Gavin Forster Commercial Photography

17/06/2026

Your face is important to your business!

Headshots are a vital part of any business’s marketing strategy. From your website’s about page to your team’s LinkedIn profiles, a headshot helps to put a face to a name.

Traditionally, headshots are corporate photos of your team members from the shoulders up. You’ll often see black and white headshots in front of a plain white wall. This style of imagery is impersonal and fails to get across what makes your business special.

The right headshots will combine your brand’s personality with that of your individual team members. That’s where I come in.

Ready to capture what truly makes your team special?

16/06/2026

It's always fantastic working with Steve and the team at North East Escapes, capturing their ever-expanding holiday let portfolio for the business. It's been some miles, that's for sure, from the holiday let staples of Amble, Bamburgh, Seahouses, all that way up, right up the coast, all the way down the opposite way to Alston, near enough into Cumbria, and then all the way nearly into Yorkshire, in Stanhope.

Thanks to some glorious weather, we captured some fantastic overhead shots with the drone to really show off the locations, which, are you can see, are just stunning.

And being able to experience that all within Northumberland and all within a reasonably short space of time from my home in the Tyne Valley is just fantastic. So, working with Steve and the team has been absolutely great, and I can't wait to see where the travels have us next.

And if you've got a property that you'd like to show off to its full potential, let's talk!

15/06/2026

What's your normal response to a cold call about something you've been cold called about a lot over the last 6 months?

I seem to be getting endless calls, we're talking 2 or 3 a day from either companies asking for changes to my EE account (which I don't have directly, I haven't done for more than 15 years). I'm with the Utility Warehouse, so I think theirs comes under the EE bracket but they're still ringing me about mobile phones and endless calls for those and also the PPC car claims, car insurance, car sales, breaches and all that. What's your normal response?

I usually do answer. I did go through a spell of not answering as many and letting them talk to me but obviously I get quite a bit of work enquiries coming in on the phone still so I try and answer where possible.

But what's your response? As soon as they give me the topic I can tell it's a sales call or instantly you can hear the click as it goes onto the call centre. I sometimes cut off at that point. I don't like cold calls, the chances of me responding positively to somebody that's cold calling me are very slim.

I missing something, should I be on a getting my phone off a list? Should I be making more effort to buy in to not have these coming in in the first place or the settings on my phone that I've missed that I could block a lot of suspected spam calls?

I did have a spam blocker at one stage on my Android phone, if anybody's got any tips on that that would be handy - maybe an app, an updated app that would allow me to do that. I think it’s just, I don't want to miss calls, I don't want to miss important things but I do want to stop being on the endless cycle of, “Go away I'm not interested!” And it's not fair on the person at the end of the phone, I don't want to be short and abrupt with somebody at the end of the phone because it's most of the time just doing their job rather than being full-on scammers. We can't assume that everybody's a scammer, but also it's things I'm not interested in so I try and get rid of it as quick as possible.

What's your technique for this? What's your way of not having as many of these calls, things come in, or what is your way of dealing with them when they call in light of them being now mobiles most of the time rather than random obscure numbers or whatever random numbers around the world, they're obviously a bit sneaky now whether it be there's a mobile number which gets more chance of picking up. It might be a neurodivergent thing, it might be just me, it's just not something that I like dealing with, but there you go.

12/06/2026

Voice notes are back.

I've always been a long-term fan of voice notes and I know this comes up regularly, whether you're a lover or a hater...

I'm very much a lover of them. It means I can download my head very quickly and not have to type things out. I can get all of the points across from the ADHD jumpy brain.

So even to other ADHDers, I tend to do voice notes more regular and to other people I kind of apologise as I start them, but I still send them regular-ish. I used to send them very regular-ish. Now I've held back a little bit because I know if people don't like voice notes, then I get it.

I don't want to cause any grumps. But on the flip side, they're really good for my head and being able to clear my head. So I'm going to send some. And all of a sudden this last week, out of the blue really, I was having a couple of chats with somebody. It was Shelly. I met Shelly who I haven't spoken to for a while. Shelly was really pivotal in my early wedding career back in Leeds and allowed me to get my head around things. Little did we realise we bounced off each other really well just because of undiagnosed ADHD as it turns out!

