Former showjumper opens new photography studio in Shrewsbury
A former showjumper who taught an Indian maharaja to ride has climbed off his horse to set up a photography studio in Shrewsbury.
Michael Martin has opened his business in the town’s busy Darwin Shopping Centre for the Christmas period.
He turned his hobby of taking pictures into a career nearly ten years ago but the seeds of a change of career were sown years earlier when he was backpacking across Asia.
Michael, from Ludlow, now in his 50s, said: “I was in my 20s and was backpacking around Turkey, Pakistan, India and South Korea.
“It was fantastic. I got a bike and cycled around India but I had always been involved with horses and I taught riding while I was in New Delhi.
“The people I taught were not as passionate about horses as those in the UK. It’s a rich man’s sport, something for the privileged.”
Among those he taught was a maharaja he met at a polo tournament but it was the photographs he took on that trip that inspired him to get into photography.
“They weren’t that good but they got me started,” he said: “I’ve been doing photography for six or seven years now. I’ve always been interested in it but it’s previously taken a back seat for other things.
“I’m primarily an events photographer, I go to black tie-events but what I’m doing now is running a walk-in studio here in the Darwin Centre.”
Michael used to ride professionally, starting out in the hunting field, progressing on to dressage eventing and then show jumping.
“Horses have been part of my life since my teenage years,” he said.
He spent one year training in France and competed in the UK’s Prix St George Competition but decided to give up competing when a horse died and another became permanently lame in a short period of time.
“They’re highly expensive to buy and maintain,” he said.
Michael is used to photographing horses or taking pictures at major sporting events but he seized the opportunity to take a unit and set up a studio in such a prime position as Darwin Centre.
He added: “It’s just up to New Year and people can come and get their pictures taken and take their prints straight away. The photo shoot is free and pictures start from £10 and they make the ideal Christmas gift.”
Although he is only shooting portraits in the Darwin Centre his photographs decorate the walls of the studio, including his favourite shots of horses, taken at events throughout the country.
At his base in Ludlow he also has a studio set up to take pictures of horses but he added: “I’m not sure the shopping centre would be keen on us bringing horses in here.”
