Just had to share this …
The reaction from World War 2 Veteran Philip Truelove, along with his son and daughter, when I returned and delivered his portrait, captured for the 39-45 Portraits Project.
THIS is why I do what I do! ❤️
215 Platoon
No. 10 Bomb Disposal Company
Royal Engineers
If someone walked up to you right now and asked what kind of photographer you are, what would you say? Would you have a clear, confident answer, or would you hesitate and mumble something like, "Oh, I do a bit of everything"?
There's nothing wrong with being versatile. But I genuinely believe there's one thing that can transform you as a photographer, and that's starting a personal project.
I don't mean a client job. I certainly don't mean something you do just to get likes or feed an algorithm. I mean a project that's entirely yours. Something that means something to you. Something that comes from genuine curiosity.
A personal project gives you an identity. It tells the world, and more importantly it tells you, what you stand for and what you actually care about. It's the difference between someone who takes photos and someone who's using a camera to say something.
It also brings real practical benefits.
You get focus. When you have a clear purpose, every shoot has direction. You're no longer wandering around hoping for a great shot. You know exactly what you're looking for and why.
You develop naturally. Because you return to the same subject or theme again and again, you get better almost without trying. You start to see things differently, you experiment more, and your technical skills sharpen alongside your creative eye. It's the difference between going to the gym now and then and actually following a proper training programme.
And it keeps you going. There will be times when your photography feels flat, or when paid work starts to feel routine. A personal project gives you somewhere to go. It keeps you creatively alive and keeps that spark of motivation lit.
Let me give you an example of a project that became one of the most meaningful things I've ever done. It went far beyond anything I imagined.
It was called the 39-45 Portraits Project. Entirely self-funded and self-initiated, the goal was to travel the length and breadth of the UK to find, photograph, and honour surviving Second World War veterans. I wanted to give them and their families a timeless portrait, completely free of charge, as my way of saying thank you.
What happened next wasn't planned. The project went on to receive national press coverage, and a selection of the portraits was displayed by the BBC during the televised King's VE Day Concert in 2025.
None of that recognition was the goal. The goal was always the veterans. People can sense when something is genuine, and that's exactly why the project resonated the way it did.
The moment a personal project becomes about you rather than the subject, it stops being a personal project. It just becomes self-promotion in disguise. A true personal project has to come from a place of authenticity, not from a marketing plan wrapped in hashtags.
Your project doesn't have to be a grand, sweeping national concept to matter. It can come straight from the place you call home.
Right now I'm working on a new project called I am Lyme. The idea is simple. I'm photographing the people who make up the fabric of Lyme Regis. The fishermen, the boat makers, the cafe owners, the bar staff, the swimming groups, and the characters you see walking around town who make the place what it is.
I'd already spent time capturing the location itself, the seascapes and the harbour, and now the people side is building its own momentum, with one person recommending the next as word spreads. The plan is to bring it all together for an exhibition in the summer of 2027 at the Jubilee Pavilion in Lyme Regis.
If you're taking on a project that involves photographing people in your community, I'd recommend putting together a simple presentation folder. Mine contains the project logo, a short written outline of what the project is and why I'm doing it, an explanation of what the images will be used for, and a small selection of sample portraits.
When you ask people to be part of something, they need to trust you first. A simple folder does a huge amount of work before you've even started talking, because it shows you're serious, considered, and that their contribution genuinely matters.
If you're wondering where to start, look at your own life. What are you already passionate about outside of photography?
If you love sport, look at your local grassroots football club, an athletics team, or a boxing gym. The effort and passion behind the scenes there is a compelling body of work waiting to be captured. If you live somewhere with a unique history, a particular landscape, or a community that doesn't often get noticed, start there. The best projects grow out of things you already care about, because that care shows in the work every single time.
Personal projects might never leave your hard drive. They might not make you famous. That's completely fine. What they will do is keep you sharp, keep you motivated, and remind you exactly why you picked up a camera in the first place.
So stop putting it off and just start. You genuinely don't know where it might take you.
For years, HDR in photography has carried a bit of baggage.
Mention it to most photographers and they'll immediately picture those crunchy, overcooked images from the early 2010s. Glowing edges, strange colours, and a look that screamed "processing" louder than the actual subject. And honestly, fair enough. That version of HDR put a lot of people off, and for good reason.
The “HDR” Trend back in the early 2010s
But here's what's changed: HDR isn't what it used to be.
What we're talking about today is not that old exposure-blended, tone-mapped look that most of us learned to avoid. This is proper HDR editing, pulling more out of the image's dynamic range and displaying it on screens that can actually show it. It's less about creating a dramatic effect and more about giving the image room to breathe.
That distinction changes the conversation completely.
At its simplest, HDR means high dynamic range; more tonal range than a standard dynamic range image can show. It’s not blending images together, it’s having the ability to really show what already exists in that file.
That sounds technical, but the practical version is straightforward. Think about a scene with a blazing sky, deep shadows, and subtle detail in between. In a standard SDR workflow, you end up squeezing all of that into a smaller box. You protect the highlights, lift the shadows, and find some kind of compromise.
