History
Charles in the studio back in 1985
Charles Ward started CWP back in 1985 after a career in the family shoe business - Barker of Earls Barton. Born and brought up on the family farm in Earls Barton, Charlie asked his father if he could borrow one of the farm barns to take some photographs - and 35 years later he is still there!
Shooting film in the early 90's
In 1997, the company was one of the first to embrace the new era of digital photography and invested in the new Leaf DCB camera, which was truly revolutionary in its day. With a black and white sensor of only 4 megapixels and a series of coloured discs in front of the camera to capture the colour information, it was quite a sight in the studio!
Our 25th anniversary article in the Business Times newspaper
The Farm Studios Design & Photography team.
We photographed Doc Martens from 1996 - 2012. Possibly over 500,000 shoes through our studio!
Some of CWP's early employees: Simone Newell, Tony Boulton and Tracy Harris
The Leaf DCB digital camera of 1997
Local firm Doc Martens recognised that photographing their shoes digitally could save them thousands of pounds in scanning costs and so decided to place all of their photography with CWP. Over the years, we have probably photographed in excess of 300,000 DM boots!
Our award
In 2001, we won the Marketing Excellence Award for our digital asset management system called Imageview, and we later became UK authorised dealers for Picturpark, which is recognised to be one of the best DAM systems available.
Aerial photography has always been a big part of of CWP's business, whether from an 80ft pole called Highsight (we developed one of the first systems in the country back in 1988) or from a helicopter.
Our Highsight vehicle outside the MK Point
Lauren Perkins aged 14 during her work experience with us.
An early Macbook and Kodak DCS 560 digital camera
Milo - our first Parson
Craig Fraser, who worked for us for many years before starting his own very successful commercial photography company called Frasershot
In 2013, Charlie Ward's son James joined the company before setting up his own motion film company called James Ward Films, but remains very much part of the team and is an excellent stills photographer in his own right.
These days, the company is flourishing and has undergone a huge investment plan to bring the studio and photographic kit right up to date and we look forward to the next 30 years!
Looking back over 38 years!
This website is dedicated to the memory of Simone Newell 1974-2003. Simone worked for Charles Ward Photography for many years, until her untimely death in a tragic road accident 19 years ago. Simone was a truly wonderful person and a superb photographer. She is greatly missed by us all. Friends of Simone can see a few more photographs of her CLICK HERE.
Simone Newell 1974 - 2003