Congratulations to Mark Collins who has achieved his first Baby of the Month winning entry!
His image of baby Archie-Lloyd proved popular with our Photographer and Sponsor judging panels and Archie-Lloyd will soon receive a £50 Boots voucher, plus the chance to win £5000 in the 2023 Baby of the Year competition.
In November 2022, Mark and partner Lyn (pictured left) opened their Barrett & Coe Shrewsbury studio and have been busy with lots of family, baby, and pet bookings ever since. In our Autumn 2022 competition, they received their first Baby of the Month Top-10 finalist, just two months after opening their studio. This was followed by their winning image in the January 2023 competition, a fantastic start for Mark and Lyn 😀
Commenting on his first win Mark told us: “Together with my partner Lyn (both personal and professional), we dipped our toes into the realms of professional photography in July 2022. Before this we were both in very stressful jobs and in May 2022 after me suffering a heart attack, we both took the decision to start new careers by opening a studio, in Shrewsbury.
While our careers within professional photography are in their infancy, photography has always been a hobby of mine, with my first camera (Cosina CT1) being purchased in 1982. Over the last 10+ years I have been photographing events, specifically Salsa dance events, this was at the same time as trying to become the next Johnny Castle (Dirty Dancing) but failing miserably.
As well as dance events, I’ve shot a lot of other functions including weddings, parties and corporate engagements. As a direct result of covering weddings and the stress involved, we were adamant that this was not the genre of photography we wanted to focus on. While we love working with people, we prefer to avoid the pressure that come with wedding photography, and we now concentrate on family, baby and pet portraiture in a studio setting.
Both Lyn and I love working with people and enjoy having fun with our customers in order to bring the best out of them. We both have children with autistic tendances, and that helps us to understand families who have children with special needs in this area. Nothing makes us smile more than parents in such families start by saying we will never get their child to smile! but then watching their faces during the viewing session, when they see our images when we have clearly proved them wrong!!
Our studio is on the outskirts of Shrewsbury town centre and is blessed to be right next to the towns beautiful Quarry Park. Shrewsbury is served by good road and public transport links, and we have reserved car parking for our customers.
Our very first entry into Baby of the Month competition was only submitted in November 2022 so we are over the moon that one of our images has become a Finalist at this early stage in our professional photography careers.
The session with Archie was an absolute pleasure, he was a natural smiler and very expressive.”
Click here to visit Mark and Lyn’s Facebook page
Call them on 01743 235400 to make an appointment
“Big thank you to Mark and Lyn we Loved our experience and absolutely loved our photos you listened to what we wanted and took our youngest sons needs in to account so thank you from the bottom of our hearts we will be back”
Gemma Atkinson