With modern HDR editing, you're not forcing that compromise in the same way. You're working in a way that allows more brightness information to survive the edit, so when viewed on an HDR-capable screen, the image can look much closer to what the scene actually felt like.
That's the key difference.
This isn't about making everything loud. It's about giving the image more range.
Check out this web page I put together to check if your display / device is capable of HDR.
Take a look on your computer, mobile and tablet device (if you have one)
🔗 LINK: hdrviewer.lovable.app
Let's be honest: old-school HDR deserved a fair amount of the criticism it got.
A lot of it was used as a shortcut to rescue badly exposed images, and the results were often heavy-handed. Software like Photomatix, which was the go-to tool for HDR processing back in those early days, made it incredibly easy to push things too far. Shadows were crushed, highlights flattened, and that distinctive grungy, over-cooked look became almost a signature of the era. At its worst, it was gimmicky. You knew exactly what you were looking at the moment you saw it.
Worth saying though: Photomatix is still around and still a perfectly viable option. Used with some restraint, it's capable of much more conservative, natural-looking results than its early reputation might suggest. But back then, subtlety wasn't really the point for a lot of people using it.
That's why many photographers developed a kind of instinctive resistance to anything labelled HDR.
But modern HDR is a different thing entirely.
It's not trying to shout at you. It's trying to reveal more subtlety. And when it's done well, most people won't even register that they're looking at an HDR image. They'll just think it looks rich, deep, and beautifully displayed.
More people than you might think.
The biggest shift is that the industry around HDR has finally started to catch up. More screens support it, editing software is building in proper HDR workflows, and image sharing is slowly becoming more compatible. That matters, because a workflow only becomes genuinely useful when you can see the result and actually share it.
Photographers are already experimenting with it in landscape work, cityscapes, interiors, sunsets, and any scene where the contrast is simply too much for a standard file to hold comfortably. It makes particular sense when the subject contains bright highlights that you want to keep bright, without the rest of the image falling apart around them.
So yes, people are doing it. Not everyone, and not for every image. But enough that it's moving from niche curiosity toward something more mainstream.
This is where HDR becomes genuinely interesting from a photographer's point of view.
We've reached a point where many viewers already have HDR-capable phones, tablets, laptops, televisions, and monitors. The image you edit is no longer always limited to the old one-size-fits-all SDR world. Some people can actually see more of what you intended when you made it.
That opens up real creative possibilities.
A sunset can hold brighter light without clipping into mush. A window-lit interior can keep detail outside without destroying the atmosphere inside. A seascape can carry that glowing, luminous quality we often try to suggest with standard editing but don't always fully achieve.
In the right hands, HDR isn't flashy. It's expressive.
The best way I think about HDR is this: it's another tool, not a replacement for everything else.
It won't suit every photograph. Some images are better left in a standard workflow, particularly if the scene is already well contained or if you want a classic, controlled look. HDR also won't make much difference if your audience is mostly viewing on SDR screens.
But for the right image, it can be brilliant.
The skill, then, isn't just learning how to switch HDR on. It's knowing when it adds value and when it doesn't. That's usually where good photography lives anyway. Not in using every feature available, but in using the right one at the right time.
I think so, yes. Just not in the old dramatic sense.
We're not heading back to the days of overprocessed HDR everywhere. That era is done, and rightly so. But we are moving towards a more natural, more display-aware way of working, where HDR becomes a normal part of the photographic toolbox rather than a novelty.
How quickly that happens depends on a few things catching up together: displays, software, and sharing platforms. But the direction is clear.
More of the world is becoming HDR-capable, which means photographers will increasingly need to understand how to work with that reality, whether they choose to or not.
HDR is not dead.
What's dead is the old caricature of it. The version that turned every photo into a neon soap opera. The modern version is far more interesting, far more useful, and far more in step with where technology is heading.
For photographers, the opportunity is simple: start paying attention now. Learn what modern HDR actually is, watch how it develops, and think about where it fits in your own work, because this feels less like a passing fad and more like a genuine shift in the way images are made and seen.
There's been a cracking conversation happening inside my Photography Community on SKOOL ( LINK ) recently, and honestly I think it's one of the most important conversations the photography world could be having right now.
The topic?
Camera clubs.
Specifically, why they're struggling to attract younger members, and whether something as simple as what we call them might be part of the problem.
I've never belonged to a camera club, and I say that not to be dismissive of them, because I know plenty of people who've had brilliant experiences and genuinely improved their photography through being part of one.
But, it never felt like it was for me.
I couldn't quite put my finger on why for a long time. But sitting with this discussion in my community, I think that maybe it starts with the name.
The demographic at most camera clubs sits firmly at 55 and above, and the majority of clubs have shrunk since Covid, with several folding altogether, which is incredibly sad to see.
Walk into a typical meeting and you'll find familiar faces, familiar subjects, and familiar debates about judging criteria. There's nothing wrong with any of that in itself, but the pattern is consistent enough to ask some hard questions.
