As of now I am temporarily pressing pause on Mike Hubbard Photography until April next year, I’ve just mobilised into 12 months full time army service to serve in Afghanistan as a member of the Army Combat Camera Team. I will be the ENG operator (Electronic News Gathering/Video operator).
The the next 4 months is going to be filled with courses and various exercises in preparation for a winter in Afghanistan sadly I won’t have any time to take on any private photography work. I would like to apologize to all those of you that have put in requests recently that I have be unable to take on. It is a shame after a great couple of years but I will be picking up where I left off once I’m back in the UK next year, I imagine I’ll be looking at taking bookings again from April/May 2013. If you do have any enquiries reference weddings for next year you can still email me on: info@mikehubbardphotography.co.uk or use the question box on my website although my replies may be delayed depending on what I’m up to as I may be away from locations with internet access for weeks at a time. You can still call the office number on 01743 829320, Judith and the team will still be there to take any messages and answer questions, they will also be able to forward any messages onto me via email if needed. Again I must stress that any responses from me could be severely delayed due to where I am.
So what’s led me here, well I’ve been a member of the TA for the last 8 years and have always been in the infantry originally a member of the light infantry until we amalgamated with the Green Jackets and changed to the Rifles. I’ve been on operations with the Army before and many of you followed my blogs of the last 2 tours I’ve done of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have been with the infantry, my last tour in 2009 was out in Helmand province with my SLR/Camera tucked in my bag, the lads in the platoon were happy with this as I took a lot of photos of them and managed to make “most” of the look pretty good! Over the 6 months I gathered quite a selection of images and once we were back in the UK I entered them into the Army Photography competition, I ended up winning the Army Amateur Photographer of the year award and that was the point everything changed for me.

I was approached by the Commanding Officer of the Media Operations Group (volunteers) and asked if I would like to attend selection to join the unit as a photographer. So I attended and got asked to join the unit. That’s when I also started up Mike Hubbard Photography and my life went photo mad!
As part of the training for the MOG(V) photographer role I had to go on an ENG course (electronic news gathering) which is basically a course teaching the correct use of a video camera for capturing broadcast quality and news worthy footage/interviews and learning how put all the clips together into selections the news will use. There’s a lot more to it but that’s the short version! I actually really enjoyed the course, I’d never thought of getting into video before but now I really like it! After being with the unit for 18 months, I had finished all the training needed and received the call up for Herrick 17 to go at as part of the combat camera team. I’ll be heading out as part of a 3 man CCT (combat camera team) 1 ENG (video) which is me, 1 PHOT (photographer) and the OC camera team (team leader / reporter). There is only ever 1 Army team out in Afghanistan, the current team has 1 of my colleagues Gorge, from MOG(V) working as the ENG, I will be taking over from her. You can see what Gorge has been up to by viewing some of her post on the Army blog here. Also check out some of her great video pieces here.

I will be keeping my blog up to date and will let you know when to watch out for any of my video work.