North East Head Shot Photographer: Portraits featured from Durham, Middlesbough, Darlington to Rothbury in Northumberland.

‘People do business with people’ is the principle behind a lot of the North East head shot, PR and profile photography I do at www.davecharnleyphotography.com.

A close up picture that really brings out a person’s character can often help to sway the buying decision. And it doesn’t have to be done in a formal environment like a studio either, I prefer to use a natural, relaxed approach to headshots, and as a north east professional press and PR photographer I have a bank of high performance studio lights, reflectors and other tools of the trade so I can transform the most mundane of spots into great backgrounds.

Press and PR photography is essentially about people, and I like to use an informal style that allows the subject’s personality to shine through.  You also should be thinking of great photography for your Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin head shot profiles.

These are just a handful of my recent commissions: Steve Cochrane is the head of the well-known Middlesbrough-based Psyche brand. Steve has an impressive business pedigree and is a well known figure and incredibly successful businessman. Career highlights include being made an honorary doctor of business administration by Teesside University, and winning a series of retail awards, including beating both Harvey Nichols and Selfridges to win the Drapers Award for the best new store 2004 and the Retailer of the Year award. Steve is very familiar with being in front of a camera so was a relaxed subject, and my photos of him even attracted interest from Santander magazine.  

Teesside-based Jo Hand Recruitment is a respected name in the competitive world of recruitment.  The company’s Teesside marketing agency commissioned me to take a series of photographs to support the forward marketing plan, for use in brochures, newsletters, on the website and with press releases.

The brief was to capture corporate headshots of the people behind the business, showing the approachable, knowledgeable team that founder Jo Hand has built around her.

I took a small set of lighting gear along with me so I could quickly turn the firm’s central Middlesbrough office into a mobile studio. The fresh and fabulous lime green walls - the company’s signature brand colour – created a perfect backdrop for pictures of the team. Part of my role was also to reinforce the company’s roots in the region. 

 Teesside and County Durham are the heartland of Jo Hand Recruitment’s customer base so we varied the shots by going out and also working in a coffee shop environment.

Another Photography job came about after a Glasgow-based advertising and creative agency approached me to take some shots of a volunteer at Rothbury Coquetdale Community Hospital near Morpeth in Northumberland.

Ann Dick has volunteered with the RVS for 26 years, and was nominated for a prestigious Diamond Champion award. A stalwart of the RVS, Ann has met several members of the Royal Family, and I used natural light and a soft feel to photograph her serving drinks, playing dominoes and chatting with elderly patients. The feel was warm, relaxed and engaging and summed up the value of local heroes like Ann who are embedded within our communities.

Artist Gayle Chong Kwan is the name behind Arripare, a Teesside-based large scale photographic work styled around a mythical island, which shows an alternative version of some of our region’s best loved landmarks. Unveiled in October last year, Arripare was the centrepiece for the launch of REFOCUS, the new biennial Castlegate mima Photography Prize.

Gayle is an internationally-renowed artist who created Arripare by focussing on landmarks and scenes photographed from around the region, including Stockton, Thornaby, Norton,Yarm, Seal Sands, Billingham and Ingleby Barwick. She then used a combination of documentary photography, collage and sculptural construction to create this amazing piece of work that is constructed to encourage the viewer to see the island as either sitting in the clouds or out to sea. Gayle was a dream to photograph, and the resulting shots were used in local, national and international media.

Another Teesside photographyjob involved Middlesbrough-based animation and visual effects company Bloom Studio, which was expanding thanks to winning a number of new contracts and securing a start-up loan backed by Sir Richard Branson. The business is based at Teesside University’s Victoria Building business hub and is the North East’s fastest-growing visual effects company, recently moving to new premises in the Phoenix Building to allow for expansion.

This type of good news story cries out for some strong pr photography to accompany the press release that wentout to the Middlesbrough Gazette, Darlington's Northern Echo and other regional publications. My brief was to capture the energetic, professional but slightly quirky feel of the Bloom brand and its people. I call it environmental portraiture, it’s similar to a magazine shoot. This style can tell you a lot about an organisation and its people, especially if you mix in a range of non-specific backgrounds with full length and head shots.

The old phrase ‘the eyes are the windows of the soul’ is one that resonates with all north east professional photographers and beyond, and when we make that connection between the subject and the viewer, we know we have achieved our aim.