The conversation in the Photography Community mentions not only the struggle to attract younger members but also speaks of other clubs announcing declining memberships.
That's not a blip.
That's a warning sign.
So what's driving this?
Competition-heavy formats? a lack of openness to newer genres and technology perhaps? I actually think one thing is being underestimated, and it's the very first impression these clubs make before anyone even walks through the door.
The name.
Before I get into the name thing properly, I want to share something from personal experience.
As I’ve mentioned, I've never been a camera club member, but I have visited quite a few over the years as a speaker and presenter, and one thing I notice (except for the few) is that every visit has included a mention of the next competition, the upcoming judging session, or where the club currently sits in some regional standings.
Now, I get it. Competitions give members something to work towards. They create structure, they generate engagement. But when it's woven into almost every conversation, almost every meeting, it starts to define what the club is about, and if what the club is about, is winning, or being judged, that's a very specific kind of person you're going to attract, and a very specific kind of person you're going to put off.
Think about it from the outside. You love photography. You take pictures because it makes you happy, because you see the world differently through a lens, because it's your creative outlet. You're looking for other people who feel the same way. You walk into a camera club and within ten minutes you're hearing about judging criteria and competition deadlines. Is that going to make you feel like you've found your people, or is it going to feel like you've accidentally wandered into something that takes itself a bit more seriously than you're ready for?
With dwindling memberships very apparent over the last five to ten years, several clubs have folded entirely, and the more established ones are attracting very low numbers of new, younger members to replace more senior ones as time goes by.
So back to the name, because I think it matters more than people realise.
Naming psychology tells us that a name without an emotional connection is virtually useless, and a name with a negatively charged association can actively work against you. That's not fluffy marketing theory. That's just how human beings process information.
So what does "Camera Club" say to a 25-year-old who shoots on their iPhone, edits in Lightroom Mobile, and shares their work on Instagram? It says hardware. It says equipment. It says a room full of people debating sensor sizes and lens brands. It says: “Probably not for me.”
"Camera" as a word carries baggage. It implies a physical device, and a fairly specific one at that. In a world where the best-selling camera on the planet is a smartphone, leading with the word camera as your entire identity is, at best limiting, and at worst, actively putting off a huge potential audience before they've even given you a chance.
"Photography" though? That's about the image. The art. The craft. The story you're trying to tell. It doesn't care what you shot it on.
Here's the thing, it's not just "Camera Club" that has a problem. Some clubs have tried to modernise by rebranding as a Photographic Society or a Photography Association, and while I understand the thinking, I'd argue those names bring their own baggage.
"Society" sounds formal. It sounds like membership cards, committee meetings, and a waiting list. It sounds like somewhere you need to be invited into rather than somewhere you wander into because you love taking photos. It has a certain stiffness to it that, however unintentional, can feel exclusive rather than welcoming.
"Association" is even worse. It sounds corporate. It sounds like a trade body or a professional organisation, somewhere you join because you have to, not because you want to. It creates distance before you've even said hello.
The word "Club" though? I actually think that's fine.
A club sounds like somewhere people gather because they love something. It sounds informal, accessible, and human.
Keep the club.
Ditch the camera.
When you call something a Photography Club, you shift the identity of the group from being defined by a tool to being defined by a pursuit. That's a genuinely meaningful distinction. It's the difference between a Running Shoe Club and a Running Club. One is about the kit. The other is about what you do.
A Photography Club says: come along if you love photography. Bring your mirrorless, your DSLR, your phone, your film camera. Bring your creativity. Bring your eye. The name sets an expectation, and if clubs back it up with programming that's genuinely inclusive of all types of image-making, including mobile photography, documentary, portraiture, street, and landscape, the name becomes a promise they can actually keep.
And maybe, just maybe, if the name shifts the identity, the culture starts to shift with it. Fewer evenings built around who's entering what competition, more evenings built around sharing work, exploring ideas, learning from each other.
Of course a name change alone won't save a struggling club. If the judging is still archaic, if the welcome isn't genuine, if competitions still dominate every conversation the moment you walk in the door, you can call it whatever you like and younger members still won't stay.
In an Amateur Photographer reader poll of nearly 900 people, almost a fifth said they didn't belong to a camera club because they considered it an old-fashioned concept. That's a perception problem, and perception starts with the name, but it doesn't end there. The culture inside has to match the promise the name makes on the outside.
But here's what I keep coming back to; a name change can be a catalyst. It forces a conversation. It makes a club publicly commit to something bigger than it was before. It's a visible signal to the outside world that things are different now, and for someone scrolling past a community listing on their phone, that signal might just be the thing that makes them stop and read on.
I've never been a camera club member, and honestly, if I'd ever stumbled across a local Photography Club that genuinely welcomed all types of photography, all types of photographers, and all types of cameras, including the one in my pocket, with evenings built around creativity rather than competition, I might well have felt very differently.
That's the gap we're talking about. It's not enormous, but it might be the difference between a club that survives the next decade and one that quietly fades away.
