From Music to Portraits with David Shoukry

In this episode of Photography Adjacent, I sit down with David Shoukry, a portrait photographer known for his clean, carefully composed style. David shares how he moved from a 20-year career in music into photography, and how that transition slowly shaped the way he works today. What begins as a story about changing careers becomes a wider conversation about finding your place in a creative field. David reflects on trial and error, building a style over time, and the reality of making a living through photography. There is a lot here for anyone trying to navigate their own path in a creative industry. This conversation offers a grounded look at what it actually takes to build something sustainable. It highlights the role of consistency, relationships, and patience, and shows that most careers are built quietly over time rather than all at once.

Tom Trevatt David, David Shoukry, welcome to Photography Adjacent. Thank you very much for joining us. It's great to have you on. I'm sure that a lot of people who are listening today have heard your name, have seen your work, know who you are, but maybe they haven't heard the full story of how you got into photography. So tell us how you started in this game.

David Shoukry Okay, well firstly, thank you very much for having me on. It's very nice to speak with you and to see you again. Okay, so how I got started in all of this was, this is my sort of second career, if I can call it that. So I spent the first 20 years or so of adult life working as a musician. So that was partly teaching music, composing for TV and playing as a pianist.

So I did that for a long time. The last part of that career had me based in Southeast Asia. And when my family and I decided to return home, I had been umming and ah-ing for some time over whether I wanted to continue doing music as a career. Nothing went wrong with it. But like with every career that you can have, I was doing the same kinds of things. And I'd ummed and ah-ed over you know, could I do something else? And I've been a hobbyist photographer for several years. And one of the nice things about being based in in Southeast Asia was that there is, I would say there's a different culture and approach as far as photography is concerned there, especially portrait photography. And people are, I would say just much more open to getting involved in photography and being in your photographs.

And so it made it easy for me to practice. So I spent a couple of years living in India, and that was the place where I really learned how to do everything. And it was super helpful that where I was living, people were not exactly queuing up to be my portrait subjects for me to practice on. But it wasn't difficult to find people who wanted to help. And obviously, it meant that I could practice, get good, give my photos to people.

And then when I eventually returned home to the UK, I kind of went cold turkey with my music career and had a little bit of money behind me, which meant that I could sort of stop and immediately go into doing photography. Now, it was, I wouldn't necessarily recommend cold turkeying a career change if I was going to do it again, because it was quite a slow start financially. And I had to try a few things before before I found something that I was good at and I could find something that people would pay me to do, basically. And so I initially had a few sort high street jobs, commercial photography jobs where I would, commercial portraiture that is, where I would photograph people who would book in for like a makeover session or they'd come in with their kids or with their partner or something. And that's how I sort of learned how to do studio work.

and then I ended up converting my garage and having a small, you know, what would the size be? Four by five meters or something like that. So a pretty small double garage. And I just got to work there and built it up. And that's how I got going.

Tom Trevatt Nice. So I mean, today, you're known for your portrait work. Certainly, you know, the way that we kind of see you online is, you know, you've got a very specific style is very clean. It's very kind of considered. And it's definitely got this kind of like, know, I could I can see a David Shookery photograph in the wild. And if I scroll back on your Instagram, which I was doing yesterday, as I was just preparing for for our chat today.

It's almost been like that from the beginning, very, very early on. Yes, your work has got kind of various different styles and there's obviously some street photography and some sort of, I'd say, like travel style photography from when you were maybe just a hobbyist. But how did you almost find this style and adopt it? then, you know, you've almost had like almost 10 years worth of a career of a style, very, very, very similar. I mean, maybe you probably see quite different styles in there, but. From the outside perspective, feels like you kind of almost landed fully formed.

David Shoukry Yeah, that isn't the case. I did not land fully formed and there have been so many kind of failures with things that I've had a go at and you know either I didn't enjoy it or I had no talent for it or people weren't interested in me doing that for them and so the way that I've got to the style that I'm shooting at now is a combination of finding a lighting style that I really liked so the soft lighting style that I use for most of my pictures.

That's my favorite thing, which is why I do it. that's initially, that's what I learned to do. And I did it with two lights. And once I felt that I could, you know, I was able to shoot decent headshots, other sort of relatively straightforward kinds of portrait photography. And then a few years ago, like every other freelance photographer that's serious about their career, I had to kind of think. what's going to be my, excuse the appalling corporate phrase, but what's going to be my USP? What will people come to me for that other people aren't necessarily doing? And so it was then that I tried to start incorporating elements of set design and being a bit more intentional about the way that I was using color. And so I don't have any formal education as a, you know, in the visual arts and photography or anything like it.

