Contact: charlie@charliesportraits.com
Step inside Charlie’s Swinbourne’s studio for a friendly, relaxed portrait session at Leeds’ most beautiful building – the Corn Exchange!
Charlie approaches studio sessions as a collaboration, creating portraits and headshots that feel authentic and true to who you are.
Charlie has a fascination with faces, expressions and gestures, and the way people naturally interact, influenced by being partially deaf and communicating visually, via lipreading and sign language from an early age.
Here’s some recent portraits:
He also works across theatre, music, the arts, TV, community projects, plus events and special occasions, drawing on his former career as a BAFTA and RTS award-winning scriptwriter to tell stories through his lens.
Here’s a selection of photos taken outside the studio:
To find out more about Charlie’s journey from being a scriptwriter to a photographer, scroll down the page!
Charlie’s exhibitions and clients:
Exhibitions
Faces of Bradford 2025 – online exhibition of twenty portraits of key artists, volunteers, teachers, organisers, performers and community champions who took part in Bradford City of Culture.
Lifted (2025) – twelve portraits of elderly people and the volunteers who support them via the charity Ilkley and District Good Neighbours. Shown at Clarke Foley Centre, Photo Ilkley, Ilkley Playhouse and Ilkley Library.
Clients
Theatre: Royal Court, Leeds Playhouse, Tobacco Factory, HOME, Fuse Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, Graeae, Ilkley Playhouse
Music: Opera North, No Limits, Brudenell Piano Sessions, Leeds International Piano Competition, Pianodrome, London Jazz Festival, Belle Chen, Brudenell Piano Sessions, Leeds Piano Trail
Arts: Wellcome Collection, Studio Spectroscope, Science Gallery, Bradford City of Culture 2025, Dada Fest, Deaf Identity, Design Museum
TV/Film: Foundations (Apple TV), Waterloo Road (BBC1), Lumo TV, Retreat (feature film), A Hand Rises (feature film)
Community: Ilkley and District Good Neighbours – Lifted exhibition 2025, Ilkley Art School, Community Cutlery, Friends of Ilkley Pool and Lido, Ilkley Stroke Group
Events: Creative Cities Convention, Flarewave Festival, Deaffest, Sign Festival Bristol, BDA Conference, Fintech North, DeafEXPO, Signlight Film Festival (Los Angeles), Piano City Milan
Commercial: Liverpool FC/Carlsberg, Forestry England
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Charlie’s journey in photography
‘Charlie camera’
Watch Charlie signing a blog about his journey in photography below or scroll down to continue reading.
Twenty years ago, Charlie broke into working in TV and worked with a group of brilliant young deaf people who gave him something very special: his sign name, which is usually linked to something about the person.
Charlie’s sign name roughly translates as ‘Charlie camera,‘ or ‘Charlie taking a photo.‘ It was given to him because he always had a camera in hand, capturing the team at work in the office and on shoots.
Charlie maintained his interest in photography for a few years, often photographing family events and holidays, but when his scriptwriting career got busy, alongside having a young family, his camera got put to one side.
By January 2024, Charlie had created his own series and written for a range of BBC shows, winning BAFTA and RTS awards. But although he was at the peak of his writing career, he wanted a change of focus and decided to return to photography.
Initially, Charlie volunteered in his local community, gaining as much experience as he could, at plays, events, and groups. He watched a lot of online photography tutorials and invested in professional camera equipment, using the money from his last script.
After six months Charlie began working full-time as a photographer. He then spent a year travelling across England photographing theatre, music, comedy and events before opening a portrait studio in his dream location, the Corn Exchange in the centre of Leeds, in March 2026.
He now shares his time between photographing people in his studio in the centre of Leeds, and working for theatres, music venues, events, for his local community, and on personal projects.
Charlie’s other work