About the studio

Old Soul Design is the working name of a one-person photography studio. The studio has been operating in roughly its current form for over a decade, with the work clustering around three subjects: food, travel, and lifestyle photography for editorial and small-brand clients.

The background

I came to photography via a long path through cooking and writing about food. My first paid photography work was for a small regional food magazine that needed someone who could be in a restaurant kitchen for half a day without disrupting service. From there the work expanded into recipe and cookbook editorial, then into the broader food-brand campaign work, then quietly into travel and lifestyle through editors who knew me from the food side and asked if I could shoot a hotel or a market town instead.

How the studio works

The studio is a one-person practice. I shoot, edit, retouch, and handle the client correspondence directly. Some larger productions are crewed up with a stylist, a producer, or a second shooter — relationships built with a few trusted collaborators — but the default mode is solo, which keeps the work flexible and the budget reasonable for the editorial work that pays most of the bills.

The three lines of work

Food. Restaurant assignments, cookbook spreads, recipe development, brand campaigns for ingredient or kitchen-equipment makers. The work tends toward natural light and honest food (food that's actually been cooked, not props that have been engineered to look that way).

Travel. Editorial assignments for travel magazines, hotel and restaurant location work for hospitality clients, and personal projects that turn into longer photo essays. The travel work has a slower pace than the food work because the editing arc spans months rather than days.

Lifestyle. Maker portraits, small-business owners in their workspaces, editorial portraiture that fits the same visual world as the food and travel work. Less wedding-and-event, more "tell me about your work and let me photograph you doing it".

The photoblog

The photoblog is the long-running personal home for the work that doesn't fit a commission. A frame from a market that wouldn't make the magazine's edit, a meal I cooked at home, a side-of-the-road landscape on a travel-assignment route. Posted irregularly — weekly when there's something worth saying, monthly when there isn't.

Equipment, briefly

For anyone curious: full-frame mirrorless bodies, a small set of fast prime lenses, occasional tilt-shift for food still life, a tripod that's seen more countries than most people. I use continuous LED panels for low-light kitchens and natural light for everything else. Some retouching and grading in Lightroom and Capture One; minimal heavy editing — the goal is always to honour what was in front of the camera.

Who I work with

Editorial publications, independent food and travel brands, restaurant groups, small-and-mid-size hospitality businesses. I'm comfortable on both the commercial and editorial sides, and I'm careful about which jobs I take — saying yes to a job means I'll do it well, so I say no fairly often to keep the calendar honest.

How to commission

Email [email protected] with the project, the timeline, and the rough budget. Editorial budgets are well-understood and I'll happily work to magazine rates; brand budgets get quoted on the specifics. Replies within a couple of working days, faster if you're on a tight editorial deadline.

For print enquiries

A small number of personal-project images are available as fine-art prints in limited editions. The travel essays especially have generated print sales. Email with the image you're interested in (or describe it) and I'll send pricing and edition information.