For People Who Like Reading Blurbs

Some example styles of photography that Mat provides are as follows:

Studio photography in the home; shots with a stark black background and poetic feel. All the shots you see on this site are set up in the client's home, even the ones that look like they were in a studio.

Beautifully lit portraits with natural backdrops such as ivy, textures like stone and interesting brick. For a given scene we aim to capture shots with perfect symmetry and with an eye to a vanishing point, to provide maximum choice when it comes to proofing.

Office-based portraits that serve two purposes; provide a consistent look and feel across all employees whilst bringing out the personality of each person in front of the lens.

High-end Linked-In photos: plain shots in super high definition that are lit well and look fabulous in black and white if you choose. Although they work great for Linked-In, these photos could also be used at their full resolution and used for marketing materials later if required.

Is Mat the best portrait photographer in London? That would be quite some claim. Perhaps a more sensible question might be, "does Mat run the best portrait photography company in London?" One reason for his success is that Mat is focused on delivering an excellent result for his clients. This sounds like a terribly inert marketing statement, but it really translates when the deliverable is such a visual / subjective thing. Portrait Photography - at least the kind we do for our clients - is 40% art, 40% skill, and 20% business management.

A Typical Week For Us

A typical week for us looks like this. Three or four individual portrait photography shoots in London where we head to people's homes in various localities. In reality, although these are mostly only two hour shoots, London being London we can't fit more than two of these in a given day. Sometimes, only one. So these individual portrait sessions can take up 2 or 3 days of the week. Such days, depending on the workload, we usually find a speciality coffee house nearby and relax with a V60 filter coffee, enjoy the surroundings, or scout for new locations and do a little networking. If we wasted a long afternoon in such a manner, Mat will then work into the evening on editing assignments for other clients.

For the remaining days, Mat either takes on larger commissions such as corporate photography or editorial work, or is chained to the editing desk. We can easily spend two whole days in editing for a given week. Yes - days. It's hard as a client to understand that a lot of the work you pay for goes on behind the scenes. We aim to stick to a 5-day week like most of the rest of the working world, but this very rarely happens (like the rest of the working world?), and we often find ourselves shooting on Saturdays and Sundays, if not working through a backlog of editing that got out of hand as we tried to fit too much in. Those freelancers reading this blurb will understand that you often must take work when you are a bit too busy and try to even-out the gaps at other times when there isn't so much work, by spreading the load. As such we do specify to all our clients that there is a two week lead time for receiving deliverables, unless otherwise agreed. We can often subvert this on request, but this is our general rule, as it allows our business to be sustainable.

The Places We Work

Here's some information about the localities in which we work. Chiswick is great for portrait photography and it's where we are based. So many beautiful backdrop locations here: Ravenscourt Park (I have some special places in the park I like to shoot where the light dances around and can be captured by a reflector), the many places along the river which works great for sunset portraits, the gorgeous brickwork in some of the conservation areas, the numerous parks and green areas, fashionable cafes, and more. Portrait photography in Barnes is lovely too, there are some great photo options along the towpath in Barnes and of course we have shot some gorgeous family portraits in the river homes and green spaces in Barnes. We shoot a lot of portrait photography in Westminster, generally for legal and political professionals. We've had commissions for a handful of MPs over the years and relish working with such individuals. Mat is more interested in the political process than in the end result, so is generally fascinated and inspired by politicians of all persuasions. More often, however, the portrait photography we shoot in Westminster is for legal professionals; private commissions, photography commissions for magazines or journals. At time of writing (August 2017), recent photography sessions in Westminster have included Lord Dyson, Baroness Hale the new Supreme Court President, and a firm of retired judges, to name a few. Here are some other places in which we regularly undertake portrait photography for professionals: Camden, Hampstead, Richmond, Brompton, Fulham, Mayfair (although usually for visitors to the country), City of London, Borough. We often plan shoots in other London places that Mat finds special, and we are often found pointing the camera in a particular direction at Barbican (oh, the architecture! Not to everyone's taste but makes for stunning urban portraiture) or at various special points along the River Thames.

As a general rule we don't undertake personal portraiture outside of the M25, but our corporate and editorial commissions take us much further afield. We often receive assignments to shoot at multiple locations in the UK as it's easier for a client to hire one photographer on whom they can rely, and pay the additional expense of travelling, than to attempt to manage multiple contracts with multiple photographers. We have worked with a few clients who have attempted this before, and we have edited-up other photographer's photos and consoled the client when their Leed's-based photographer has not shown up, or their Oxford-based photographer turned out to be an amateur posing as a professional and they missed the vital shots.*

* For the sake of balance, this particular client found an excellent portrait photographer in Manchester whose work I can highly recommend!

Mat was born in London and has lived here for most of his life. Combine this with his curiosity for life and desire to find visual interest in everything he sees, and you should get a good idea about why Mat is a portrait photographer in London who knows the scene!

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Now you know how we work, if you have any other questions we'd love to hear from you. Just email mat on mat@matsmithphotography.com or scroll upwards from here to use our contact form to get pricing for your London portrait photography shoot! Thanks for reading!