Or, at least, tell the millions of viewers who search millions of pictures every day where to go to license them. From April 2020 Google links them directly to your website – provided you have entered the correct link into your IPTC metadata.
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Last month Andrew Wiard attended the annual IPTC Metadata Conference in Paris on behalf of the BPPA ( IPTC – International Press and Telecommunications Council ). There he proposed drafting ‘quick guides’ to get the IPTC basic essentials across to as many photographers as possible. Starting with the Four Cs, the four IPTC metadata categories that every photographer should complete in every picture – Creator, Caption, Copyright Notice and Contact details.
Continue readingThis year, Press Photographers that applied for accreditation to photograph the Pride In London parade and celebrations received the following email:
Changes to accreditation in 2019:
Pride in London have been working with our agency partners to review the security arrangements for Pride in London 2019. We’ve made a number of changes to the parade route which will enable us to make the parade more secure. This includes significantly reducing the numbers of people with access to the route itself.
Your media wristband gives you priority fast track access to the public areas at the stages. It does not give backstage access
There is no access inside the parade barriers along the parade route or to the form up area.”
This is a change over previous years. We have sent the following letter in response:
‘Dear Pride London,
The BPPA would like to raise our grave concerns regarding Pride London’s proposed plans to severely impede media access to this year’s parade.
Photographers are accredited to the parade but not allowed to photograph the parade itself from start to finish.
We cannot see the sense in this. With an estimated one million attendees, this would be considered a major news event and very worthy of extensive coverage by all national and international media organisations and barring access will inhibit global coverage and ultimately, interest in the annual Pride event.
Moreover a parade which promotes freedom of the individual and freedom of expression should not be restricting the freedom of the press.
Finally we cannot see there is any necessity to alter previous year’s arrangements in this way.
We, The BPPA therefore urge you to reconsider before the event and look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. Thank you.’
UPDATE FROM PRIDE LONDON
Press that have requested accreditation should have recived an updated email that includes the following information:
Following a letter from the BPPA and listening to the concerns we have reviewed our decisions and have confirmed an approach that ensures Pride is open for all, while ensuring the event stays safe and secure.
As such, we are pleased to confirm that you have been approved for:
1 pass(es)
This wristband gives you access to parade form up and along the parade route if you are carrying a professional camera.
As you may have noted in the media pack, there is no front of parade photocall this year. We will also have an area for photos near Piccadilly Circus and our team can advise on its location tomorrow should you want a fixed spot to photograph from.
We followed this up, writing to Pride London to confirm the position and received the following:
“Dear BPPA,
Thank you for your e-mail. I can confirm this is correct.
This year we revised our media accreditation process because of its impact on the speed and security of the parade. Not an easy decision but it is an operational choice based on ensuring 30,000 people can pass through London safely and securely.
Following your letter we urgently reviewed our decision with our production partner to see what possibilities there are. We have been contacting people directly who are impacted.
As the third largest event in London we try our best to accommodate the complexities of organising 30,000 people through the streets and it was never our intention to inhibit coverage and deny freedom of expression. I wanted to thank you and the BPPA for bringing this to our attention, and I hope this resolves the matter.
Pride in London
We would like to thank Pride in London for listening to all the organisations that voiced concerns and for changing your policy.
We wish everyone a Happy Pride 🌈
We are pleased to announce the first of the Curators for Assignments – Tom Stoddart!
Now established as one of the worlds most respected photojournalists Tom Stoddart began his photographic career on a local newspaper in his native North-East of England, before moving to London to work for a variety of papers on Fleet Street.
During a long and varied career he has witnessed such international events as the war in Lebanon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of President Nelson Mandela, the bloody siege of Sarajevo and the wars against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
We are thrilled that Tom has agreed to join our panel of curators this year.
If you want to take part you had better hurry – you only have until friday to submit your entry.. Visit the assignments website for details.
I have worked as a professional photographer since leaving university in 2002, starting my career in the darkroom at the Tameside Reporter in 2001 before joining the NCTJ Press Photography course, which led to a position at the Gloucestershire Echo in 2003.
In 2004 I won the Lord’s/MCC Young Sports Photographer of the year Bursary and following a year of cricket photography at Lord’s, I was employed by South West News Service (SWNS) in Bristol and covered news and sport across the South West of England.