The clubs that will be thriving in ten years' time won't necessarily be the ones with the longest history or the most impressive trophy cabinets. They'll be the ones that made a newcomer feel like the name above the door was written for them too.
Photography Club.
Two words.
BIG difference.
It’s got to be worth a try, right?!?
There are products that come along and tick boxes, and then there are products that come along and actually solve a problem you've been living with for years. The BenQ Creative Pro PD2770U falls firmly into the second category for me.
Let me explain why …
If you've followed my work for any length of time, you'll know I've been a BenQ display user for a long time. I've recommended their monitors, used them in my own setup, and talked about them on the channel more times than I can count, but there has always been one thing missing … a built-in hardware calibrator.
Every time a new BenQ display launched, that was the thing I found myself quietly hoping for, and every time, it wasn't there. Until now.
The PD2770U is the first BenQ PD Creative Pro display to feature hardware calibration with a built-in calibrator, and honestly, that alone was enough to get my attention. Hardware calibration is a different beast to software calibration. Rather than adjusting things at the GPU level, it works directly inside the monitor's chip. The result is more accurate, more consistent, and doesn't eat into your bit depth the way software calibration can. For anyone doing colour-critical work, that distinction genuinely matters.
What makes it even smarter is something BenQ calls Light-Adaptive Calibration. The display has a light sensor that reads your ambient environment and adjusts the monitor's brightness to match before the calibration runs. It sounds like a small detail, but it's actually solving a real problem. How many times have you calibrated a display only to find the brightness felt off the moment you sat back down to work? That's exactly what this is designed to prevent.
Also, you can schedule it. Set it, walk away, come back to a calibrated display. No puck, no laptop, no cables. Just done.
I've switched the PD2770U to my main display, and the reason comes down to one thing: Adobe RGB.
I do a lot of work that ends up in print, and Adobe RGB covers a much wider range of printable colours than standard sRGB. When you're working in a narrower colour space and then sending files to print, you're essentially working blind. What you see on screen isn't what comes back from the lab. The PD2770U covers 99% of Adobe RGB, which means what I'm seeing when I'm editing is as close as it gets to what's actually going to be printed.
Pair that with a Delta E of ≤1.5 out of the box, triple certification (Calman Verified, Pantone Validated, and SkinTone Validated), and the fact that the panel goes through BenQ's AQCOLOR uniformity calibration where every section of the panel, right out to the edges, is individually tuned, and you've got a display that I genuinely trust. That trust is hard to put a price on when you're making colour decisions for print.
Beyond the calibration story, there are a few things about this display that have genuinely improved how I work day to day.
The magnetic shading hood is one of them. It snaps on cleanly, blocks ambient light from messing with how you perceive colour on screen, and is built from noticeably sturdier material than what I've seen on other hoods. It's one of those things where you don't realise how much ambient light was affecting your judgement until you block it out.
The Wireless Hotkey Puck G3 is another. It's a small dial that sits on your desk and lets you switch colour modes, inputs, and now with the G3, launch applications directly. I use it to jump between Adobe RGB mode and sRGB mode when I need to check how something's going to look on a standard screen. It sounds like a minor convenience, but when you're doing it multiple times a day, having it on a dial rather than digging through a monitor menu makes a real difference.
On the connectivity side, the PD2770U has two USB-C ports (both at 96W charging), two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort, and a wired ethernet port via RJ45. My desk runs a single USB-C cable from the laptop to the monitor, and everything else flows through the display. Clean, simple, exactly how it should be.
27 inches, 4K UHD, IPS. The panel uses BenQ's Nano Matte technology, which brings the reflection rate down to under 3%. That's noticeably lower than a standard matte panel sitting at 3.5%, and miles away from a glass panel at over 4%. In a real working environment with lights and windows, that matters more than it sounds on paper.
It's a 60Hz panel, which for creative work is absolutely fine. This isn't a gaming monitor. It's built for people who need to trust what they're looking at.
If you shoot for print, work in Adobe RGB, or just want the confidence of knowing your display is consistently accurate without faffing about with external calibrators and third-party software, yes, I think it is. The built-in calibrator alone changes the equation for the PD range. The fact that it comes with everything else the PD2770U offers makes it, for me, the most complete BenQ display I've used.
I've wanted a display like this from BenQ for a long time, and this has definitely worth the wait.
Something really encouraging is happening in photography right now, and if you have been feeling quietly frustrated with the pressure to make everything look flawless, I think you are going to love it.
Industry reports from Aftershoot, Stills, and other creative sources are all pointing in the same direction: audiences are turning away from over-polished, over-processed imagery and responding much more warmly to photographs that feel honest, immediate, and genuinely human. After years of chasing technical perfection, it seems the tide is finally turning, and I find that genuinely exciting.
It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. We are living in a visual landscape absolutely saturated with AI-generated content, heavily filtered social media imagery, and endlessly refined visuals.
In that context, a photograph that carries real emotion, a little texture, or a fleeting spontaneous moment stands out precisely because it feels true. Audiences can sense the difference, even if they cannot always articulate it.
