About K2Photographic

Using light, landscape and a cinematic approach, we create environmental portraits that are bold, atmospheric and distinctive.

Our style of photography is built around carefully controlled off-camera lighting, using light and shadow to create depth, shape and contrast while keeping the subject firmly connected to its surroundings. The result is a style that is dramatic without being overworked, polished without losing character providing far more than just an average photograph.

About Fletcher Davies

“I’ve always been fascinated by photographs”

As a teenager, while doing my paper round, I became captivated by the images I found in publications such as National Geographic and The Sunday Times Magazine. Those photographs did more than show me what something looked like. They transported me somewhere, introduced me to people and places I’d never experienced, and told stories without needing words.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that fascination with visual storytelling would stay with me for the rest of my life.

Photography, however, wasn’t where my career began.

Learning to work with people, places and the unexpected

Before becoming a professional photographer, I had a rather varied working life. I’ve worked as a lifeguard, an outdoor pursuits instructor, a stagehand and theatre technician, and spent time travelling. Each of those experiences taught me something different.

Working outdoors taught me to be comfortable with changing environments and to work with what is in front of me rather than expecting everything to be predictable.

Theatre taught me something else entirely: the power of light. Working backstage, I began to appreciate that lighting isn’t simply about making a subject visible. Light can create atmosphere, direct attention, reveal shape and change the entire feeling of a scene. A carefully lit stage can turn an ordinary space into somewhere completely different.

Those lessons would eventually become an important part of the way I photograph today. But perhaps the most influential part of my working life came later.

I went to university as a mature student and studied Youth and Community Work, eventually spending 18 years working as a Senior Youth Worker. That career taught me a great deal about people. Listening. Patience. Communication. Building trust. Understanding that everyone is different and that the same approach doesn’t work for everybody.

Those skills might not appear to have much to do with photography, but they have proved invaluable. Because portrait photography isn’t really about cameras. It’s about relationships. And although the principal subject of my work is often a horse or dog, every animal comes with a person and a story attached to it. Understanding what that animal means to its owner, making people feel comfortable and taking the time to work at the animal’s pace are all part of creating a successful portrait.

A change of direction

In 2013, after 18 years working as a Senior Youth Worker, I was made redundant. It was a difficult and uncertain moment, but it also created an opportunity to reconsider what I wanted to do next.

Photography had always been there in the background. Now I had the opportunity to take it seriously.

What followed wasn’t simply a decision to become a photographer. It was a process of learning, experimenting and discovering what kind of photographer I wanted to be. I became increasingly interested in lighting and, particularly, in the possibilities of off-camera flash.

Rather than simply recording the light that happened to be available, I could shape it. I could decide where the viewer’s eye went. I could bring out the character and form of an animal, separate it from its surroundings and transform an ordinary location into something much more dramatic.

And I realised that many of the things I had learned before photography were suddenly becoming useful. The lighting principles I’d encountered in theatre. The experience of working outdoors. The ability to adapt to unpredictable situations. The patience and communication skills developed through youth work. And, underlying all of it, that fascination with photographs that tell a story.

Finding my style

Over time, I became increasingly drawn to dramatic, cinematic imagery. I didn’t want to create photographs that simply documented what an animal looked like. I wanted to create images that made people stop.

Images with atmosphere.

Images with depth and emotion.

Images where the lighting, location and animal all worked together to create something that felt like a scene from a film.

That led to the photographic style that has become central to K2Photographic: carefully controlled off-camera lighting used in outdoor environments to create dramatic, cinematic portraits.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

The theatre environment where I first learned about controlled lighting was highly structured and predictable.

Today, I take those principles outside, into fields, yards and countryside, and apply them to subjects that are anything but predictable.

Horses move. Dogs don’t always cooperate. The weather changes. The light disappears. And that’s part of what makes it interesting.

Why horses?

Horses are extraordinary photographic subjects. They’re powerful and graceful, but they’re also individual characters. Their expression, posture, movement and relationship with their owner can completely change an image.

Photographing them combines almost everything I’ve learned throughout my working life. It requires an understanding of people, patience and communication. It requires confidence working outdoors and the ability to adapt when things don’t go according to plan.

And technically, horses provide an incredible canvas for light. Their form, movement and presence allow light to sculpt them in ways that can transform an image.

That’s what keeps me experimenting.

K2Photographic today

Today, K2Photographic specialises in dramatic, cinematic portrait photography of horses, dogs and their people.

Although the photographs may look very different from the work I did before becoming a professional photographer, the path to getting here is actually quite logical.

The teenager fascinated by photographs is still there. The outdoor pursuits instructor is still comfortable working in challenging environments. The theatre technician is still thinking about how light shapes a scene. The youth worker is still listening, observing and building relationships.

And the photographer has brought all of those experiences together. That’s what K2Photographic is really about.

Not simply taking a photograph of an animal, but creating an image that captures its character, the atmosphere of its environment and, where appropriate, the relationship it has with the person who loves it.

Because ultimately, that’s what first attracted me to photography all those years ago:

Where Are we Located?