It was all in music. And so all of the things to do with that more formal side of art and painting and photography, I just learned from books effectively and YouTube videos. I'm a pretty regular gallery visitor and that's something that I've always enjoyed. And so I tried to take inspiration from, know, frankly, people that had worked it out before me. I certainly wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel. I didn't come to it. thinking that I was an expert or anything like that. I had to learn the same as everybody else. And I did it in a kind of, I think what people call adult learning. I didn't learn it in school. I did it because it interested me. I like libraries and I was able to do things off my own bat. that's the stuff that has been, I don't know if failure is the right word or not, but stuff that didn't take off in my career.

You know, like everybody else, I just don't really advertise it on my socials or anything else. I'm perfectly happy to talk about it because nobody emerges into any kind of career fully ready to go. But that's what it was. I tried lots of stuff. tried doing things like, initially, I thought I fancied the idea of photographing newborns. because I... that time, sort of 10, 12 years ago, the majority of the photography education that you could find online was American. And in America, I just kind of assumed that because we share a language with American people, you know, the photography industries were probably alike in many ways. I found that that wasn't the case. And so with something like newborns,

I spent a long time learning how to do it. I did various courses and all of this sort of stuff, bought all of the very expensive and specialist gear that you need to do that. And then I got about two bookings and I thought, I knew there wasn't a culture of doing that kind of photography in the UK, but I thought, okay, well maybe I'm the person that could get things moving and all of that sort of thing, but it didn't work. And I think also, as far as I can tell the majority of baby and newborn photographers are women and so that's part of that culture in the industry and I'm obviously not a woman and so I wonder whether that may have had, people may have seen that as a bit of a disconnect or whatever. So I sort of left that behind, I tried doing creative portraiture with brightly coloured gels and that sort of thing and although I use gels now in a more a more kind of paired back sort of way, a gentler way. You know, I wasn't able to do that very well and there are other people doing that really, really well that, you there's no point in me trying to compete with those. And so eventually I found my niche doing, you know, doing things that appealed to me and things that appealed somewhat to other people as well.

Tom Trevatt Mm Yeah, absolutely. The way that I kind of feel about your work is that there's this kind of consistency across the body of work. It feels, I mean, I've been in room when you've been doing workshops, when you've been doing test shoots, you you've used my studio every now and again in the last few years. So I've seen the kind of the processes that you've gone through. There's a... On the one hand, there's a real simplicity to something. It's like, you you've got a kind of a set of tools that you use quite regularly, but no two photographs are the same. You know, if I look back over, know, maybe a thousand images of yours, there's a style, but every single photograph seems to be composed of different elements in different ways. You take quite a lot of time and effort into furniture, the backgrounds, the color tones, you know, let's say someone turns up with a wardrobe of, you know, multiple different items, you will then do multiple different kind of shoots based on the tones in their in their tops or their dress or whatever. This is clearly something that kind of comes from an artistic sense of sensibility. You know, you've already said that you have this kind of musical background, you care a lot about art and about aesthetics.

I mean, you know, this, feels to me like somebody who it's not just photography. It's like composition. It's this kind of, you know, sort of idea that you're kind of bringing all these elements together. It's not like, you know, when I get someone in the studio, I sort of feel like it's, it's, it's almost like I respond to them. I'll work with, with them and work off their kind of energy for you. I feel like there's this kind of like, you've got a vision. Does that make sense? You've got this kind of like, right, this is what it's going to look like. It's going to feel like this.

David Shoukry Yeah, sort of. mean, I'd like to think that everything that I do has a kind of collaborative element. And I never forget that when I'm doing, you know, when people are paying me to do jobs, I try and keep in the front of mind that they are the customer and I need to be doing the kinds of things that they do, that they would like, I'm sorry. But what... I think what I try to do most of all is the most important thing for me is that the shoot is successful, that the client enjoys their pictures and they have a nice time being at their shoot. And also I have a kind of one eye and this is the kind of maybe selfish isn't the correct word, but obviously keeping an eye on my career and my portfolio. I would like to where possible produce photos that are portfolio worthy, if you like, so things that I could show to other people further down the line that I'm really proud of. I don't...

I hardly ever take pictures where I'd be ashamed to show the photos to somebody afterwards. so, let's think of the best way to describe what I mean by that. I mean, people come to me as any photographer because they want me to sort shoot in a particular style. I like to have like a wardrobe consultation so that I can make sure that everyone's gonna look good and that I've got... the right kind of backgrounds and furniture and stuff that will go with all of that. And from time to time, people ask me about, can I do this shoot or that shoot? Now, and a good example of this was a few years ago, this family, a man, woman, and their young son, who was probably about 10, they came to me and they said, could I recreate the photo from It's a Wonderful Life, the one that's on the movie poster where they're doing this kind of hug?

like a family hug and immediately I just thought it's not gonna work. I did the shoot anyway because it wasn't the only thing that they wanted to do and we probably spent about half an hour trying to do this, like mock up a hug that was, and in the original it would have been like a spontaneous image and obviously we couldn't get it there and the more we tried it, the more that the dad in the family, I could feel him getting more frustrated because the pictures weren't looking right.

