Gavin Forster Commercial Photography

08/09/2026

People often ask me if I always have a camera with me. And nine times out of 10, if I’m away anywhere, I do.

But, my daughter was down at the Royal Ballet in London and due to logistics and amount of kit needed for child trips to London, as you can understand, the amount of space that I had with me was somewhat limited. So, the shoots that had lined up while I was down there, I held back a little bit, when I realised that actually getting that much kit along just wasn’t really feasible. But that didn’t stop me. I thought, ‘Let’s set myself a challenge on this one...'

I do talk about how the biggest assets in any business is the phones that you and your staff carry around. The photos that you get from that can be really instrumental in your marketing strategy. And making sure you get the best out of them is something that I’ve done for more than 10 years.

So practice what you preach and all that; I only had my phone with me in London and one of the apps that I talk about a lot is VSCO Cam. That was my phone and a bit of an app for a bit of a stylised take on it. And these are some of the end results and I’m actually quite happy with them! Yes, they’re more processed than I normally do for my commercial work, but they’re great for socials and they tell a story and they got really good feedback when I shared them.

If your company needs more photos and you can’t justify the cost of me being everything that you need the photos from, which is totally understandable, and your staff need to be taking these pictures in specialist locations, what can we do together to make sure that they’re getting the best pictures they can? To really feel like the pictures that they’re getting are on brand, on message and of a significant quality and style that they fit with the rest of the marketing strategy?

If that sounds like something you need, if it sounds like something that is useful for you, more than happy to have a chat, whether that could be 1:1s with the specific members of staff that are charged with this or directly with marketing managers. Or, if it’s with a wider team in a group session, we could happily do that.

The real goal is hitting that marketing strategy and making sure that you’re maximising the images that you get out there, that they’re on brand and on message, rather than just being a hodge podge of what feels like phone snaps and your professional images that you’ve got is the main bit of the website.

Check out these London pictures, let me know what you think and see if you can spot some of the places on there, that may or may not have a different view on them, to what you normally see with snaps around London.

07/09/2026

It's always fun when your neighbours ask you to bring your camera along and I end up shooting all manner of things locally.

This one was for my neighbours Porsche 911 that he was selling at the time. I'd already previously shot the car for some promo things that he was doing but this this was very much for the sale. So as you know, I shoot a lot of cars both in photo and videos, for Blackshaws for example, and others, but this one was for a sale of a car.

So it was the internals and externals of works. I think we did a really good job of capturing that essence of it. Some things can't be quite captured on an iPhone these days, as you know a lot of a lot of sales for both houses and products tend to be with phones these days but at least we've got some great pictures with a with a big camera and all the gear that goes with it.

If you've got some interesting cars to shoot, whether that's a sale or for just for yourself get in touch and I'm sure we can we can accommodate.

04/09/2026

Somehow it's Great North Run time of year again and it holds many memories. It's kind of really where my career as a photographer started...

It's sort of the first job I earned real money at. I worked for 3 or 4 years covering the Great North and all of the other runs in the North, going to Sheffield, Manchester, Sunderland 10Ks. I did all of those and a few others and that's where I realised I could make money from taking pictures which is, you know, here we are however many years later and that's what we're doing for a living now which is crazy.

I remember doing the side of the road as runners come towards me and shooting for the runners and that was a good few years of stuff. I then evolved into working for charities and for a couple of years where it was London-based charities getting a handful of runners in the race and shooting them in the middle and at the end and I think that was the point where I stopped. I said I'd never do it again just on logistics because having to drive to the middle of the race, shoot some runners and then get all the way to the end, without a media pass, was just logistical chaos and I really didn't like not being able to plan my day out. Actually that charity there was only 50 runners so there was 52,000 people running at me and I had to get 50 bibs. I mean I got it yes obviously, because you know we do these things, but that was really hard.

So roll forward a few years and Newcastle Hospitals Trust got in touch and only needed me at the end of the race to get all the fantastic runners as they come across the line and give some extra gee-up at the end. I've worked for them ever since and it's one of the first things in my diary in the year, they've booked me up straight away which has been great and it's one I always look forward to just for those smiles and through pain of all of those runners coming through and doing a fantastic race for charity, I mean the amount of money raised for charity in the Great North is just absolutely crazy, for charities big and small it's just absolutely fantastic to see what people put themselves through physically to raise money for some causes that really do need their help.

I do need to pull together a collection of images from all of the all of the runs, see if I can get some of those early ones, I know I've certainly got a shot of when I was stuck on a cherry picker for four hours with Ivan from Ghana who didn't know if he was scared of heights and he soon found out as he was shaking at the top of a cherry picker and then the pole run out and we were stuck up there for four hours of him shaking the cage which was just an amazing story, so yeah that ended up going on the press release for the press stuff for the following year and it was just great to be part of, so yeah the Great North holds a great thing in my in my career and long may it continue.

04/09/2026

How often do you ask?

I know at times I feel like I’m asking for lots from both my clients and from people I’ve worked with, for years and years and years. But I’m not one that puts myself out there as ‘Look at me, look at me,’ as you know?

But one thing that really does help me and I’ve already seen the impact on the last time I managed to get away with these. I know how much of an impact it has on my list and my enquiries coming in.