What the trend reports describe as "more human" photography comes down to a handful of connected ideas: natural expressions rather than rigid poses, visible texture rather than smoothed-out skin, and editing choices that preserve the character of the original moment rather than ironing everything into a generic finish.
In practice that might mean embracing grain, direct flash, looser framing, or a more documentary approach to light and movement. None of that requires you to abandon your craft; it just asks you to use it in service of feeling rather than control.
The most encouraging thing I take from all of this is that technical quality still matters, it just is not the whole story anymore. The photographers who are really connecting with people right now are the ones combining solid skills with a genuine point of view and a willingness to let a little life into the frame.
That is something worth celebrating, because it means your personality and your way of seeing the world are actually an asset, not something to sand away in post.
There is also a broader context worth keeping in mind. Adobe's recent updates to Photoshop and Express are a good reminder that automated, AI-assisted production is only going to become more common across the creative industry. That is not something to fear; it is actually an opportunity. The more synthetic visual content floods our screens, the more a real photograph, one made with intention and feeling, can cut through simply by being authentic.
So the question worth sitting with as you work in 2026 is not whether your images are perfect. It is whether they are meaningful. Can the photograph still do its job if it keeps a bit of roughness, a bit of risk, or a bit of life? According to everything being written about where the industry is heading, that roughness might be exactly what makes it memorable.
That feels like a genuinely good moment for photography, and for the people who make it.
There is a conversation happening in photography right now, and chances are you’ve heard it. Whether it is in comment sections, Facebook groups, or at events, the same question keeps coming up: is AI going to kill photography?
I get it. When generative AI started producing photorealistic images from a text prompt, the alarm bells rang, and not entirely without reason. If a computer can conjure a dramatic seascape or a perfectly lit portrait from a few typed words, where does that leave those of us who actually pick up a camera?
So here’s what I believe: I don’t think it’s the threat people fear it is. Of course for some areas of Professional / Paid Photography but certainly not for enthusiasts; not for anyone who shoots because they genuinely love it.
Photography has always had to adapt. Digital replaced film, and people said it would ruin photography. Smartphones put a camera in everyone's pocket, and people said that would ruin it too. It didn’t. If anything, more people are shooting now than ever before. Accoridng to CIPA shipment data with 2025 market reports, the hobbyist camera market made up well over two thirds of all digital camera sales, and the number of photography workshops and online courses has grown by more than 30 percent in recent years. People are not falling out of love with photography. They are falling deeper into it.
AI is the latest chapter in that same story. It’s a new tool arriving in an industry that has always evolved alongside new tools.
Here’s the thing that often gets lost in the noise. AI, in the context of most photographers' day-to-day lives, is not generating fake images to replace yours; it’s quietly working inside the software you are already using.
Take Lightroom and Photoshop. Both are packed with AI-powered features now. Masking that would have taken me the best part of an hour a few years ago takes seconds. Removing a distracting element from the background of a portrait, reducing noise in a high ISO shot, selecting a subject with precision. These are the kinds of tasks that used to eat into your editing time without giving anything creative back. They were just tedious.
That is where I have found AI genuinely useful. Not as something that replaces my decisions, but as something that handles the mechanical stuff so I can focus on what I actually enjoy, developing the image, getting the look I had in my head when I pressed the shutter, making it feel the way I want it to feel. The creative part is still mine. AI just means I am not spending forty minutes (and more) doing fiddly selections to get there.
It would be dishonest to say AI has no impact on photography as a profession, because it does. Certain areas are already feeling it. Product photography is one. Generic stock imagery is another, and headshot photography is shifting too, with a growing number of AI applications now capable of producing professional-looking results at a fraction of the cost of hiring a photographer.
Will some people choose those options? Of course. But then, every industry has customers who will always gravitate towards the cheapest available option. Photography is not immune to that, and it never has been. There have always been clients who want results without paying for expertise. AI simply gives that segment of the market a new way to do what they were always going to do.
The clients worth having though, tend to think differently. They understand the difference between a generated image and a photograph made by someone who knows what they are doing. They value the professionalism, the experience of working with a skilled photographer, and ultimately an image that could not have come from a prompt box. That market is not shrinking. If anything, as AI imagery becomes more widespread, it is becoming more discerning.
There is something interesting happening on the other side of the AI conversation. As AI-generated imagery has flooded the internet, audiences have started to crave the opposite. The photography trends emerging in 2026 are centred around authenticity, real moments, real imperfections, real emotion. The slightly overcooked, hyperpolished aesthetic is losing its appeal. People want to see images that feel genuinely human.
That is actually great news for photographers, because the one thing AI cannot do, no matter how sophisticated it becomes, is be there. It cannot stand on a cold beach at six in the morning, read the light, time the wave, feel the composition before it happens. It cannot build a relationship with a portrait subject and find the moment where they forget the camera is there. It can produce images that look impressive on a screen, but impressive and meaningful are not the same thing.
This is the point that gets missed entirely in the AI debate. When people talk about whether AI can replace photography, they tend to focus on the output. Can it produce a decent image? In some cases, yes. But photography has never really been just about the image at the end of it.