In 2006 I accepted a staff position with The Press Association and relocated to London where I covered a variety of news, sport, showbiz and royalty for 10 years until August 2015, when I left PA to relocate to Manchester. I continue to work as a freelance photographer for numerous editorial and commercial clients.
I am UK based with well over thirty years experience as a news, editorial and corporate photographer.
Between 1994 and 2008 I was a staff photographer with The Times Supplements. Since 2008 I have had a portfolio career which also involves shooting editorial and corporate assignments, writing about and teaching photography as well as working as a photo editor on very large sports events with world class teams of photographers.
I have been on the Board of The British Press Photographers’ Association since its reformation in 2003 – holding the offices of Website Editor and Vice Chairman for many years before becoming the Association Secretary in 2016. My two proudest moments in that time were representing The BPPA at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press in February 2012 and the publication of Five Thousand Days in 2005.
Since 1999 I have published websites and blogs offering my insights and experiences to anyone who wants to read them. The technique pages of dg28.com became very successful and lead to invites to lead seminars and teach location lighting and workflow in the UK, Europe and north America.
My first interest in photography was at the start of my teenage years when, with my brand new Russian made Zenith camera, I would spend hours walking around my home tome of Marlow-on-Thames photographing everything and anything in hazy black and white, sending the film off and awaiting the prints with mounting excitement about a week later.
After getting a job at a well known chemists on their photographic counter, I had access to all the film and processing I could need, this was all during the late 1970’s and early 80’s where unions, strikes and politics dominated the news and Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister.
After saving up and buying my first ‘proper’ camera, a Nikon FM, nothing could stop me. In between shifts on the photographic counter, I would take the train into London, photographing demos, political rallies, celebrity arrivals and the departure of the task force to the Falklands in Portsmouth.
It was soon after that I learned of the full time Photojournalism course at Sheffield where they took 12 students a year and trained them in the basics of press photography. I was lucky enough to be accepted and spent a hectic year under the influence of our madcap, but inspiring tutor, Paul Delmar.
It so happened that Sheffield was the centre of the Miner’s dispute as the National Union of Mineworkers had their HQ in Sheffield and the nearby colliery, Orgreave, was just a couple of miles from the college. One Monday in June, there was rumoured to be a mass confrontation between the Police and the miners, so I decided to not turn up for my exam that morning and headed to the colliery. The scene was of a medieval battle with horses, wooden stakes, burning debris and bloody fighting – It turned out to be ‘Bloody Monday’ which was the pitched battle between the Police and miners and where Arthur Scargill, the President of the NUM was felled by a blow from a Police truncheon. There were only three of us there at that moment and I was soon met by a flustered Daily Star photographer who had just arrived and who had missed this pivotal moment. I was happy to give him my films and my pictures appeared the the Daily Star the next day with a fee of £50. I was berated by the lecturers the next day for not turning up, by taken aside by Paul Delmar and told that he would have done exactly the same and well done.
At the time, the course was recognised by local papers as the place to go for trainee press photographers and I got a job immediately on leaving the course at the newly reinstated Kentish Independent newspaper in Woolwich, run by two journalist brothers who bought the ailing newspaper. After a truly mad year on this effective start-up, which involved folding several thousand sheets of the paper as a printing contract had not been checked to include folding and sorting, delivering them to newsagents as that contract had been forgotten, making our own adverts to fill blank pages as we had no advertisers, hiring models to work as receptionists, also employing Boy George’s brother as my fellow photographer and all night parties in the office most nights, I knew this was the life for me….
It was all too good to be true and the paper folded within a year, but I managed to get on to a big London local paper, The South London Press, which propelled me into the day to day life of local newspaper coverage, developing film and printing each time I returned from a job . Having a large and vibrant area to cover, it was great experience.
Not long afterwards I left and started to freelance for all the main London papers at the same time, The Evening News, Evening Standard, and the London Daily News with occasional shifts for the Daily Express, just along the corridor from the Standard on the 2nd floor of the their building in Fleet Street.
After the Evening News and the London Daily News folded, I found myself working almost exclusively for the Daily Express. As the new recruit, I was spending most of my time picking up all the last minute and unsocial hours jobs, but it was a great feeling to be working for a national newspaper, with some renowned staff photographers.
