re planning a multi-speaker event or just want a wedding photographer to come and speak at your event of any kind, I’d love to chat to you.
I know lots of stuff about lots of stuff – photography, business, creativity and some elements of creative psychology.
My message is always one of positivity and motivation, and my talks are always crafted to help the audience, never to further my own profile.
I started photography in 2010, and started teaching in 2015 when I co-founded The NineDots Workshop, that same year we did the first NineDots Gathering and both became an annual event on the wedding photography calendar. The workshop became an annual spring event, and the Gathering an annual winter event. NineDots eventually grew into a big community based around online membership in 2018. The Gathering still takes place every year. I last hosted it in 2021.
I left NineDots in 2020 for a variety of reasons but mainly to find myself as a photographer again. And then in 2024 I co-founded FedWed – The Federation of Wedding Photographers and Filmmakers because I missed being involved in the forward momentum of an industry I love so dearly.
This was the two-day workshop I co-founded with my friends Mick Shah, Andy Gaines and Rahul Khona. We taught two groups of 20 back to back for two days per group in February 2015 and this kick-started my passion for education and mentoring.
After the success of the workshop we launched the first major wedding photography conference to take place in the UK with the NineDots Gathering, bringing speakers from all over the world to the UK. I co-hosted the event with my NineDots colleagues and also did a small 15 minute “ted talk” about always pushing yourself past the stage of “good enough”.
We taught the Ultimate workshop as usual, but put on an extra new Ultralight workshop all about working with light – natural, continuous and flash. 20 attendees per workshop.
Most of my years running the NineDots Gathering I just hosted or co-hosted. We ended up with two stages, and quite a logistically complicated event so trying to do presentations wasn’t possible. But I absolutely LOVE hosting.
We had made the decision to stop teaching in-person workshops and so we recorded our final workshops with a view to selling them as online courses. I taught a full day on Documentary & Storytelling and another full day on Flash & Lighting. We had 20 attendees per day, including people from all over the world. One photographer even flew in from Honduras to attend!
I loved speaking at FDF in Seville and you can see the full talk I gave below. I touched on many elements of my personal wedding photography style and approach but centred around finding your style and getting as good as you can at the craft of wedding photography so that you can capture moments powerfully.
In 2018 I did a live shoot workshop in the upstairs room of a pub in London, teaching all the ways you can achieve beautiful, creative photos in a not so beautiful space just using the light. You can watch a replay of this workshop in a video below.
After switching from Canon to Sony in 2018, I made a video for YouTube reviewing the Sony A7iii and detailing how I had my cameras set up. This went viral and caught the attention of Sony who offered me and NineDots a never-done-before full takeover of the massive Sony stand at The Photography show at the NEC. As part of this I did a collaborative talk with my NineDots colleagues about wedding photography in general followed by a solo presentation telling some stories behind my favourite photos.
In early 2019 I provided a full day workshop as part of the PPANI event in Belfast, with around 40 people attending. This was a workshop split between keynote and practical demonstrations.
In-person teaching is my passion and as we’d decided to stop this for a while with NineDots I did my first solo workshops on the back of teaching at PPANI Belfast. I took that same workshop on the road around the UK and across 4 cities I taught another 60 people so altogether including PPANI I taught 100 photographers in the spring of 2019.
As well as hosting the NineDots Gathering as usual, in 2019 I also did a full live shoot demo in a very dark room using only available light from light fittings and using creative composition to work around the large audience of around 40 for each shoot!
After leaving NineDots in 2020, I was invited back to host in 2021 for logistical reasons and it was a lovely way to sign off my time with NineDots, on a high, doing the bit I loved the most.
I was invited by Kevin and Annie Kheffache to be one of the speakers at DocDay Dublin 2024. My talk was entitled 11,500 photos because during the 1 hour talk I showed every photo I’d taken at a wedding while detailing my approach to wedding photography.
After a few years under the radar I decided I wanted to get involved in the industry and education again because I could see lots of areas where I feel like I can help people. Not least positivity. So I co-founded FedWed with my friend Stephen Walker and we launched with free events in six cities across the UK with over 300 photographers and filmmakers attending in total. As well as planning and hosting the events I also did a talk at each event about Imposter Syndrome, The Spotlight Effect and The Halo Effect.
After launching FedWed we were approached by GraphiStudio to curate a speaker roster for The Wedding Stage at Click Live Expo, as well as hosting the stage itself for the 3 days of the expo. As part of this I gave a 40 minute talk where I broke down a set of my favourite photos from across the years including the settings used, but also the stories behind the photos.
Thanks for the photos in the slideshow above: Ronan Palliser | Stephen Walker | Ben Appleby | Toni Darcy | Tobiah Tayo
If you think I’d be a great fit for your event, just get in touch with me here. Let me know what you’re thinking, what you’d like me to talk about (I can resurrect an old talk or write a whole new one) and anything else you think I need to know. I’m excited to work with you.