It is about being out in the world with a camera. It is the discipline of learning your craft, understanding light, making decisions in the moment. It is the feeling of nailing a shot you had been visualising for weeks. It is the connection you build with a subject during a portrait session. It is standing somewhere beautiful and choosing how to see it.
No AI can replicate that experience. And for the vast majority of photographers, enthusiast or professional, that experience is the whole point.
If you shoot because you enjoy it, AI changes very little about that. It might make some parts of the process quicker and easier, and used well, that is no bad thing. But it is not going to make the experience of making a photograph redundant.
Yes, the industry will keep changing. Some corners of it will shrink. But photography itself, the act of it, the craft of it, the joy of it, is not going anywhere. Do not be scared of AI; just don’t hand it the wheel either.
Photography is not dying. If anything, the conversation AI has started might just remind people why real photographs matter.
Last week, I was working at the UK Photography Show with Adobe, hosting their Capture, Edit, Print area of the Adobe stand.
This area was kitted out with lighting from Westcott (thank you) and also featured my vintage gray background.
David
The lighting being used was the L120-Bs, fitted with Rapid Box Switch softboxes, so folks attending the show could take pictures of our fantastic models, Kristina, David, Grace, and Beth, (great fun and great to work with) using either their cameras or their mobile phones, with no need to worry about triggers. This worked extremely well.
Kristina - Captured using my iPhone 17 Pro Max
We also had some great photography students from Birmingham University, who were kitted out with Lightroom mobile on iPads. They could edit images taken by attendees and print them out there on the spot, thanks to Canon for lending printers and also Hahnemühle for providing paper. This definitely went down well with attendees.
David - Captured with my iPhone 17 Pro Max
It was great working with Adobe and great to catch up with friends who also work at Adobe that I've known for many years, but not seen in person for way too long.
Here's a few more samples of some of the pictures that I managed to take while setting up the stand ready for attendees, or maybe grabbing the odd one in between shots during the day ; I’ve more to edit so will share them in another post …
David
Kristina
I've worked at photography shows. I've stood behind lighting setups, watched attendees cycle through shooting bays, and seen how models are treated over the course of a long day on their feet. The vast majority of people who step up to take a photograph are perfectly decent. Many are a bit nervous, maybe self-conscious about their ability, unsure of what to say. They take their shot and move on. And I get that. Not everyone is comfortable striking up a conversation with a stranger, especially one who's posing under studio lights in front of a crowd.
But here's the thing: even if you're feeling a bit awkward, even if you don't know what to say, just saying "thank you" would mean a lot. That model has been standing there for hours, holding poses, giving energy to every single person who steps up with a camera. A simple acknowledgement that they're a human being doing a job goes a long way.
What concerns me, though, is the other end of the spectrum. Because there are times when you watch certain people take a photograph, check the back of their screen, and walk away, and something about the whole thing just doesn't sit right. The way they framed the shot. The way they looked at the image. Their whole demeanour. You can't always put your finger on exactly what it is, but it gives you cause for concern. You find yourself wondering what the purpose of that shot actually was.
I've been thinking about this for a while now, and the more I look into it, the more I realise this isn't just a feeling. It's a well-documented problem across the photography industry, and models themselves have been talking about it for years.
When you actually listen to what models say about working at photography shows and events, the picture is consistent and, frankly, uncomfortable to hear as a photographer.
At Photo Plus Expo in New York, a model was placed on a narrow traffic pylon on concrete for a dramatic skyline portrait. She was visibly frightened, reaching for a spotter's hand to keep her balance, yet photographers kept shooting. One attendee actually called out "Wait!" when the spotter stepped in to help her, prioritising a clean composition over a woman's physical safety. No one had brought mats, padding, or any safety equipment.
Chris Gampat, Editor in Chief of The Phoblographer, described watching models go for hours without a break, with photographers growing frustrated when they asked for water or a bathroom visit. He recounted swimsuits and summer fashion being shot outdoors in February, with the photographer complaining about shivers and goosebumps as though a woman in near-freezing temperatures should somehow override her own biology for the image. When lunch orders were taken on set, models were routinely passed over. As Gampat observed, when the model stepped onto the set she left her humanity at the edge of the seamless. She stopped being a person and became a prop.
That word, "prop," keeps coming up. And it's exactly the attitude I've seen glimpses of at shows. The model isn't a colleague or a collaborator. She's part of the furniture, there to be consumed.
Evelyn Devere, with thirteen years of modelling experience, described photographers making unnecessary comments about her body and their attraction to her, implying that photos would be used for personal gratification or shared among friends. She recounted a photographer who slowly adjusted her positioning so that areas she had explicitly chosen not to expose would be visible, reassuring her he couldn't see anything when she raised her discomfort.
Kat Yip, a UK-based model with eleven years' experience, described photographers bypassing her professional portfolio to request personal nude photos, and others who opened conversations by commenting on her body.
