My newsletter now has some real life actual people subscribers. If that’s you, THANK YOU! A lot.


It does make it easier knowing that someone is out there reading this. Or does it? I’ve reread and rewritten this quite a few times to make sure it makes sense to people who aren’t me. Fingers crossed.


A proper introduction seems in order: Hi, I’m Gail, I live in Cheshire and I’ve been a working photographer since 2007. But I can’t actually remember a time when I wasn’t taking photos. I think deep down I’ve always been a photographer.


I take portraits, mostly of families and headshots, and events including weddings, corporate, theatre and community. I also take still life / arty photos, which tend to be nice or interesting things I find at home or in the garden and sell these online.


Here’s my second camera (the first was a Fisher Price pocket camera). I still have this one somewhere - complete with its box. I did let my children play with it, but only when supervised. I took this photo in case anything happened to it.

This was taken using a method called ‘Through the viewfinder’. It uses the large glass view finder of a vintage box camera. I’ll dedicate a newsletter to this technique at some point.

I did graduate to a real Polaroid - a OneStep600 that I’ve had since at least 1984 as that’s the earliest dated photograph I have. I was always very meticulous about dating my photographs, even back when I was in primary school. It’s a shame my digital filing system isn’t quite so organised.

One of my early Polaroid photographs. Not dated but I’d guess at 1985. This was the view over our garden fence when we first moved in. My parents still live there but the view is now of a housing estate.

I always wanted to be a photographer, but was told many times at school that it wasn’t a proper job. I was able to study for a GCSE in photography while at sixth form, but then went to university to do ‘proper’ things in business and went on to get office jobs.


While working in marketing communications I hired a photographer at least twice a year to take photos for our newsletter. Then I got married and paid another photographer and the penny finally dropped that these people were getting paid to do an actual job. At which point I bought a new fangled digital SLR camera and enrolled on a City & Guilds evening course to learn how to use it. (So many buttons.)

I was made redundant half way through my course and used my payout to open a portrait studio with another photographer on the course. It was one of those now or never moments. And that’s been my profession ever since.


You can find my arty photographs on RedBubble here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/gailgriggs/shop


And details of portrait photography can be found right here on my website.


I’ll be announcing dates for spring mini sessions soon, the daffodils are telling me spring is definitely on its way so I need to get that in the diary. As a thank you for subscribing I’ll announce that date in my newsletter first, so get subscribing if you haven't already! https://gailgriggs.substack.com/subscribe