When looking through the glossy pictures of celebrities adorning newspapers and magazine covers on the newsagents shelves, or through the many online celebrity pages, take a second to check the name of the photographer.

There is a good chance they are the work of Manx photographer Jack Alexander.

Over the past five years many famous faces have passed in front of Jack’s lens. His work, featuring singers, pop stars, TV personalities and fashion portraiture has graced publications such as Q, Front and FHM magazines, many national newspapers, photography magazines and countless press features.

And, it seems, the more he shoots, the more ’in demand’ he becomes.

Now based in London, the 25 year old, former Ballakermeen student left the Isle of Man shortly after finishing a degree in English Language at Huddersfield University.

During his time at University, his self-taught hobby, photographing portraits became his passion and having decided that was where his future lay, he took the plunge to move to the UK.

’I moved to London and lived with a friend from the Isle Of Man,’ said Jack. ’He was literally the only person that I knew. It was just a case of sending emails out to anyone that would have me. I started using twitter to reach out to people.’

Supported by a part time job, his hard work eventually paid off, and he landed his job in professional photography.

’My first big break was photographing Charlotte Church,’ he said.

’I basically asked her over twitter after I moved down to London. Although she wasn’t exactly at the peak of her career, everyone knew her. The pictures appeared in loads of papers and magazines all at once, as it was part of a press campaign.

’And for the first time it felt like a real thing to do, rather than just do photoshoots with friends.

’I realised people would actually see these pictures and, on the back of that, agencies started to reach out to me. I thought "this is getting serious now". And it has just carried on from that.

’I photograph exclusively portraits,’ he said. ’It can be head shots, press shots for musicians, magazine editorials or music video stills. Anything people related.’

Britney Speers, Ed Sheeran, Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande, soul singer Gregory Porter, grime artist Tinie Tempah and Olly Murs are just some of the famous names that Jack has worked with.

His natural, intimate style and relaxed, personal style of portraiture is something that is generating him a number of fans and admirers.

’I think my style is more intimate. I like it to be a nice picture, and not too forced and fake. It is obviously a niche of high fashion to have really crazy make up and colours, which is great, but personally I like to keep it as "what you see is what you get". Very straight forward and honest.

’I always used to hate studio work, but now since I have really taken to using flash and strobe lighting, I have noticed how it is changing my style.

I do like to work with natural light, but as I have been shooting now for so many years, I’m looking for ways of keeping things fresh and different.’

His favourite shoots so far was photographing UK soul singer Joss Stone.

’She was someone I waited for about a year to photograph, but our dates just never worked out,’ said Jack. ’But, last summer, she had us around her house in Devon, and we had the whole day to chill out. It was very relaxed. We wandered around her house and gardens, and it was like a dream to photograph.’

When not photographing, Jack works as online editor for the fashion magazine Fault, and also writes for the photography website Fstoppers.com. And, later this year, he is branching out to working with some major players in the photography industry. He has signed up to work with camera manufacturer Nikon, and will live-stream a magazine photo cover shoot later in the year.

He is also due to work with Apple.

’I like to see my career as something that is constantly developing, said Jack. ’I enjoy taking steps off the ladder, and doing more things, like working with Nikon.

’I’m only starting to reap the rewards of four or five years’ hard work now, and I want to keep establishing myself more. I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing now, but I want to be doing it on a bigger scale, and finding more exciting ways of doing it.’

Jack’s work can be seen on his website jackalexanderphotography.co.uk