Amandy Rose Silva-Ranger, a promotional model speaking to VICE, described working a car show where attendees grabbed her as she walked past. She said she didn't feel like a model; she felt like a piece of meat on display. Nicole de Melo, another promotional model, said she had experienced sexual harassment many times and had left multiple companies because of it, adding that the boundaries between professional expectation and personal entitlement became blurred.
These aren't isolated stories. A survey by Zoner Studio found that over half of model respondents had negative photoshoot experiences, with the vast majority involving sexual harassment. 58% said they preferred working with female photographers, and many reported feeling uncomfortable or pressured when working with men. Data from the Model Alliance found that nearly 87% of models had been asked to pose nude without any prior agreement.
Reading all of this, I kept thinking back to those moments at shows. The ones where you watch someone take a photo, glance at the back of their camera with a look you can't quite place, and walk away without a word. Those moments that make you uneasy. The models' accounts suggest that unease is well founded.
There's something about holding a camera that can change the dynamic between two people. At its best, it creates a collaboration, a shared creative moment. But at a show, where there's no pre-shoot conversation, no agreed brief, no relationship at all between the photographer and the model, that dynamic can tip the wrong way very quickly.
I think some people genuinely forget, or perhaps never considered, that the person standing on that set is a professional doing a job. She's not there for them personally. She's giving the same energy, the same poses, the same patience to everyone who steps up. And she deserves to be treated with the same basic respect you'd give any other professional you encounter at a trade event.
A female photographer writing for Photofocus catalogued the directions she had personally heard given to models at events and shoots: requests for "sexy looks," instructions to touch themselves, to spread their legs, to push their chests forward with their arms. She titled her piece simply: "I am over the creepy ones." And I think a lot of us in the industry share that sentiment but haven't been vocal enough about it.
The trade show format makes this worse. At CES, one reporter observed a model kept inside a physical pen for attendees to photograph, remaining silent for four straight days while even the most provocatively dressed promotional models at other booths were at least armed with product knowledge and a sales pitch. At Photokina 2016, female models were positioned as test subjects for camera equipment, dressed in ways that had nothing to do with the technology being demonstrated. The model becomes set dressing. Wallpaper with a pulse.
I understand that photography shows use models to demonstrate lighting and equipment in a practical, engaging way. That's legitimate. But the format creates a uniquely one-sided power dynamic. The model is static, available, performing. The photographer is transient, anonymous, accountable to no one. There's no conversation, no agreed brief, no relationship. And in that gap, some people's behaviour goes unchecked.
This is where it gets properly frustrating. When I started looking into whether any formal guidelines or codes of conduct exist around how photographers should interact with models at these events, I found almost nothing.
The one standout exception is Magnum Photos, which published a comprehensive Code of Conduct in January 2021 explicitly prohibiting all forms of discrimination and sexual harassment. It provides detailed examples of prohibited behaviour, including touching, unwanted advances, sexually oriented remarks, and comments about a person's sexuality, and applies across offices, events, workshops, and assignments. It includes a public complaints procedure with sanctions ranging from written reminders to permanent expulsion. Notably, a previous 2018 version had contained a confidentiality clause preventing its publication, which was removed in the 2021 revision. This is exactly the kind of thing we need more of. But Magnum stands almost entirely alone.
The major UK photography bodies, the Master Photographers Association, the Royal Photographic Society, the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers, the British Institute of Professional Photography, all have codes of conduct. But they're focused on business practices, client relations, and general professionalism. The RPS has a Nature Photographers' Code of Practice covering bird nesting sites and habitat disturbance, but nothing equivalent for the treatment of human subjects at events. The Professional Photographers of America asks members to maintain high levels of professionalism and integrity but offers no specifics around model interaction. None of these bodies have published event-specific guidelines addressing the concrete behaviours that models consistently report.
The photography shows themselves? Nothing I could find. No published attendee codes of conduct. No harassment policies. No briefings for people using interactive shooting bays. Nothing that says: "Here's how we expect you to behave when you step up to photograph a model."
What makes this even more frustrating is that other industries tackled the exact same problem a decade ago.
PAX, the gaming expo run by Penny Arcade, banned booth babes back in 2010, requiring that any promotional models be educated about the product and prohibiting overtly sexual or suggestive methods. Eurogamer Expo in the UK completely disallowed promotional models from 2012, with formal guidelines stating that the practice was unacceptable. RSA Conference banned revealing attire for booth staff in 2015, and CES updated its exhibitor guidelines after sustained public pressure. The "Cosplay Is Not Consent" movement drove widespread adoption of anti-harassment policies at fan conventions, with major Comic-Cons now defining harassment to include unwanted photography or recording.
A freely available Conference Code of Conduct template, adopted by over a hundred organisations, specifically states that sponsors should not use sexualised images and that booth staff should not use sexualised clothing, uniforms, or costumes. The templates are there. The frameworks exist. The photography industry just hasn't adopted them.
And here's the irony that really gets me: photography is the one industry where the relationship between a camera and a human subject is the entire point. We should understand the ethics of looking at people through a lens better than anyone. Yet we're behind gaming conventions and tech expos when it comes to protecting the people in front of our cameras.