She sent a couple of voice notes straight back to me after a message this week on something. And all of a sudden there was 20 or 30 voice notes back to each other. Back and forward. And it was so much of an easier conversation, so much of a longer conversation allowed to be a longer conversation because obviously you've got to listen, stop and reply. It was a full day of back and forwards in between stuff, which was great. It felt like a phone call just spread over a longer period of time in between when both of us could listen and talk. Fantastic for me. We've talked about things we wouldn't have done and it's kind of sparked a few things in my head and allowed us to have a catch up and a chat and a rant on about our respective industries these days and what we're both doing.

And then since then there's been more people sending me voice notes, which is great. I don't know what sparked everybody using them again. I remember this conversation a couple of years ago and I was either loved by some or hated by others for sending voice notes over.

So it's nice that it's come back and people are starting to use them again or realising that people don't actually mind them as much as they think they do. I even got a couple of voice notes off a good friend of mine, Nicola, recently. And I think the line was, “I don't like these, but I'm sending it because it's easier.”

There you go. That sums it up. I don't like sending voice notes, but they're easier.

So there you go. We keep things nice and simple. Are you still using voice notes?

12/06/2026

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

11/06/2026

With the Men's World Cup kicking off across the pond today, we're about to head into a month of all things football.

With a couple of NUFC players in the England squad, there'll be some local support no doubt!

Will you be watching this year?

10/06/2026

Let's show off your property!

From Airbnb to student accommodation, house sales to promotion images I've had the pleasure of shooting hundreds of vastly different properties from all over the North East and beyond.

We can even get the drone in the air, showing off your location. Let's have a chat if this is something you are looking for...

09/06/2026

Managing to catch up with George Bromley along the way on his awesome personal challenge of walking a beeline from Land's End to John O'Groats was just fantastic and so inspirational.

Finding out what compels someone to take on an intense journey like this was just amazing - so pleased we got to connect, a really inspiring guy!

08/06/2026

With the PGAs behind us and the US Open teeing off this month, we're firmly in golf season now.

It all brings back a fantastic memory from last year, when my daughter and I went up to the Scottish Open in Dunbar and she absolutely loved it.

She got really close to the players. We went on a practice day which means that we had a little bit more flexibility and a little bit more relaxed approach to things where often if you go on the competition days it's super duper quiet, it's really intense and that's great to be at as well but the practice days with my daughter was just was just fantastic.

And it gave her the chance to see her players and got to meet some players that she really had a connection with. She got to meet Adam Scott, literally the only reason that she wanted to go was to go and see him, as he was the first person she saw hit a shot at the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool a couple of seasons back.

She just loves him as a player and keeps an eye out for his scores every week. So to manage to meet him – and that was a very much a chance encounter in light of the chaos of the starting sheet – we managed to figure it out and get in the right place at the right time and get a picture with him.

It was absolutely fantastic for her to have met a golfing idol in that sense even though she's just starting with her golf.

05/06/2026

The hallowed turf of the Castle on the Hill means a lot to me as a Newcastle United fan, but also as an iconic building in the depths of Newcastle’s city walls, it's always meant a lot to me.

Every time I'd see those metal shapes on the top of the building, it always made me smile. Being able to capture some images of a large conference that was taking place there (I can't really say who it was) – but it was to see their faces, to be watching the lights being out on the pitch to keep the grass growing.

Just to see the vast aura of the building with nobody in it was something else. It's different when it's full of 52,000 people, but it still makes such an impact even when it's just a handful of business people looking around.

It's been a transitional couple of years. I remember being pitch-side with my good friend Serena back in the 2015-16 season, I think it was that year that we went down, I think it was then that I took pictures pitch-side for her. It was phenomenal. It was a real experience to be part of and to still be calling in now for different jobs, it's just fantastic. Whether that be in a full-on big gala dinners or balls through to conferences in the building. People often forget that it's not just for football. The team that works in the background doing these events is just great to give people a space that can be so adaptable to their needs.

If you are looking for a unique venue, have a chat with the team. They'll certainly be able to create a fantastic experience for you, bringing your event to life and imprinting that little bit of Geordie spirit on your event.