And so just to come back to what you originally asked the although the the images don't kind of come out fully fully formed I think there is a There's some sort of It works everything sort of works stylistically because I've had to think about things beforehand and the the the client has had to think about things beforehand and so hopefully, you know that the 10 % of the images end up being keepers and the rest of them I've got just as big a ratio of awful pictures to keep as everybody else, I'm sure. I just don't really show them. I mean, I do. If people ask, I don't mind showing them, but it's not, I don't know. I like there to be some mystery.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, yeah, of course. So talking about your clients, I mean, you had a very clear, obvious sort of family there, but currently and, you know, over the last 10, 12 years, who have your clients been?

David Shoukry So they're a mixed bag. Now initially, I thought I was gonna be what I call a consumer photographer. So photographing people that just wanted pictures casually maybe for their families or things like that. That was one of the many things I tried that didn't take off. Now again, part of that is a sort of industry thing in the UK. I think people are sort of less prone to... to having those formal family shoots and that kind of stuff. But whatever the reasons ended up being, it didn't work. And so I then tried approaching people that needed photos for their job. So whether that was headshots or whether it was some other kind of publicity type thing. And because I previously worked in music, I had loads of contacts in the performing arts, in music and dance and actors and opera singers and those kind of things. So I initially started photographing them and that was quite an easy thing to do because I knew I could take good photos and I knew I had good friends in that industry and helpful contact as well, people that were happy to recommend me because I'd done good work for them. And so that's, I eventually started doing that and that's how things moved.

I do some editorial photography as well for the newspapers and magazines and my other private clients now are primarily people that are still in the performing arts in some capacity, sometimes TV people or people otherwise in the media or the public eye, but all of the pictures are there to promote themselves or their careers or their projects or something like that.

So it's a combo of private clients and an editorial at the moment.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, because from an outside perspective, you know, whenever we look at say, what would you call it? What did you call it commercial photography? Not commercial photography, what is it? Consumer photography, Whenever we look at a consumer photographer's website, which I am one of those, we would normally see a portfolio, a kind of description of the service, and then a price or the capacity to book me here or something along those lines.

Clearly your work, your portfolio, your website feels very much more like a kind commercial photographer's website or an editorial photographer's website. We have multiple portfolios that have got different feels to them and then there's simply an about me page and a contact page. There's not really a kind of sense of I sell you a photograph or a photo session. This is the price, this is what it looks like. So if I were to be a private client, let's say I'm a dancer or a performer of some sorts and I come to your website, I don't necessarily immediately go, I know that David shoots like this. I know that he shoots these types of people, these types of clients. So is there some kind of like, and this, think this is kind of interesting because I've got friends and other photographers who we always have this kind of conversation. Do you sell your work on your website? Like in one way, like it's a particular kind of product that you buy, or do you do it in a kind of commercial editorial photographer style where the website is purely an editorial?

Is it purely a portfolio website? You've gone down the portfolio website route. Does that mean that you still get emails from people being like, I want to hire you to take photographs of me for my job, or do you have to do quite a lot of educational work to help your help those clients kind of come to you?

David Shoukry It's a combination of both actually. I get quite a few inquiries and bookings and things from Instagram. So those would be the people that are the same kind of people that you see in the pictures on Instagram, so performers of various descriptions. And I also get a fair number of inquiries for things that are, I guess what you might call general photography, know, stuff that you would not know me for at all.

So things like I have a couple of regular gigs for things like photographing warehouses of all things so I so I do I do a little bit of work with a company that there are civil engineering company and they build distribution centers, know when you're driving along the motorway and you see one of Amazon's places or John Lewis or whatever so they build those and they Make the racking systems inside the store things or whatever So I do marketing photography for them, for example. I know that's not what you're talking about, but the sort of meat and potatoes of how it's coming in is for private clients, I have two, I guess you'd call them packages, they can come for a big shoot or a small shoot. And so those packages, I charge a sort of set fee for that.

With the reason I haven't got any prices on the website, and I know that there will be either you maybe thinking that or certainly people watching this might be thinking that, it's because, it's not because I wish to hide the amount of money that I charge, it's that with anything that is not in the sort of packages that I do normally, it normally needs a bespoke.

Now, I know bespoke is a bit of ridiculous word to use in this instance. I'm not having a kind of three-piece suit cut or whatever. But obviously, needs, you know, I need to quote for the amount of time, the deliverables, all of those type of things. And so for those jobs, and that's, yeah, just anything that is not my normal bread and butter, then I will do that on a case-by-case basis. The other bit of my career that you just referred to. the educational stuff, that brings in work as well. So I do probably a third to a half of all of my work is educational in some way. So that's, it's running in-person workshops, which I do at the studio and elsewhere. I sell a couple of online courses through my website, you know, things like bits and pieces of editing software and things like that.

