Hear about AI, food photography and keeping your clients for fifteen years with Abi and Giles from Giles Christopher Photography

Abi and Giles have a background in film and TV. Abi as a producer. They met while working on Jonathan Creek.  Abi says she does the organising side doing the paperwork, keeping the clients happy and getting the next client while Giles does the creative stuff.

Giles started doing stills photography as an assistant in the movie industry. He then moved into being a movie cameraman. Eventually, they both got tired of the long hours in the movie industry and set up their own business. They ran the company alongside their film careers for about five years.

They now do video. Having done just stills for a long time they are now doing some video. However, they are sticking to short videos and outsourcing to filmmakers for longer work.

Marcus and Giles talk a little about equipment. Marcus says he is quite a technical geek and loves focus-stacking. This also allows him to change the look of an image later on if the client wants it. He uses a Sony mirrorless camera now and thinks they are now good. He has moved from Canon to Nikon to Sony over the years.

Sam’s asks how they get clients. Abi says word of mouth has been key for a long time. There are a lot of connections and conversations with people. Their clients tend to stay with them for a long time. Their oldest clients have been with them for over fifteen years. Once they get new clients in the studio or on location they tend to keep them. Also, they work a lot with marketing agencies and they have a high staff turnover. This works well with them as staff they have built a relationship with in one agency move to another and then they get introduced as great photographers to the new agency.

Abi spent lots of time chatting to clients over lockdown as the clients were feeling low. Her day-to-day job is keeping those connections alive. They are also always suggesting new ideas to current clients. Giles likes to run new ideas with old clients and they really like that and like trying them.

Sam asks about their approach to AI. He says it’s here and they love it and want to embrace it, but also he is keeping the enemy close. Giles did do some talks on it but stopped due to the hate mail he was getting. Giles says the generative AI is so much better if you give long prompts giving lots of technical terms to do with the lighting and style of shoot. Giles says it’s great for generating ideas so you are not staring at a blank page. It helps spark ideas.

Marcus mentions Scott Choucino of Tin House Studio who does food photography. Marcus says due to AI he is going to make his photography more organic and doing things like shooting on film. Giles thinks it’s great to go back to film. You can listen to our show on film here. But Giles thinks commercially it’s essential to stick to digital.

As final advice, Giles says to stick to your rates and value your experience. He also recommends working out how much you need to charge hourly as a minimum to survive with the lifestyle you have.