One of them, John Downing, took me under his wing and I was very grateful for his help. He also told me of a new organisation, the PPA which had been recently started up to represent British Press Photographers and to show their work in exhibitions. I was persuaded to join, but could immediately see the benefits of actually getting members of the profession to other face to face, before the internet, even for a social occasion.
After ten years at the Express, I was offered a coveted staff job which I hastily accepted. Since the beginning of my career at the Daily Expres, some 31 years later, I have been lucky enough to cover some of the major news events together with wars, disaster, famine, crime, politics and more or less everything else this job throws at you as well as travelling around the world to do it.
During this this time, the BPPA was formed by dedicated press photographers determined in it’s vital role of representing our combined voices and recognising our joint talent by showing the general public the breadth, diversity and quality of our work in the form of regular exhibitions and competitions which has achieved national recognition.
I was happily coerced into joining the BPPA at a late stage, but again see the need for a professional body to represent us in these changing times and I am happy to be a part of this important organisation..
On Tuesday 13th November a large group of predominantly female professionals from the world of Photojournalism gathered in London for the very well attended “Women In focus”, hosted by Reuters and International Center of Photography at The Ned.
The event was focused on Photojournalism but for the sake of this piece I will refer throughout to Photography or “the Industry”.
During the opening introduction by Sir Harold Evans (Editor at Large, Reuters), to a backdrop of the above image (produced by Pulitzer Winning Reuters Photographer Hannah McKay, we were told this was biggest event focused on women in journalistic photography.
The opening remarks gave way to Session 1 where Daniella Zalcman of Women Photograph presented a number of statistics on the industry. She backed up the oft cited figure that 85% of photographers are male. She suggested that the Industry could not be telling a balanced story if 85% of the view presented is male, it is clear that women and men do see stories differently therefore unless there are more women, how can the presented view of the world be balanced.
Following a short presentation by Erin Barnett, Director of Exhibitions & Collections, International Center of Photography, we moved on to the first panel discussion of the day Gaining Access and Building Trust featuring photographer, filmmaker and writer Yumna Al-Arashi, Magnum Photographer and Fishbar co-founder Olivia Arthur, National Geographic photographer Jodi Cobb and documentary photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind, moderated by Jo Webster, Managing Editor for Strategy & Operations, EMEA, Reuters.
One of the overriding threads of this discussion was not only access and trust, but also funding (its quite clear that only with funding can a photographer hope to access the area/people that they wish to focus on) and unless the images “fitted the mould” of possible funders, money would not be forthcoming. Anastasia commented that she saw ours as an elitist profession. With so many journalists being from Oxford or Cambridge her issue was not only were we required to navigate the gender divide but also the class divide. When it came to the points of gender and the slow reduction of “overt sexism” in the industry there were thoughts such as “why do we need the term Women Photographer?” is this term sexist in itself? and “Are you proud of being a women photographer?” which was answered by Jodi with “whats our alternative?”.
The session closed for a tea break with the sobering message:
“If we don’t change diversity behind the camera , photojournalism will die, it has to reflect the diversity of the audience.”
After tea, Session 2 started with Susan Meiselas presenting her project A room of their own. This followed on well from the previous session on gaining trust. Susan showed how she collaborated with the subjects, pasting the works on the wall as the project grew, demonstrating how the story might build on the published page, building trust and confidence with the (possibly fragile) subjects.
We then moved on to the next panel: Photography and social change. Jane Barrett, Global Head of Multimedia, Editorial, Reuters, moderated photographer and researcher, Magnum Photos, Sim Chi Yin, photographic artist, Diana Matar and Pulitzer-Prize-Winning photographer, Reuters (and BPPA Member), Hannah McKay.
During the session Hannah spoke about her first international assignment in Bangladesh and how she saw her camera as a symbol of hope to her subjects. Sim Chi Yin made us think about the unintended consequences that may occur on the subjects if a body of work goes viral whilst Diane showed/performed her project of work showing how the combination of spoken words with the still image can be very powerful.
During Diane’s “performance”, it was clear the huge amount of work that needs to go into collecting the information to create such a project. The words spoken did not only include the names of the victims (the images were of locations of police shootings) but also important statistics, making the story very personal and hard-hitting.