And so the people that come, that's one of my big contact points with like normal people because with photography, we know that it's got to be one of the loneliest professions on the planet. So when you're not shooting, you're basically in a room somewhere in front of a computer probably, or on the phone, either chasing work or trying to get paid. And so with the workshops and things like that, that's a really nice way for me to meet people and interact with people. so quite... quite often, not all the time, but I will have contacts from people saying, my friend or my husband or whatever came to one of your workshops, can you do this photographic job for me? And so there is that as well. A reasonable amount of word of mouth. then there are things, because there are bits and pieces of things that get published. People see my name there. I mean, not a huge amount of work comes in that way, actually. less than people would probably expect. But yeah, those are the ways that the work comes in.

Tom Trevatt No, fantastic. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the education side of things. so firstly, you've just recently or within the last two years become yourself. Like you were English photo works for quite a long time. And then more recently you've actually kind of reclaimed your name. The website is David Shoukry and now you've got the education website, which is Create With David. Is that right?

Yeah, so it's very much kind of coming back to your name. What's the evolution there? Where do English photo works come from and what was the kind of process that you went through to get back to yourself in a way?

David Shoukry You know, literally no one has ever asked me that question before and I'm quite excited to answer it for you. So if we go back to a few minutes ago when I was talking about living and working in Asia, now the photography education that I'd been exposed to at that time, so I'd watched lots of courses from CreativeLive, which I don't even think that still exists anymore as an organization, but I learned an awful lot from that. about what's possible in a photography career, the different kinds of portraiture that you can get involved in and various ways of marketing and so on. And so I encountered lots of business names with names that were just names that were not the photographer's name. It could be like happy clicks shooting in Texas or somewhere like that. And so I thought, okay, I can brand my business with a name. that isn't necessarily my own name. I didn't necessarily have a problem with using my normal name or my government name, as I discovered Americans call it recently. And with the photo works aspect of it, so with English, obviously, that it was just to show that I'm a Brit. And then the photo works, I quite like the idea of this, and this is probably gonna sound a little bit wanky, but the idea of the artisan side of it, the making side of things,

craftsman ship side of stuff, all of which, you know, the process of doing it, all of those things interest me and interested me at that time. And I also noticed that those people that had like a company for their name, sorry, a name for their company rather than using their regular name, those were kind of consumer photographers themselves. And so I thought, that that was how everybody did it. Now, when I came back to the UK, I sort of traded under the English Photo Works name and, you know, absolutely fine. When it became clear to me that I was moving in a more kind of commercial direction with my photography work, obviously nobody that is doing non-consumer photography, everybody uses their name, know, Tom Trevatt, David Shoukry, whoever else they might be.

And so it kind of seemed like a bit of an anomaly. And so the website that I had at that time for the first few years, it kind of advertised me as a general photographer. I would shoot weddings and all kinds of other bits and pieces that photographers do. But once I'd found my sort of niche as it were, it seemed, you know, people were saying, you're David Shickley, are you also English photo? And so I just wanted to try and make everything as clear as possible. So I still actually use it as my, on my email address. And so the, create with David brand, which is the, the sort of workshop bit, I guess you would say, was to keep my, portfolio and my training stuff or education and workshops separately.

because I knew that the picture editors on the magazines and whatnot, they don't care about whether I'm giving somebody a one-to-one to teach them about shutter speed or that sort of thing. And so it was a case of just making sure that the two areas of my business were absolutely clear. yeah, that's why I did it. And actually, the other significant thing is I have a last name that I have to spell every single time. And so I thought, well, everyone knows how to spell English, photo, and works. And so that would be, would sort of eliminate people getting it wrong on Google or whatever. those are the reasons, basically.

Tom Trevatt Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. It also, for me, it has a sort of branding element to it. And, at the time you were living in or close to bath and there's this kind of almost bucolic aspect to that part of the world, sort of Jane Austen style thing. And then there's the kind of, there's something a little bit about the way that you styled your, your photos and styled the website. And it had this kind of almost very English kind of Bridgerton-esque kind of element to it. So it did sort of make a lot more sense that way. Whereas now the shift back to your name feels a touch more, there's something a little bit more kind of paired back and stripped back and it's become a little bit, yeah, more commercial, more kind of cleaner in that respect. Yeah.

So we talked a little bit about your education, the sort of education that you offer. I've been at a couple of your educational offerings, your group workshops, but you also mentioned one-to-ones. Explain what happens in one of those groups or one of those one-to-one sessions. What are you focused on? are you really interested in talking about and helping people with?

David Shoukry Okay, again, that's one of my favorite things to do. Now those one-to-ones usually take two formats. the one that I mentioned before, which is where I talk to someone about shutter speed and ISO and all of that kind of stuff. in January, when people have got their fancy camera for Christmas and they need a bit of help getting going with it, I'll get a few calls to help with that.

