There is a particular kind of madness that comes with being a working photographer in the middle of a busy season. It is the madness of setting two alarms for 2:45am, driving three hours to an airport in the dark, flying two hours to Poland, spending a weekend crying happy tears with your oldest friends, flying back, going straight to the office, then driving to Gloucestershire to set up a headshot studio for 185 people and all of this within the space of about five days.

May 2026 was that kind of month.

And I would not change a single minute of it.

Why Events Matter, A Lesson Learned at 4:00am on a Friday

The month began with a charity golf day in Nottingham. The NGA Charity Golf Day for Notts Gymnastics Academy, a registered charity raising funds for young gymnasts in the East Midlands. I left Newport at 4:30am, arrived at Ruddington Golf Club as the morning mist was still sitting on the fairways, and spent six hours photographing people doing what people do when they are outdoors on a beautiful course for a good cause.

They laughed. They competed. They celebrated. One person did a victory dance that I am fairly confident their colleagues will not let them forget for some time.

This is why event photography exists. Not for the grand gesture, though those matter too, but for the small, unrepeatable human moments that happen when people gather around something that means something to them. A charity golf day is not just a golf day. It is a fundraiser, a community builder, a memory maker. And without a photographer present, it is a collection of moments that exist for a few seconds and then disappear forever.

Sports and charity event photography is a discipline in its own right. The technical demands are significant, long lenses to capture action from distance, fast shutter speeds to freeze movement, constant repositioning to find the angle that tells the story rather than just documents the scene. The 70–200mm f/2.8 earned its place in the bag that day, as it always does when there is distance and movement involved.

The Reunion. Why Life Outside the Camera Fills the Images Inside It

Between the golf day and the biggest shoot of the month, I did something entirely unrelated to photography. I flew to Gdansk, Poland, with my husband, who went to visit his mother while I drove with my closest friends Ola and Kamila, and headed to a lakeside venue in Grabówko where 24 of my school friends were waiting.

Thirty years after our final exams.

I have written about this elsewhere and I will not overdo it here, but I want to say something professional about something deeply personal. The photographers who produce the most emotionally resonant work are not necessarily the ones with the most technical skill. They are the ones who have lived, who have laughed until they could not breathe, who have held friendships across decades and borders, who understand what it feels like to be in a room full of people who genuinely love each other.

That weekend refilled something that a busy season empties. It reminded me why the work matters. Because the events I photograph, the conferences, the galas, the away days, the charity dinners are all, at their core, versions of the same thing. People choosing to be in the same room together. People choosing connection over isolation. That is worth documenting. Every single time.

I also took my camera. Of course I did.

185 People. Two Days. Over 400 Headshots. Delivered Before They Left the Building.

Then came Tortworth Court.

De Vere Tortworth Court in Gloucestershire is a stunning Victorian Gothic manor house. The kind of venue that makes you feel slightly underdressed just by looking at it. I was there with ACF Events, one of the UK’s most professional and genuinely wonderful event management companies, for a two-day corporate headshot session on behalf of their client Form3.

The brief: photograph 185 people across two days, producing both a formal professional headshot and a fun image for a digital mosaic wall for each person. Deliver everything before the client left the building on day two.

The setup: a Raubay pull-up white backdrop, a Photoolex strobe with large softbox, a parabolic reflector panel, two Nikon camera bodies, my 85mm prime lens, and my assistant Piotr, who managed the guest list, handled all the heavy lifting, and made sure my tea cup was never empty. That last point is more important than it sounds.

The execution: two long days starting at 7am, working through open slots between conference sessions, managing a flow of people with no fixed time slots on day two, and maintaining consistent exposure, lighting, and quality from the very first frame to the very last.

The result: over 400 edited images delivered on site before the event concluded.

When the organiser said they could not believe it was possible, I smiled and said thank you. Inside I was thinking about all the preparation, all the test shots at home weeks before, all the equipment checks, all the conversations with Louise at ACF Events about logistics and scheduling. What looks like a miracle from the outside is just preparation from the inside.

Corporate headshot photography at scale is one of the most technically demanding disciplines in event photography. Consistency is everything. Your 185th subject deserves exactly the same quality of light, the same care in direction, and the same attention to their expression as your first. Aperture locked. Shutter locked. ISO locked. White balance locked. The variables you can control, you control completely, leaving your full attention for the variable that matters most. The person standing in front of your camera.

This shoot also marked a significant professional milestone. ACF Events confirmed that I am their main photographer. For a photographer who started this year with a clear goal of building agency relationships, that confirmation meant a great deal.

Two Networking Events, One Evening, Cardiff

The evening after Tortworth Court finished I drove to Cardiff for two networking events back to back. Because apparently I do not believe in recovery days.

Connect Cardiff at Barbara’s Bier Haus was first. A warm, well-organised evening where I reconnected with Sian from Utilita Arena Cardiff, who mentioned the possibility of shooting concerts there. I also met Hannah, founder & event host Beyond the business card who extended a camera-welcome invitation to a future events.

Then Cardiff Film and TV Networking at Be At One, a different crowd entirely, but I reconnected with Lisa Marie Brown who organises Wales Goes Fast & Furious on the last May weekend in Cardiff. Creative, curious, connected to the screen industries. A reminder that event photography does not exist in a single world. It crosses into film, television, music, sport, hospitality, charity, and everything in between.

Networking gets a bad reputation. Too many name badges, not enough substance. But the right rooms, the ones where people are genuinely curious about each other, are where the interesting things begin. I came away with new contacts, new possibilities, and the particular kind of tired that only comes from a very good evening.

Kingsway Market, Three Clients, One Night, One Camera, 2am

The final set piece of May was the opening night of Kingsway Market in Newport. I shot simultaneously for Voice magazine, South Wales Argus, and Kingsway Centre itself.

Not every stall was filled. Not every corner was finished. The paint was barely dry in places. And yet the atmosphere was already completely there. Welcome drinks and goodie bags at the entrance. A coffee cart outside doing excellent business. A mechanical bull that attracted considerably more volunteers than anyone expected. A tractor that became an impromptu photo booth. Live music that made people forget they were standing in a converted retail space and start dancing.

Covering three clients in one shoot requires a particular kind of discipline. Each client has different needs, editorial storytelling for the magazine, news photography for the newspaper, brand and atmosphere content for the venue itself. You are not shooting one brief, you are shooting three simultaneously, constantly assessing which frame serves which purpose while never losing sight of the overall story.

I delivered the images at 2am. Some things cannot wait until morning.

What May Taught Me

May was a month of extremes. Extreme early starts and extreme late finishes. Extreme emotional highs, both personal and professional. Extreme technical demands and extreme human rewards.

It taught me that preparation is the closest thing to magic that exists in this industry. That the right equipment, properly tested before you need it, quietly removes the obstacles between you and the work. That agency relationships, built slowly and with genuine care, compound into something extraordinary. That a mechanical bull at a market opening will always, always, get people on it.

And that sometimes the most important thing you can do for your photography is put the camera down for a weekend, go to Poland, and remember what it feels like to be fully alive in a room full of people you love.

June is already looking bigger. A third consecutive Credit Week. More evenings with ACF Events. Fast cars. And whatever else decides to arrive between now and the end of the month.

Bring it on.