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Introducing Mallen Studio, a Bristol-based Human-directed AI Photography Start-up

25th August 2026

We’re Martin and Tony Allen, brothers from the Isle of Wight.

We grew up outdoors – skateboarding, messing about on boats, building stuff in our dad’s shed, and spending as much time as possible outdoors. That shaped the way we work – practical, hands‑on, and drawn to things that excite us.

We’re building Mallen Studio around those same values. There’s more content in the world than ever, which makes it harder for any single image to stop anyone mid-scroll. That means every image has to earn attention rather than just take up space, and it has to happen quickly, brands can’t afford to wait around for the next big shoot.

Martin has been a professional photographer for seventeen years and has shot huge sailing events, extreme sports athletes, product photography for the likes of Dyson, fashion photography for brands like Musto and Gymshark, food and drink, and a whole lot of events. In lockdown, he trained in CGI. Although he’s now directing AI, he’s still a photographer and CGI artist.

Tony has always been creative at heart: drawing, painting, making hand-poked tattoos, and various other side-hustles. But he took the less conventional route to get here – Physics at uni, then 20 years in marketing recruitment and client services, working closely with brands, agencies, start-ups, scale-ups, and global businesses.

Mallen Studio is a human-directed AI photography studio. We exist to make sure your brand identity survives an AI-flooded world by creating imagery that’s unmistakably yours, impossible to ignore, at the volume a campaign needs.

For brands:

Give us a tightly targeted brief and we’re your production partner – accurate, on-brand, fast. Or hand us the problem and we’re your creative partner, landing the big idea and taking it all the way to delivery. Either way, it’s campaign-grade quality, at a pace and scale a traditional shoot can’t match.

For agencies:

We plug in as an external creative and production resource, replacing the traditional stack: CGI teams, photographers, visualisers, models, producers, hair and makeup, safety, logistics, easily tens of thousands before a single image is finished. More agile, and it scales with you.

We start most relationships with a test brief: low-cost, low-risk, and enough to show you exactly what we can do before you commit to anything bigger.

You can reach us at [email protected] or see more at www.mallenstudio.com.

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About Mallen Studio

Human-directed AI photography™ Because generic was never the brief

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