But I also do a reasonable number of sessions with people that want to learn detailed lighting stuff. those people are quite often, I mean, there's sometimes professional photographers that are looking to pivot a bit. they may have been doing weddings or something like that for a long time and their knees have gone or whatever it might be. And they just want to learn something new. So that's one demographic.

Another demographic would be the kind of retired dentist with a bag of Leica equipment. That's another another kind of person that comes to see me and really those You know people like that They just want to have fun with their photography they've got the the resources and the equipment and the time to to learn how to do it and they just you know, they want to come and have a Spend the day with some you know someone they don't know that they can learn from and that's you know, that's That's how it generally goes. are, so with, I will sometimes do those one-to-ones with other professional photographers who are in what you might call an adjacent space. So they're doing studio portraiture in, you know, maybe in the same way that I am. Again, I don't have any problem with doing sessions with people like that. I don't have problems with people coming to my workshops. I'm not, because, you know, from time to time people ask about, they'll be sort of wary of what I'm doing and say you know don't you feel that someone's gonna come and steal all your business you know things like that and I don't worry about that and the reason I don't worry about it is that I don't think anybody is stealing business from anybody else in the photography industry I mean getting getting work is is tough regardless of of what you're doing and the fact of just being able to do a thing does not mean that you're instantly going to be given loads of work doing that. I can, you you shoot in an amazing style. I shoot my own style. Any number of other people do that. If I started saying, okay, well, gonna, I wanna shoot like Tom Travatt. I wanna have a combination of natural light and constant light and the colorful gels and those type of things. Fine, I can do it, but people know you for it. And the point is, whatever our...

niche in the industry, we spend time, you know, meeting people and making contacts and nurturing relationships and those kind of things. And I think it's those things that make people come back to you. It's not whether you can do a thing or not, know, skill can be, know, virtually anything that can be learned is on YouTube. Now, if I go and watch a YouTube video about something, that doesn't suddenly mean or if I go and have a workshop with know, Jake Hicks or somebody like that who's got a very definite style. If I go and learn about how Jake is doing gels and, you know, using projection and stuff like that, fine, I can learn how to do it. But everyone knows that's what he does. And so they're going to pick up the phone and ask him to do it when they need that look. And so I'm perfectly happy to tell anybody that wants to come to me, I'll show you how you do it. This is what you need. this is the kind of lighting you need to look, this is how color relationships work. And I'm happy for people to go on their way with that new set of skills, enjoying their photography. And I've never, I mean, you know, never say never, but nobody has come to me and said, did you hear that so-and-so managed to get this gig because you showed him about doing that? You I don't think that happens.

Tom Trevatt No, no, I don't think it happens either. What's really interesting for me is obviously from a technical perspective, we can teach the things that we use and the things that we do. And someone might come in and be like, you know, they'll shoot a photograph that looks a little bit like the kind of photograph that we might shoot because we set up the lights, we set up the backdrops, we set up the posing and so forth.

But it's like, it's just that that's what they do for that particular moment. And they take the things that they learned from that and they go and apply it to the kind of photography that they do. And it's just a bit of a kind of tool in the toolkit rather than a full spectrum of like, I'm copying or I've learned this entire business model and I've learned the entire strategy and so forth. But yeah, so.

With these kinds of one-to-one clients, are you working with them on just a sort of like a one-off basis or is it a mentorship? Is it a long-term project? What's the setup?

David Shoukry Well, at the moment, is, you've caught me at a transitional point in my life, to quote, I think it's pulp fiction or something. So at the moment, people will normally come to see me for one day. There are, I will, I mean, this hasn't happened for a little while, but I sometimes have clients that were like the new DSLR, the new DSLR clients, they will, for example, book, you know, three or five mornings over two or three months or something like that. And so they will come and, you we'll do general photography, but with the people that are doing one-to-one training, they come for one day. Sometimes it's, they will come to a group workshop and then decide they want to specialize a little bit more. And quite often people will come to several group workshops because

Although the format of the workshops follows, you know, I mean, they're not all the same, but they do follow a pattern, you know, it's not completely novel every time. But I do work with a range of different models. And so I think people like to come and have that combination of support with the workshop and the flexibility to do what they like and, you know, photographing a different person. So yeah, that's how that works.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, fair enough. So you've moved fairly recently. I mean, I say fairly recently, but I haven't seen the studio that you've moved into apart from the fact that it's behind you right now. You were in the garage. That was in the past and maybe sort of two, three years ago, you moved to this new space in High Wycombe. How's that affected your photography? Because obviously your photography is the way that I kind of look at it, it's like, it's almost space agnostic.

