Annabel Williams

Biography

In 1989, Annabel appeared on BBC1’s The Clothes Show and blocked their phone lines for 4 days. Thus began her meteoric rise to fame and firmly established her as probably the most influential portrait and wedding photographer of her generation.

Frustrated by the static professional portrait photos of the time, Annabel set out to create a new and exciting genre of photography with her passion and desire to make ordinary people look fantastic in photos. Her unique and fresh approach to showing people how they “feel” rather than just how they “look” saw Annabel book 70 weddings in her first year of business. Soon hundreds of women were flocking from all over Europe to be photographed by her.

During the next 10 years Annabel appeared on many more TV programmes and in virtually every national newspaper and magazine.

She lectured worldwide for Fujifilm, Kodak and many other organisations. She won numerous awards for her unique and innovative photographic style. By the year 2000, Annabel was one of the most successful portrait photographers in Europe; recognised for her extraordinary business success by the Cosmopolitan Woman into Business Award and Daily Mail Entrepreneur Award among many others. Sought after by the public and press alike, she started to turn her attention to teaching others how to break free from the traditional constraints of photography.

Annabel changed the face of wedding and portrait photography by taking her non-techy approach mainstream in the UK. Her training company was responsible for the advent of the majority of today’s top portrait and wedding photographers. So much so, that Canon UK teamed up with Annabel to launch the Annabel Williams Photographer of the Year Awards in recognition of this explosion of professional talent.

In 2009, Annabel recognised the changes the iPhone would bring to photography and began to include the consumer market in her teaching. She became the Photographic Expert for Asda Photo Centres and Photobox.co.uk, the Envoy for Canon UK and later made training videos for Samsung.

In 2011, Annabel launched a groundbreaking new website aimed at non-technical photographers, having written a series of best selling photography books, renowned for their simplicity and practical application and published worldwide.

From 2011-2020 Annabel was living mainly in the USA, but has recently moved back to the UK. The space and time given to many of us, during the pandemic, has rekindled her love for the Lake District and she is currently reconnecting with many people she photographed as children, who have grown up and are now keen to give their own a similar experience!

Annabel still travels worldwide to shoot in inspiring and sometimes challenging places. She continues to share her knowledge with, and give confidence to people who love photography, and are keen to get the best out of their cameras and smartphones by keeping it simple.

“Photographing people is
90% psychology and 10% technology.”

Annabel Williams