Helen

John is now semi-retired from the day-to-day of the studio but runs our photography masterclass.

John is the founder of DCTR but for some 37 years, John was a Partner for an Estate Agency based in Surrey. During his tenure, he was a fellow and Committee Member of the NAEA and also a judge for the Estate Agency of the Year Awards.

John started in estate agency straight from school over 50 years ago. During his career he was a Fellow and Committee Member of the NAEA and also a judge for the Estate Agency of the Year Awards. He built and sold three business, one to Prudential Property Services just before the recession in the early 90's. He loved his job but his true passion was for property marketing and photography. Thanks to his second boss, throughout his career he found that presenting properties in a way that was better than his competitors, played a huge part in his success.

Many estate agents will understand that estate agency can be fun but often isn't so after 37 years he changed his life and sold his partnership to his partner and quickly established himself as a leading country house photographer (hello-photo.co.uk). He wrote the RICS Guide to Property Photography and was lucky enough to photograph some of the UK’s most prestigious properties, as well as working for some of the biggest names in the industry.

Doctor Photo grew from a cottage industry that started 11 years ago – when John as a favour to his agent mates, used to spend his evenings removing skips, bins and other agents' boards from their photos – to become a leading property market supplier, enhancing thousands of images a week for clients around UK & Europe.

John's passion is to help DCTR's customers to sell more houses and to improve their brand image. If you have any questions or just want a chat, he’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, do read our blogs which are updated on a regular basis with tips and information that will help readers present properties to a professional standard.

Interesting fact: John was present the day Baby Spice joined the Spice Girls (before they were the Spice Girls). As Chairman of a charity that provided studio recording facilities for young people he was introduced to Emma the day she arrived.

Helen runs our Video Training programme alongside her own production business, Orchid Digital. Helen started working on video to promote products and services when it was still 'new', at the time only big brands with the money were wanting to invest in this kind of marketing. Over the years video production has become far more cost effective without losing quality and so Helen strongly believes it's possible for every business no matter how small, to tell their story.