It's like location agnostic, right? So you could be anywhere in the world and you could set up a scene that you just put in this kind of like clean frame. And I know that you also, when you post on your education platform on Facebook, for example, you quite often post what you call. the dirty scene or the dirty setup or something like that, the sort of behind the scenes sort of frame. You almost like grab another camera, take it behind the scenes and take that frame. So do you feel like the space has changed your work at all or is it just like copy and paste into the new space and it's, it is completely space agnostic?

David Shoukry That's another very good question. So I love the way that you described it before saying it's location agnostic, which is actually a very good way to describe it. initially, when I again, going back to my garage days, which are a few years back now, but I can't learn things. combination of YouTube, books, magazines, and obviously trial and error, is what everybody does. And once I'd kind of stumbled, I don't know whether it's stumble is the right word, but once I'd worked out that I could kind of bounce light and that had a sort of quite significant effect on the way the pictures looked, my garage was like this white box, like a sort of cube thing. And initially I thought, what if I can only do this in here?

Now I'm not a kind of laws of physics type of person and so sort of deep down I kind of knew that I could probably do it somewhere else but I had this slightly nervous tick thinking I'm gonna be in here for the rest of my life and obviously you know the first time I went somewhere else and did it it was fine because physics is physics and it always does what it's gonna do but the the space that I'm in right now if I do what I'm gonna do is sort of flip my Laptop a little bit so you can see what's behind me. There's the camera that didn't work initially There's a few backdrops and things and then it's kind of there's a staircase right there And it goes up to there's a kind of mezzanine up there with an office space and Storage and stuff like that. So in the to answer your question in the finished pictures the the space doesn't It doesn't change the way the pictures look

because I still do, I still shoot the same way as do everywhere else. However, the staircase, let me just show you that once again, which you can see here, is the building is a 1950s factory, manufacturing building, and it's got several details like that which I would like to start including in the pictures because they're so cool. And it's got a nice floor, and again, most photographers don't talk about floors.

But one of the things that really gets my juices going with floors is that if you have a different floor, it looks like a different room. Because people know that you don't change the floor in a room. The floor is the floor. And so that's why I use rugs and other things on the floors, because it changes the location in people's minds. But in terms of the space itself, it's really lovely to... first thing to have my own space because I had several years of what you might call studio sofa surfing. You know, was, and your studio was one of the places where I was doing that. So I had, was kind of in between studios. Basically I had several years ago, I got divorced and my personal circumstances changed quite a lot. And so all of that, you know, I had to move to a different part of the country. And so all of those things churned up.

my entire existence for a long time. And so I've actually been in this studio only one year. And it's really changed everything. It's not, I don't know whether you can hear this from the mic, but it's actually a noisy building. have the guy that's in the unit next door to me is a cabinet maker. The guy on the other side makes finishes, metal finishes for walls. And there's another guy on my floor that has a cushion manufacturing business.

So it's kind of, there's a lot of coming and going. It's industrial basically, which means it's also affordable. But it's, you know, it's a good amount of storage. It's kind of vibey. And I think when people come here, they're like, it's a bit of like New York in the 1970s or something. Maybe that's a little bit pushing it. But it's, you know, people like it. I like it. It's a bit cold, to be honest, but you know, there it is. What heaters are for.

David Shoukry But I do like working in here for sure.

Tom Trevatt Nice, nice. Because if we look at somebody like Johnny Edwards, his studio is insane. in a way, the way that he does it is he has maybe he has a massive studio space, high ceilings, and then maybe sort of 10 or so setups that are kind of permanently there that he'll change a little bit, change a little bit. But he wouldn't necessarily. have a client in and then constantly be changing backgrounds and constantly be changing things. He'd almost like there step along to the next bit, step along to the next bit. Whereas with you, it's like you're forced into this because your, your sets are complex. They're just as complex as Johnny's sets.

you're almost forced into this moment where it's like, right, okay, deconstruct everything, dismantle it all, rebuild it, dismantle it, rebuild it. Does that happen regularly? I mean, I've not seen that happen, but I'm presuming that's the sort of the thing that you go through.

David Shoukry Yeah, it happens every single time. It happens every single shoot. And the way that I... I've kind of got a system that I think works that doesn't hold up the progress of things too much. One of the most important things in that whole system is knowing what the wardrobe stuff is going to be. So I always have some kind of consultation, so I know what the clothing is going to be. And so from there, I can decide what the backgrounds are going to look like, what the colors involved will be. I can choose furniture.