“Reach is not the same as impact” said Sim Chi Yin as the discussion evolved on to the always difficult position of when to be a human and when to be a photographer . Sim Chi Yin did intervene to help a family by raising money to help prolong a subjects life, which is considered a strong taboo in journalism. Consensus said – “surely we are humans first and photographers second” (and my thoughts: is it not our humanity that drives us as photojournalists). The dividing line however, is extremely challenging at times.
During lunch we were about to browse beautifully printed images created by many of the guest speakers.
The afternoon started with Pulitzer-Prize-Winning photojournalist and author Lynsey Addario in conversation with Alessandra Galloni. Speaking on her birthday, Lynsey talked about her stories of Afghanistan, she gave a heart wrenching story of maternal death in childbirth in Sierra Leone, (at this point the atmosphere in the room could be cut with a knife). She also told the harrowing story of her abduction (and expectation of death) from the front line in Libya. Before the floor was opened to questions, Lynsey discussed the idea of making a beautiful image in difficult/war situations. Our job as photographers is to bring the reader/viewer into the story. Difficult blood-stained images will not always achieve this. As she concluded “If you want to do this job, you have to give everything to it”.
Unusually and very usefully the event also included a panel of photo-editors offering a differing view on the issues of diversity. Moderated by John Pullman, Global Head of Video and Pictures, Reuters, the panel on Photo Editors and Mass Perception included multidisciplinary artist Alexandra Bell, Editor, North America Pictures, Reuters Corinne Perkins and Head of Photography, The Guardian Fiona Shields.
Alex creates works of art by turning existing front pages layouts of well known media (such as the New York Times) on its head with alternative page layouts to hi-light the prominence of how page layout affects the meaning, importance and slant of the days news. (An important lesson to us all here). Fiona talked about how The Guardian use wire services & contractors to try and even out their gender balance, driven by statistics including womenphotograph.com twitter feed. (I discussed this with her privately later as I am personally concerned that statistic use does not end up in tokenism).
The discussion made it clear that agencies and newspapers have a role in ensuring gender balance features well as race and religion in the balanced reporting of news.
Following a short tea break we returned to the final session of the day, kicked off by Research Curator of Photography, Imperial War Museums, Hilary Roberts. Focusing on the WW1, Hilary talked about some of the pioneering Women Photographers, hi-lighting that evening in WW1, women produced many important documents. She quoted a phrase used by one of these photographers that I am sure many of us have used a great many times “I’m working this out as I’m going along” (although my poor note taking means I cannot tell you who she was quoting).
We then moved on to the final panel of the day: Documenting Violence. The returning Lynsey Addario was joined by photographer Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi and Chief Photographer for Northwest Africa, Reuters, Zohra Bensemra. the panel was moderated by the BBC’s Special Correspondent, Razia Iqbal.
Again, humanity was the key ingredient to the discussion. In the British Industry we often discuss the rights of the photographer to take images in public when and where we want but here were war photographers talking about respecting the subjects and always asking permission even in the most stressful of situations such as death (of course, permission does not always need to be sought vocally). Emotion and feeling emotion when covering violence was also key point.
The day finished with a summation by Alessandra how more want to get into the industry and mention on the Reuters Scholarship for Visual Journalism with ICP’s Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program.
I will finish with the thought that “We are also human – not just photojournalists” and a quote from Zohra “The day I don’t feel anything is the day I stop taking pictures”
Julie Edwards for The BPPA.
In the first post of what will be a regular feature of BPPA Members telling the story behind a photo, BPPA Member Peter Macdiarmid, photographer London News Pictures, talks about …. Boris goes for a run ….
It’s not often that a press photograph leads the news agenda, but it does happen now and again.
I have been working as a press photographer for 31 years starting out on local newspapers in south London then progressing to The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, Reuters and 10 years as senior news photographer at Getty Images. Currently I work at London News Pictures, covering news and politics.
For me news photography is a passion and I put a lot of time and effort into looking for different images that catch the reader’s attention and illustrate a story in a unique, and hopefully original way. Sometimes this approach can make an ordinary image really stand out.
With this in mind I went looking for former foreign secretary Boris Johnson at his Oxfordshire home during last week’s Conservative Party Conference. Thinking that Boris would leave his house and head up the M40 to Birmingham for the second day of conference I positioned myself in the road outside by his driveway. Usually Boris will give a happy wave to any reporters and photographers as he gets into his car, but today I was on my own.
