AvantPhoto

19/10/2026

I’ve done my “then and now”. Your turn.

Some of you knew me in Sussex. Some through events, commercial shoots or portraits. Others have only found AvantPhoto since the move to France.

I’ve changed location. Plenty of you have changed jobs, businesses or direction altogether.

My mental address book is almost certainly out of date.

Where are you now, and what are you doing?

Tell me below, or send me a message. New faces welcome too.

Phil

17/10/2026

Behind the scenes on a product photoshoot.

I had a brief, the products and had sourced valuable unique props and great collaborators to provide fresh items to create unique flat lays for a pharmaceutical brand.

Got a spark of an idea?Set it alight with an AvantPhoto product shoot. Get in touch and discuss your brief here:

https://avant.photo/product-photography/

15/10/2026

Maldon oysters, light from a beautiful skylight and a kitchen full of skill. A rather good start to a working day.

At Shuck! in Eastbourne, I photographed the oysters from shucking to serving, the people preparing them and the hands reaching in to share them.

The result is a portfolio showing customers what they can eat, who they’ll meet and what awaits them.

Read the story:
https://avant.photo/food-photography-eastbourne-shuck/

Want your own business photographed? A Day in the Life shoot is €695, including up to six hours on site, an edited portfolio and one ten-card social story ready to upload.

Tell me about your business through the contact page at avant.photo.

Food photography Eastbourne for Shuck! See how AvantPhoto captured the dishes, people and atmosphere in a Day in the Life restaurant shoot.

14/10/2026

The process.

From brief, to set up to the shoot and final delivery.

It all starts with the brief. Include basic info like where the photos will appear, when they will be shared and what their purpose is.

Include everything in the brief.

14/10/2026

Winter marketing can ask quite a lot of your product photographs.

Your online shop needs clear views. Your campaign needs something that catches the eye. Your email or website banner may need space for a headline.

Planning those uses before the shoot helps create a useful set of photographs, instead of leaving you to squeeze the same image into every job.

View AvantPhoto product photography:
https://avant.photo/product-photography/

02/10/2026

Be honest: when you take four, ten or twenty versions of the same moment, what happens next?

Do you choose the best one and delete the rest?

Keep all of them, just in case?

Or promise yourself you’ll sort them out later, then leave them there until your phone starts making threats?

These four photographs were taken in just over half a second. Only one made the final selection.

How do you decide what stays?

29/09/2026

Stay part of the story 📸

Algorithms control what you see - email doesn't.

For occasional updates, useful tips, new work, and details on upcoming trips to the UK, join the ever-growing number of people that receive this info by using this form: https://eepurl.com/u1HY5l94cY

28/09/2026

Most of us have hundreds, possibly thousands, of photographs.

The problem is no longer taking them. It is knowing which ones are worth keeping.

The sharpest photograph is not always the most important, and keeping twelve nearly identical versions of the same moment rarely preserves the story any better.

I’ve written a practical guide to choosing photographs with genuine meaning, removing the duplicates, protecting the originals and creating a collection you might actually look at again.

Read it here:

https://avant.photo/which-photos-to-keep/

25/09/2026

Why this photograph?

The older brother looks directly at the camera, relaxed and calm, but fiercely protective of his little brother.

The younger boy tilts his head towards him. He looks completely at ease and safe in his brother’s company.

They are at home here. The barn belongs to their world, and neither of them appears posed or uncomfortable within it.

The dark doorway separates them from the background, while the doors frame them and guide your eye back towards the boys. Every part of the composition supports what their expressions and body language are already telling us.

Choosing a photograph is not just about sharpness, smiles or technical perfection. The strongest frame is often the one where expression, place and composition all tell the same story.

Next week, I’ll be sharing more about how to decide which photographs are genuinely worth keeping.

21/09/2026

“Make car parks sexy.”

That was the brief.

Not the cars. Not some expensively dressed models pretending to retrieve their luggage.

The car parks themselves.

NCP commissioned me to travel around the UK and change how people saw buildings designed almost entirely for function, then largely ignored by everybody using them.

I photographed the colour, geometry, scale, artificial light and occasional moments of genuine drama hiding inside the concrete.

The work was featured by BBC News. Hungry Eye magazine called it “possibly the most impressive example of an artist drawing beauty from an unlikely subject”.

This is not nostalgia.

It is evidence.

If I can find this much story inside concrete ramps, payment machines and fluorescent lighting, imagine what might be hiding inside a business people already have a reason to care about.

Your business is more interesting than a car park.

Its photography should prove it.

See the complete project and read the story:

AvantPhoto - The Beauty of Car Parks

Then tell me:

What is the least photogenic part of your business?

I may disagree.

And if you know someone who insists there is nothing interesting to photograph in their company, send them this.