EU Copyright Directive to be debated in European Parliament

Tomorrow (26th March 2019) MEPs will vote on a controversial EU directive to copyright work used on the web. It sets terms and conditions for others to reuse content (posted by people like us) commercially.
The battle has been between the tech giants, whose business model is all about reusing other’s intellectual property without license or renumeration, and us ‘the creative community’.
Scares have included that ‘readers will be unable to share links’ (wrong) or ‘Wikipedia will collapse’ (nonsense). Many of us have had content stolen by others to market their photographic services from our clients’ own media sites, and now Publishers’ Right (Article II) in the directive will allow us to chase our payment, which should stop many thefts. It should allow a revenue stream that before was tricky to say the least.
As Angela Mills Wade, the director of the European Publishers Council is quoted, “a vote for the directive will be a vote for fairness, for culture, for creativity, and crucially, for the future of Europe’s professional, diverse independent press.”

Marketing Essentials for Professional Photographers

You are a photographer, you know how to take photos, you have a vision but have you ever asked yourself the following questions..

  • “How do I find clients?”
  • “I got undercut by a photographer offering to do the job for £100”
  • You probably all think “LinkedIn is useless; I have been on it for six months and haven’t had a single enquiry”.

If so these series of seminars may be useful to you… Experienced photographer Pete Jenkins has got together with ‘Cath Preston’, a successful Networker/Marketeer based in Sheffield to run a series of one-day seminars on Marketing Essentials’ and ‘LinkedIn Essentials’, aimed at photographers, (although basically useful for any solo-preneurs/creatives/self-employed professionals who are struggling with basic marketing and with using LinkedIn effectively).
Lots of 1:1 help, those difficult questions answered, and ongoing support after the seminar has long gone.
Members of the BPPA can get £50 discount, see the offers page for details.

  • Marketing Essentials Ramsdale Golf Club Nottingham 20th March (all day) £133
  • LinkedIn Essentials Ramsdale Golf Club, Nottingham 30th January (all day) £133
  • Marketing Essentials NUJ, Kings Cross, London 6th February (all day) £199

You can see more details and book here…

Assignments Live with Tom Stoddart

We are proud to announce that the first of our long running Assignments Live events for 2019 features none other than Tom Stoddart on 31st January.
Tom Stoddart began his photographic career on a local newspaper in his native North-East of England. In 1978 he moved to London and began working freelance for publications such as the Sunday Times and Time Magazine. 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. Read more about Tom here..
If you fancy joining us at Wex Photo Video London for this relaxed event listening to Tom’s talk entitled “Every Picture Tells A Story”, detailing his 50 years as one of the worlds leading photojournalists, which is followed by a raffle and plenty of time to socialise (or network if you prefer) with other photographers, you will need to be quick. Assignments Live are free to all but with tickets being available to theBPPA members a week before non-members, many of our members have already snapped up their tickets leaving a fraction remaining.
Tickets are available here…

We are starting the new year by helping you brush up on your Photo Mechanic based workflow

We offering members and non-members the chance to take part in a series of keenly priced half day workshops which will be focused on making the most of Camera Bits software to select , caption and send your images out to the picture desks in a fast and efficient way using Photo Mechanic.
BPPA Secretary Neil Turner has a long history and experience writing about and teaching photography as well as working as a photo editor on very large sports events with world class teams of photographers.
Take the chance to learn from his years of experience as a photo editor how to make the most of the complex and powerful Photo Mechanic. Take control of variables, code replacements and autocomplete texts.
Attendees are welcome to bring laptop’s to follow the tuition in real time if they wish. If not, just listen, take notes and ask questions.
Even the experienced are bound to learn something new.
You can register on this keenly priced workshop here…

Introducing the Board: Anthony Devlin

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.
 

Introducing the Board: Neil Turner

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.

An open letter to Alamy CEO James West

Dear Mr West
When our members first pointed out that Alamy was reducing the commission that it pays to contributing photographers the first reaction was “oh no not again”. Sitting and watching the video that you posted on YouTube didn’t help. 
Alamy is a company whose success is built on its relationship with the people who have trusted you to handle their stock and live photography sales. Relationships built on trust are destroyed very quickly when one party moves the goalposts and that’s exactly what you are planning to do.
Many of our members are contributors to Alamy and a significant number of them have invested incredible amounts of time and money supplying images through your service. They have done this based on an expectation of an equitable split of sales. The graphs showing increasing revenue and turnover do not show the whole picture when it comes to the incomes of individual contributors. Very few of them have had the degree of income or turnover growth that Alamy can proudly boast about. We know many photographers whose income from Alamy has plateaued at best and, in a number of cases, reduced significantly.
We are not stupid. We are amongst that group of photographers that you mentioned who understand the market. We know that many individual images fetch lower prices than they once did, that it is a complex and competitive market and that sales models have changed since 1999. We understand that the financial uncertanties of Brexit mean that you have to be cautious over the next twelve months or more. We understand that Alamy wants to improve and grow. We understand that you want to fund those goals from within your own revenues but we don’t understand why you would do so at the expense of the contributors whose effort has been one of the key drivers of your rise to a turnover in excess of $30,000,000.
In essence you are asking hard working and dedicated photographers to take a 20% pay cut. It doesn’t matter that Alamy is selling more and has the potential to sell even more in the future if your investments in technology and research pay off. By reducing the photographers percentage you are asking them to pay for those developments and we would be interested to know if anyone at Alamy is taking a 20% pay cut to help fund their futures.
You will, no doubt, have read the comments underneath your video on YouTube. The anger is there for all to see and there are many photographers on there who are going to reconsider their relationship with Alamy. They don’t agree with your assertions that 40% of more sales is better than 50% of a slower increase in sales and, as individual photographers, they are probably correct.
We would ask that you reconsider this move and that you continue to pay existing contributors 50% of the sales. If new contributors want to join then maybe you could agree the 60/40 cut with them. There has to be a way to keep the trust of our members and still be able to fund development because, as things stand, Alamy keeping 60% of fewer pictures of lower quality is a distinct possibility which benefits nobody.
Kind Regards
The BPPA Board

Introducing the board: Jonathan Buckmaster

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..

Women in Focus

REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Rohingya refugees are reflected in rain water along an embankment next to paddy fields after fleeing from Myanmar into Palang Khali, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay TO FIND ALL PICTURES SEARCH REUTERS PULITZER – RC18DA7E6630

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.

Members Stories: Boris goes for a run…

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.

Peter Macdiarmid, photographer London News Pictures
© Licensed to London News Pictures. 01/10/2018. Thame, UK. Boris Johnson waves at photographers as he runs near his Oxfordshire home. The former foreign secretary is due to attend Conservative Party Conference this week. Photo credit: Peter Macdiarmid/LNP

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