Studio Portrait Photographer & Client Experience Specialist

Studio Portrait Photographer & Client Experience Specialist

Apply for Studio Portrait Photographer & Client Experience Specialist at Mark Swinford Photography in Leeds, ENG, GB. This Full time on site position offers great opportunities for career growth.

Part‑time: 18 hours initially, increasing to approximately 24 hours once fully trained, with potential to grow towards 36 hours.

Starting pay:
National Minimum Wage, with additional bonus opportunities available once fully trained.

Free on‑site parking.

We have an extremely rare opportunity for an experienced Portrait Photographer to become an important member of our small, specialist studio team in Horsforth, Leeds. We are a family‑run portrait photography business that has been established for over 30 years, and opportunities to join our photography team do not come along very often. This is not simply a job where you arrive, take photographs and go home.

It is a genuinely multi‑faceted role where you will become involved in the complete client journey – from the first enquiry and booking, through to the photoshoot itself and eventually helping clients choose the photographs and artwork they would love to own.

Personality is incredibly important to us. We are looking for someone with a warm, chatty and empathetic personality who genuinely enjoys meeting people and making them feel comfortable. Many of our clients arrive feeling nervous or unsure about being photographed. Your ability to quickly build rapport, reassure them, make them laugh and help them relax is every bit as important as your technical photography skills.

You must be extremely confident communicating with people.

• Face‑to‑face
• On the telephone
• By text and messaging
• Through our CRM system
• During photography sessions
• During client viewing and sales appointments

You need to be approachable, friendly, organised and professional while also being able to confidently follow the systems and frameworks we have developed over many years. Reliability is also extremely important. We run a busy appointment‑based studio and our clients may have organised their whole family around attending a session. We therefore need someone who is 100% dependable and understands the importance of arriving on time and being ready for their clients.

You will also be expected to present yourself professionally and dress smartly and appropriately for a premium client‑facing studio environment.

Applicants must have a minimum of two years’ real‑world photography experience photographing people outside of college or university. We are specifically looking for someone experienced in people and portrait photography. This could include experience photographing:

• Families
• Children
• Babies
• Newborns
• Couples
• Weddings
• Boudoir
• Makeovers
• Fashion
• People‑focused commercial photography

Student‑only photography experience will not be sufficient for this position.

You should have a good understanding of posing and directing people, composition, professional studio lighting, working confidently with different ages and personalities, creating variety within a portrait session, working under time constraints, producing consistently high‑quality portrait photography.

Specialist training in our own photographic styles, studio systems and processes will be provided.

An important part of our studio is our specialist boudoir photography. These sessions can be extremely personal and intimate experiences for our predominantly female boudoir clients. Creating an environment where clients feel completely safe, relaxed, understood and comfortable is absolutely essential. For this reason, a significant…