The devil is in the (mundane) details

There are many facets to being a pro- and some of them are not that glamorous. But getting them right can make all the difference

- Paul Wilkinson

Being a professional photographer creates endless stories, from the day I lay in fox poo at the start of a shoot to the day I knocked Prince Charles' cup of tea of out of his hand. Luckily, he laughed at me as I ploughed right through him, racing to capture a shot of one of his team B) meeting an actress from ITV's Coronation Street. (His police security detail didn't look quite so amused...)

I have airport stories, motorway service station stories, wardrobe malfunction stories, and medical emergency stories: who knew that if you tell an ex-SAS captain to stand somewhere, he'll do precisely that until he collapses? Of course, when we asked him why he didn't tell us he needed to sit down, he matter-of-factly replied that I had given him an order.

There is entertainment in all of this, and sometimes a little pathos - but it's little details, the boring details, that really build a business.

Let's take file naming. Wait, no, don't turn the page just yet; there is a point to this beyond my inane love of technical details.

We have been running a photography business for the best part of two decades; in that time, we have amassed several thousand clients and millions of images. Having a business with so many interactions means we will have inevitable requests for images from our archive.