I'm not writing this to shame anyone or to suggest that every photographer at a show is behaving badly. Most aren't. Most are there to learn, to practise, to enjoy the event. And I genuinely understand the self-consciousness that comes with stepping up to a shooting bay in front of other people. It can feel awkward. You might not know what to say. That's completely fine.
But at the very least, say thank you. Acknowledge the person who's been standing there all day giving you their time and energy. That small thing matters more than you might think.
Beyond that, I think the industry needs to step up properly. Photography shows could adopt attendee codes of conduct tomorrow. The templates exist and they're freely available. UK professional bodies like the MPA, RPS, BIPP, and SWPP could develop specific guidelines for photographer-model interaction at events, going beyond generic professionalism language to address the concrete behaviours that models consistently report. Event organisers could provide briefings for people using interactive shooting bays, setting clear expectations around consent, communication, and basic respect. The Magnum Photos code demonstrates that detailed, enforceable standards are entirely achievable.
Models at photography shows are professionals. They deserve professional treatment. They deserve to be spoken to, not just photographed. They deserve to have their boundaries respected, their physical comfort considered, and their basic humanity acknowledged, and when something about a person's behaviour at a shooting bay gives you that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach, the kind where you watch them check the back of their screen and walk away and you think, "What was that actually about?", the industry needs structures in place that mean someone can act on that concern.
It sounds like an unlikely claim; smartphone making you better with a professional camera system, but for me, it is exactly what happened, and the journey that brought me there started in the strangest of circumstances: a global pandemic, an empty coastline, and a camera bag I eventually stopped reaching for.
Portrait photography is what I do, it’s the heart of my work, but in the early days of the COVID pandemic, with people unable to gather, I needed an outlet. I needed to get out and stay creative. Fortunately, the nature of my work meant I had the permission to do so, even when so many others could not.
So I turned to landscapes, and more specifically, seascapes. I headed to the coast with my Sony A7R IV, invested in filters and all manner of specialist kit, and prepared to throw myself into a new discipline. What I found instead though, was that I had thrown myself into a wall.
The gear was overwhelming. I was new to landscape photography, new to reading the light in that environment, and new to the entire creative process involved.
Instead of being absorbed by the scene in front of me, I was absorbed by the technical decisions.
Which filter? What exposure? How do I handle this brightness range?
The equipment that was supposed to help me create better images was, in practice, creating a barrier between me and actually photographing the scene.
Out of frustration more than strategy, I started leaving the heavy camera bag in the car when I first arrived at a location. I would take my iPhone and simply walk, scout, and look for compositions before going back to collect the proper gear.
But, what was meant to be a workaround, turned into a revelation.
The images I was capturing purely for composition reference were genuinely looking good; not just useful as guides, but good in their own right.
That realisation shifted everything. Suddenly, the iPhone was not just a note-taking device; it had become a creative challenge: could I get a shot with my mirrorless that was meaningfully better than what I had already captured on my phone?
That question drove me forward, and over the years that followed, I found myself thoroughly absorbed in seascape photography, increasingly using the iPhone as my primary tool at the coast. My portrait work never wavered, that always remained with my mirrorless system, but for the seascapes, the iPhone became its own discipline.
A big part of what made this work was discovering the Reexpose app. Long exposure photography, the kind that smooths water into silk and turns crashing waves into mist, had always required filters, tripods, and careful technical management with my mirrorless. With Reexpose on the iPhone, I could achieve genuinely compelling long exposures without any of that overhead.
This is the nature of computational photography. The iPhone handles so much of what would otherwise require deliberate technical decisions, and for a long time, I thought that was the whole story. Remove the friction, get the shot, enjoy the process.
But what I came to understand was that the phone was doing something far more valuable than saving me time.
Without the weight of technical decisions pulling at my attention, I began to truly absorb my surroundings. The sights, the smells, the sounds, the feeling of being somewhere specific at a specific moment. I was learning to read light not as a technical problem to solve but as something to feel and respond to. I was developing an instinct for composition that no amount of deliberate study had given me.
The iPhone removed the friction that had always sat between me and pure creative engagement, and in doing so, it allowed me to build a visual language and a sensitivity to light that I was then able to bring back to my mirrorless work.
The technical side of things, the things I had found so overwhelming at the start, began to feel natural; not because I had studied harder, but because I had spent years simply being present with the subject, free from distraction. The craft followed the instinct, rather than fighting against it.
Don’t get me wrong here … I’m not suggesting everyone should put down their camera and reach for their phone. What I am suggesting however, is that whatever removes the barrier between you and creative immersion is worth taking seriously, regardless of how unconventional it looks.
For me, it happened to be seascapes with an iPhone during a pandemic. For you, it might be something else entirely. But the principle holds. When you can stop thinking about the tool and start thinking about the image, something shifts, and that shift stays with you, long after you pick the bigger camera back up.
The iPhone did not replace my mirrorless photography, it made it better, and I suspect it will keep doing so for a long time yet.
© Glyn Dewis 2026
