I’ve been to a mystical land! It’s a land where press photographers are loved and feted. They are considered professionals whose role is vital to the nation. They are not abused on the streets and the Head Of State, the President, joins them for dinner when they have their annual awards ceremony, the winner of which is whisked away in
When the Leveson Inquiry first opened we had little or no idea that press photographers would come in for so much criticism and abuse from the witnesses. At the association’s AGM in November we formed a plan to do what we could to counter this and put our side of the story. Shortly afterwards we sent an initial submission in
Back in 1997 Tony Blair made his famous “education, education,education” speech. Well… he made at least three speeches where he used that line but that doesn’t stop it being an important landmark in British political history. Don’t worry, The BPPA isn’t going to get all party-political on you but we are very interested in education and we are currently looking
Former Daily Mirror Editor turned academic Roy Greenslade wrote a column for the London Evening Standard yesterday entitled “Editors must curbs excesses of stalkerazzi” and a lot of it made a lot of sense: He agreed that the majority of press photographers do behave ethically all of the time He said that “we have to rely on editors to stick
A group of photographers that I am teaching have got exams next week and there is a good chance that they will get one question on “current affairs” in the world of photography. Drawing up a list of potential topics I suddenly realised that there have been a lot of issues that affect us over the last year or so
So, fellow professionals… answer me this… why should The BPPA be faced with a blank screen when visitors try to look at the photos on our Facebook page? The answer is, sadly, that there don’t seem to be any services out there who treat images with respect. If they aren’t stripping the metadata, they are selling your work. If they aren’t asking
On Friday 25th of November The BPPA held its Annual General Meeting. These events are often a little dull – being mainly concerned with approving accounts, electing a few people to a few jobs and then having a few drinks. This year’s AGM was very different. Sure, we agreed our accounts and yes we re-appointed our various officers but we
Every time you open a newspaper, click on a news website or check out what is happening in the world there is a very high chance that you will be looking at the work of a professional press photographer. From Tiananman Square to Old Trafford and from the red carpet at the latest film premiere to protests on the streets
The BPPA today wrote to the Leveson Inquiry and asked to be added to the list of those giving evidence. We did this because of the one-way traffic from witnesses criticising photographers and because of the dreadfully lazy television journalism that has painted each and every one of us as the worst kind of citizen paparazzi. This is what we
Yesterday morning I received a renewal reminder from the company that insures my camera gear. Twenty minutes later I read a posting on a photographers’ discussion forum warning that some of the companies who offer specialist cover for press photographers equipment were saying that they were not going to pay out for equipment stolen, lost or damaged during the recent
