Documenting royal visits, presidential engagements and award ceremonies for the UK’s largest equestrian charity.
There’s a moment from a visit to the BHS training centre in Staffordshire that sums up this relationship better than any brief could. HRH The Princess Royal had just unveiled a plaque and was preparing to leave when she was asked, unplanned, if she’d present certificates to some instructors who’d recently qualified. She agreed. What followed, captured in a single frame, was the Princess looking straight down the lens, the newly graduated instructors visibly moved, the plaque and BHS leadership in the background. This was exactly the kind of image the Society’s comms team had hoped for.
Since 2019, I’ve covered a spread of engagements for the BHS, from major royal visits to smaller presentation events. The work has taken me to Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre in central London, where the Princess Royal marked the riding school’s anniversary; to the Society’s Staffordshire training centre, watching instructors and grooms work toward their qualifications. I’ve also photographed engagements with Martin Clunes, the Society’s President, at various events.
Each event has its own shape, but the brief is consistent: deliver images the BHS can use across internal and external comms, that read as authoritative without being stiff, and that give equal weight to the occasion and the people at the centre of it. That usually means a formal shot: the plaque unveiling, the presentation, the establishment view of a demonstration, where the Vice Patron or President is clearly identifiable alongside the horse and rider they’re there to see.
What keeps this relationship going, I think, is trust: the BHS knows the coverage will be there whether the day goes to plan or not, and that when something unscripted happens — a spontaneous certificate presentation, an unguarded moment between the Princess and a young rider — it’ll be caught. For a charity whose work spans research, professional qualifications and grassroots riding schools, that range of coverage matters. It’s rarely just one thing happening in front of the camera.