And although I can get the sets, the most complex set that I ever need to do, I can do in 10 minutes. I can pull down the previous one and get the new one set up in 10 minutes. normally I go into a shoot having those things worked out already in my head. And so although there is, you know, there's a few minutes in between every single look, I know what I'm doing and I'm not sort of scrambling around finding things or thinking what am gonna do? And so from the client's perspective they they can get changed or if they're you know, if there's like hair people or any of that sort of stuff They can do their changeover and stuff like that. We'll just have a you know, five minutes and a cup of coffee or whatever It's not it's not as efficient as a setup like Johnny's and have you so I went to I think you know that I went to Johnny space a year and a half ago and it was you know, it's quite something in but the the thing that in Americans will always have that Brits will never have is square footage And I I would certainly do that if if I had the space available But you know, I I do what I can do with what I have and it's you know, I've got I've got a workable system, I think

Tom Trevatt Absolutely. And talking about the system and talking about the kind of the setups that you have, you rely really heavily on two things, hand painted backdrops, and the kind of painters drop cloth. Those sort of Shoukry style, you know, this is your sort of thing. And I know that you have a good relationship with Hand Painter Backdrops UK, Slav there and so on.

this must be one of your biggest expenses or would be had you not had the relationship with Slav.

David Shoukry Yeah, it would be. I've probably, terms of, you can see, let me just, you can see the backdrops in the corner there. So I've got, what they afford me is the ability to basically make sets that deal with any kind of color situation. So I can accommodate virtually all of the colors. In terms of acquiring them, yes, they are expensive. And the way that I've managed to do it, is that I've worked with some of the backdrop companies doing, excuse me, collaboratively is probably not the right word. So I would do work for the backdrop companies, which is social media help, photography help, a bit of web design, that sort of stuff. And those companies have ambassador programs, or some of them do to a degree.

where you will help the company by doing marketing photos for them. And so probably, of the backdrops that I have, I've probably paid for about a third of them or half of them or something like that. And the rest of them have come in exchange for other works. That is super, super helpful because I couldn't afford it otherwise. You can do a lot of the backdrop stuff using other fabrics. It's not quite so good.

but it can be done. And with the painters, the drop cloths or the decorators, the dust sheets, they, so I use those literally every shoot. And I've got this set of five that's now down to a set of three. I've used them for a job a few days ago and realized I've lost two of them somewhere. Just kind of tedious. But anyway, they are the cheapest way of doing photography backdrops and set design. You can get those on Amazon for about 30 pounds for five of them or something like that.

And what I ended up doing with them once I'd I mean those kind of Drop cloths have been used in fashion photography for you know forever And I I managed to buy some initially that were like ready ruined by I bought them from a guy that was working in my kitchen quite a few years ago and what I did was I bought a brand new set and Said would he was he up for exchanging his wrecked set? for my new ones and that meant that I had a set that were, once I'd shaken out all the loose plaster and all the paint and all that sort of stuff, they looked really nice and worn and critically, they also look quite unique. Now I know paint splattered backdrop uniqueness is a very sort of niche thing, but it just meant that every one of those backdrops is a bit different than everyone else's that uses them and so, don't know, there's a... little bit of originality going on there, guess, but I I love to use them and it means that you can Especially with the with the drop cloths you can shape them and you can make leading lines with them and you can drape them in very nice ways That way you can create a kind of little world. So people although I'm not under the illusion that anybody thinks that I'm I don't know in some

dusty mansion or something, if you cover these cloths over bits of furniture, to me, they give this kind of impression of maybe an attic room in a manor house that hasn't been seen for 50 years, and there's a bit of mystery and a bit of creativity. Or, in more obvious way, it's just a nice neutral background with some shapes that doesn't interfere with the shot.

Tom Trevatt Nice. So let's very quickly talk about gear because I know that you're shooting on very similar gear to me or at least, know, last time I saw you, you were shooting with the GFX. Tell me about your gear setup and you've got some good lights and all those sorts of things. I mean, gear is not that important but it is.

David Shoukry Yeah, so with the camera, I've been using so that the current daily driver is a GFX100, which I've had for two years. And I had a GFX50S, which I bought seven or so years ago. And I love those cameras. the reason that I know anything about them in the first place is that I ran a workshop six or seven years ago. Somebody brought a GFX camera to it and I didn't really know anything about it. I shot a few shots on it. The guy was kind enough to actually loan it to me for a couple of days. And at that point, I definitely could not afford to buy one. And at that point I was like, everything else sort of seems a bit flat and not so good. a couple of years after that, I inherited a little bit of money when my mom died and I bought one with that and I never, I didn't kind of buy it as a sort of business decision. I wasn't thinking, okay, if I buy this camera, I can double my rate and you know, people are gonna start kicking the doors down and all of this type of thing. I just thought, even if it doesn't make money for me or whatever, I'll still enjoy the pictures more. At least some of the clients are gonna enjoy the pictures more. Someone's gonna notice a difference.

