Once upon a time, long ago, I was a salesman.
And it didn’t fit.
Then, I was a motorcycle despatch rider, and it fitted the part of
me that loved (and still does love) motorbikes. But I really, really
wanted to be a photographer.
Taking pictures of motorbikes was a fairly obvious, if relatively
limited starting point. But it was a start.
What followed was an assortment of jobs on newspapers both large and small. I covered assignments ranging from plane crashes to pet of the week, from Premiership soccer to tiddly wink contests. Riots to rock stars. In a Spanish prison I photographed a pair of unsuccessful drug smugglers from Cheltenham. In Cheltenham, I photographed a pear. One thing’s for sure, if you work on newspapers for any length of time, then you’ll see, and photograph, pretty much everything. Believing that if you're not moving forward, then you're actually going backward, I accepted a job as picture editor on a regional daily newspaper, a great career move, but not if you actually like taking the photographs, rather than sitting in editorial conferences. In 1998, after about six years on the picture desk, I woke up one morning, handed my notice in, and set up Tony Charnock Photography.
Which brings us neatly to the present day. I still love the sheer variety of what I do, it all inter-twines so perfectly. The photos I take at an export conference one day provide the ideas that go into a wedding the following Saturday. Tit for tat – the wedding photos give me inspiration for a magazine shoot three days later. Variety still is, the spice of life.
Now the boring bit. I’m a registered and qualified Master Photographer. I’ve been a professional photographer for over twenty five years. I have an extensive list of blue chip clients including PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Coutts Bank, Mitsubishi, Birmingham City Council, Bellway Homes, Mercedes Benz, Drayton Manor, McCarthy and Stone, Hanson, DEFRA, Taylor Wimpey, Royal Star and Garter, Worcestershire County Council, BASF, Toby Inns and many more.
I'm based near Stratford on Avon, and photograph mainly throughout the Midlands area, principally the West Midlands, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire regions. Whilst a lot of my photography is conducted in the Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Worcester, Cheltenham and Wolverhampton areas, I'm happy to (and frequently do) travel anywhere within or outside the U.K.