A short while after the sunrise began to cut through the October chill I spotted Boris leaving for an early morning run wearing his usual flowery shorts. I managed to capture a cheery wave before he disappeared down the lane that leads to the farmland surrounding his house. Normal practice, when there is a group of press doorstepping Boris, is to wait for his return and photograph him running up the lane back home, but today I decided to make use of the golden hour sunrise.
Having not ventured out into the nearby fields previously, I had to make an educated guess as to his return route. I located a spot that would enable me to photograph him crossing a path edged with long grass between two ploughed fields before turning left towards me.
I had guessed correctly and a few minutes later Boris emerged from the woodland leading to the path. He spotted me and waved. Sometimes he waves without looking up, and on this occasion he was also half raising his other arm for balance, all of which made a rather unusual image. He then jogged past me on his way home.
Rather pleased that I had found a different way of photographing the MP that was the talking point of the Conservative Party Conference, I set off back to the car to edit and transmit my images.
Within a couple of hours the images started to appear online, but with a headline that was markedly different to my caption ‘Boris Johnson waves as he runs through fields near his Oxfordshire home’. The Mirror online headline was ‘Boris Johnson commits greatest trolling in world history by running through a FIELD OF WHEAT’…. referring to the Prime Minister’s confession that the ‘naughtiest thing she has ever done’ was to ‘run through a field of wheat as a child’
My images of a man out jogging in the morning sunshine began to take on a life of their own. I spent the rest of the day fielding calls from ITV, Channel 5, BBC TV, CNN International and German TV asking for the picture for news bulletins. Multiple newspaper online websites were publishing my pictures and it was being talked about on radio bulletins by lunchtime. That day’s Evening Standard ran it on page one and another inside.
Tuesday’s papers ran the image across four front pages and on inside pages too.
I have received a few phone calls asking me if it was a stunt – as you can see – it wasn’t.
Peter Macdiarmid
London News Pictures
Veteran Fleet Street photographer and founder member of The BPPA Brian Harris has just published his long-awaited book “…and then the Prime Minister hit me”. You can follow the story of how the book came into being on Brian’s blog.
When Brian Harris decided as a boy to give up his dream of being a newspaper cartoonist and instead become a photographer, it was a decision that would take him from 1960s Essex to the heart of the British newspaper industry in London and to dozens of countries in search of the images that encapsulate the decades from the 1970s to the present day. Some 200 of these photographs are featured in …and then the Prime Minister hit me… Presidents and royalty, ministers and movie stars, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events; Brian Harris has captured many of the most famous and compelling people of our time. His honest, often hard-hitting text tells the story behind his pictures, and in so doing, the story of his life.
Drawn from his archive of thousands of prints, negatives and contact sheets, these images document not only Brian Harris’s 45 years as a photojournalist, but also many of the defining moments of modern history. As a staff photographer on The Times, his assignments included Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’, the bloody birth of Zimbabwe, the aftermath of war in the Falklands, famine and human suffering in Ethiopia and Sudan. He joined the founding team of The Independent in 1986, with a brief to produce the kind of purposeful editorial photography with which the newspaper became synonymous. His twelve years on the Indy coincided with the start of the civil war in Yugoslavia, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Czechoslovakia’s ‘Velvet Revolution’ and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
Aside from such headline-grabbing events, the daily grind of politics has given Brian Harris some of his most memorable images. Caught here on campaign trails, at party conferences and glad-handing the public are presidential candidates, British prime ministers and party leaders – including the unforgettable moment when Labour’s Neil Kinnock took an unplanned dip at Brighton beach.
The personal stories that illuminate Brian Harris’s photographs are a valuable social document of the changing face of the British newspaper industry experienced from the inside. From the heavily unionised working practices of the 1970s, through the post-Wapping fallout that gave birth to The Independent, to life as a freelancer, Brian has seen it all. …and then the Prime Minister hit me… is in part a tribute to ‘Fleet Street’s finest’, who taught the young photographer the tricks of the trade. But this book is dedicated to Brian’s father who built him a darkroom and his mother who made his first flyer for his fledgling photography business back in Romford. Without them, there would be no story to tell.
If you want to know more, please visit Impress Publishing’s website