Google Reviews. If we’ve worked together in the past, which obviously a lot of you have done, if you have left me a review already, thank you so much for that. If you haven’t yet, if you could just click on this link, it’ll send you straight to it, and just put some words in there about how we, how things worked out.

Positive or negative, I’m not pushing for all five stars, obviously, that would be absolutely fantastic, but I get that now and again, looking back, it may not have been exactly what you wanted.

Perhaps things I can react to and things I could do better next time. So, if I could trouble you for this very quick, 30-second job, it would really make a difference to me and my business, thank you very much.

Post a review to our profile on Google

03/09/2026

As an English Heritage member for many years when living in Yorkshire, it was great visiting so many sites that English Heritage look after and I'm certainly visiting all the castles up here in the North East that are there under their banner. It's a great experience and my daughter loved it when she was little and continues to love our days out now on the back of it. I've always known about a site in Corbridge but it wasn't one that I visited so when English Heritage got in touch for some photos for a publication that they were doing, it was a great experience to go visit the site and also to capture the capture the artefacts.

I had about 10 or 15 different items to capture where I had to use a few different techniques and a few different bits of equipment that aren't the norm in order to be able to pull out some of the detail on these and really showcase the pieces as they as they are as opposed to how they could be interpreted. So it was very much a more specialist product line with none of the creativity in there, but very much the functionality of capturing these items. So, it's another great organisation I've had the pleasure of working with and long may it continue.

I never thought I'd be handling and shuffling around such ancient artefacts in this career, but as I often say, always expect the unexpected in this photography world. It's all very different and every week is very different.

02/09/2026

Sometimes I refer to this time as headshot season but I think this year's kind of changed things a little bit...

In the past, it was clear from planning out my year when I would get a flurry of headshots. There were regular times in the year where staff members would change or the website was refreshed on a regular basis to start the year, get a new feel to things and new fresh faces.

But nowadays I think things have changed. The ebb and flow of businesses has changed and I think that timings throughout the year where things will be planned in has fluctuated and that's not a bad thing! It spreads things out certainly for me and that headshot season thing does move around.

Obviously I've got the regular things - the universities which are tied into which terms they're in and when new starters are coming in or staff members are changing. That said, that flexibility is great for me. It means that I can plan things in and do things to fit but what has been clear is that headshots certainly do split into two camps and both of those have been busy for me of late.

Some of those are working to set a brief that I've worked to before, a regular thing across a company where I'm doing 200/300 headshots for people to a same background or a same editing style because the company’s of a size that they need more people through that. We need to keep that consistency across the full brand.

But also I get regular headshots for people that want to change, that want to mix LinkedIn up a bit to give them choices. The last thing you want to see is the reuse of headshots. Over a short period of time, there's no harm in using pictures more than once obviously but if you're seeing the same pictures within, say, a 6-week turnaround that does feel a little bit repetitive. Even if the words are different, people scan past things on LinkedIn if it's the same picture again and agin so having a wide variety of images in a set gives you choices and gives you options.

So it's been great shooting them for quite a few clients recently where it's mixing things up and doing things in a different style, not just changing clothes but changing locations and backdrop and context to be able to allow people to tell their story differently online.

Are you thinking about some new headshots? Are you wanting your team to all be nice and consistent across the board? Drop me a message and we can have a chat and see what we can work out for you.

01/09/2026

I've worked with Fenwick Mark Ridley a fair few times over the years, capturing his swimming feats and adventures, so here's a little behind the scenes for you all to show what it all looks like behind the lens...

It's always so fantastic to get out in nature and photograph sports people and adventurers sharing their passion (though in this case, staying on the much warmer river bank!)

31/08/2026

What are we all up to today? Taking time off for the bank holiday or making the most of the quiet and getting some work done?

If you're out and about, why not snap some pics and share where you've been or what you've been up to in the comments? Let's have a look!

28/08/2026

We're currently creeping into award season. I get the pleasure of shooting a lot of the different hotels in Newcastle, from the Copthorne to the Hilton to the Crowne Plaza, all of which give me the chance to experience some amazing awards dinners and events and promotions for companies that enjoy bringing their whole staff together to celebrate successes.

Have you got an awards event coming up? Get in touch and more than happy to show you some examples of some of the fun that I've had over the years at different venues across the North East and further away.

27/08/2026

Mira Marketing has been going from strength to strength over the last couple of years and Stu's been a good friend over many years too. I think this is at least the second or third business that I've worked with him on. I've been involved within Clothed brand many moons ago all the way through to the growth of Mira Marketing which now does great things all over the world. It does amazing marketing campaigns for different people and this one was a team photo to show expansion. The last shoot wasn't that long ago and they've already moved out of the office that they were in for a matter of months because of growth. They’re now in an even bigger office, which I need to visit to say hello the team.

But it's always great capturing the teams working and teams being busy because as much as when clients want to see the numbers and they want to see the outputs of what's being delivered and what's been successfully we've done on with other companies, they also want to see that interaction with staff and the smiles and everybody working well together. This is what was captured for the team in this case, which was just a little visit the office. I let the guys do some collaborative working and talking and you know showing what they do naturally without posing, just having a chat. So if you’re looking for some new shots of your team or to give your website that bit of refresh and a bit of extra imagery with some collaborative working and really showcasing your team working together, let's have a chat!