And so there was that but the other thing that I hadn't really banked on the the bit about medium format cameras that people talk about and some sometimes people are Negative about it and sometimes they're positive is the way that it shoots it slows down the way you shoot Now I was never a kind of spray and pray type of person anyway, and with the you know As you know with these cameras, they don't do anything very quickly least of all focus And so it was quite nice. When I get to the end of my big shoots and I've shot like 200 photos instead of 1,000, it means the process is a little bit more mindful. I have a kind of a bit of a mental tick where I like to slow down and compose in the camera as well, which the medium format thing helps with. But yeah, I've just sort of found the system that

That is for me, although they're not exactly economical cameras, I think they are very very good value for money, especially in comparison to other medium format cameras, which I'm definitely in a different tax bracket too. But yeah, I love them. I've been working a bit with Fujifilm over the last, how long would it have been? Probably about a year, doing... You know just working closely with them on GF not closely to a degree I should say on GFX stuff and you know helping them with you know running events around the GFX cameras and things like that and it's you know, that's that's nice and So yeah, I'm kind of I feel I'm in the Fujifilm ecosystem now at least You know at least for a while because I love them and you know

once you get in with any camera ecosystem, you've got the kind of financial commitment of all the lenses and so you've got to go with what you're going to stick with. But I'm very happy with their cameras and although people, clients, no one ever says, what you're shooting on, they don't complain about the pictures, which is good enough. Good enough for me.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. David, before we wrap up, and thank you very much for being with me for this last 45 minutes, but before we wrap up, if there's anybody out there who's like, how the hell do I get into this, into this kind of work? How do I start? Where do I, you know, what's the first thing that I need to do? How do I maybe get, you know, an editorial gig? How do I get, you know, my first client?

Is there anything you could give them a little bit of help with?

David Shoukry Okay, so with, think with starting off and trying to get any clients at all, I think obviously know your business, know your craft, and if you find, and I know that not, you you just have to kind of start at some point, there's never a kind of perfect time to start with anything, but obviously making sure that you know your craft in terms of taking pictures and that sort of stuff with editorial photography.

I don't have any advice for that and I'll tell you how I got into it. So for years I sent emails to the picture editors on all of the national papers and the glossy magazines and that kind of thing and you know sometimes I would get an email back saying thanks but no thanks, thanks your style isn't really what we're looking for, know polite brush off and then one time I had an email from a picture editor on a national newspaper saying we're looking for someone to photograph whoever it was next week and I knew what had happened was or at least what I suspected what had happened was they'd asked somebody else and the other person had said fine and then they backed out or for some other reason they weren't able to do it and so that was great from my point of view I was kind of super panicky and super nervous

But the thing that I realized once I went and did that job, and it had gone OK, that the main thing about it was not that I could go and take the pictures or that I was going to show up on time and do a decent job. It was that I was going to mind my business and work well with their team of people, with the stylists and the other people on set at the studio, and then with the people that I was actually photographing.

I think with those kind of jobs, it's all about relationships, isn't it? And I think if you've got somebody, some person who's at the top of their industry and whatever it might be, the last thing the newspaper or the magazine wants is for the photographer or anyone else around that person to say or do something which causes a problem or upsets someone or any, that type of thing.

And I think if you can just go to the if you're asked to go and do these things and you do them and you take decent pictures and you don't I'm just gonna say you don't upset anyone. I don't mean that but I did you know, if you just do a good job and you're a good person Then you get asked back In terms of how do you how do you get your foot in the door? I don't know the I told you how I got my foot in the door I suspect that it's like that for some people I expect I suspect there are a bit of, you know, people who are in the job know someone that can do it or they, you know, they know someone whose kid can do it or there's a lot of that stuff that goes on. Because I think people need to know that they are having trustworthy people coming along, not someone that can physically do the job, but someone that is, I don't know, just not going to embarrass them or what. don't know whether that's even the right thing to say. But, you know, hopefully you know what I mean.

Tom Trevatt Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you very much. David needs to wrap up, but tell everyone where people can find you. So Instagram, Facebook, websites, what are your, what are your links? We'll obviously put them all down in the, in the show notes below as well, but.

David Shoukry Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. So my portfolio is https://www.davidshoukry.com/ That's my sort of shop window for people that want to come and have their pictures taken with me. My education website is called createwithdavid.com. My Instagram, I mean they're all different, which is slightly kind of annoying. My Instagram is epwphoto. So that was back in the day when I was called English Photo Works. And my Facebook group is called Light Shoot Edit.

and that's where you can find me. the, yeah, I was just gonna say with the Instagram name in case anyone is still kinda thinking why didn't he just use his name, there is another David Shoukry on the planet. That David Shoukry had the account and he then deleted it. So, and if you delete an Instagram account, it means that the username cannot subsequently be used by somebody else.

So I'm always going to be EPW photo. So that's where I am.

Tom Trevatt Thank you very much. David, it was great having you on, really great to chat. So thank you very much.

David Shoukry No, the pleasure was all mine, Tom. Thank you so much.

Tom Trevatt Cheers. Amazing.