Mark Dunn Photography
19 December 2025
Sector: Photography
Location: Derby
Mark Dunn Photography Ltd was established in early 2024 and is based in Derby, offering professional photography services across sports, events, live music, weddings and commercial photography.
What began as a passion project alongside Mark’s career has steadily grown into a limited company following his retirement from full-time PAYE employment. Now fully focused on the business, Mark is building a sustainable photography practice that combines technical excellence with a genuine love of capturing moments that matter.
Mark has already built a strong reputation for high-quality work, particularly within sports photography, working with organisations such as Trent Bridge Cricket Club, as well as motorsports, boxing and a range of local sports teams. His portfolio also spans weddings, corporate headshots, lifestyle and wildlife photography, alongside large-scale live events such as STONEDEAD Rock Festival 2025, allowing him to serve both B2B and B2C clients across the region.
Challenges faced
As a newly established business, Mark’s key challenge has been building a strong forward pipeline of work, particularly securing bookings further in advance. While his photography is well regarded and receives positive feedback, he wanted greater consistency in enquiries to help fill his future diary.
Mark is especially keen to grow his wedding photography offering but has found it challenging to compete with more established photographers in a crowded market. Alongside this, a lack of confidence around pricing and package structure has sometimes made it difficult to position his services clearly and convert interest into confirmed bookings.
These challenges highlighted the need for clearer pricing, stronger positioning and a more structured marketing approach to support sustainable, long-term growth.
Solution – Support Given
Mark has been working with East Midlands Chamber’s Business Adviser, Lisa Baggott and the Accelerator project. Lisa has provided 1-to-1 business advice and coaching including help with pricing and putting a plan together to grow the business.
The business also successfully applied for a £2,000 Accelerator Growth Voucher, with guidance from Lisa, which has been used to fund specialist digital consultancy support from Paul Ince of LikeMind Media. Mark has met with Paul and his team a few times to go through his business and the type of photography he wants to attract, as well as his current use of social media. This has led to the creation of a comprehensive marketing strategy document for the business which has been discussed in depth with Paul.
To help improve his digital marketing skills Mark has also attended two Accelerator workshops - How to Plan, Build and Launch a Successful Website and Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing.
Impact - The Difference it’s Made
It’s early days but the support has given Mark a sound plan to implement with key tasks broken down into short, medium and long-term activities. It is hoped once this gets going it will attract new business leads and bookings for Mark.
“The support given by the Chamber to me as a new business owner has been invaluable, and it’s made me more confident that I can grow the business into a successful enterprise.”
- Mark Dunn, Founder
