Sally Soames 1937-2019

Sally Soames and fellow members of The Press Photographers Association (which became The BPPA) at their first London exhibition at The Barbican. Photo ©Brian Harris.

Sally Soames who worked as a photographer for The Sunday Times for more than three decades died aged 82 at her home in north London on the 5th of October 2019.

Sally, like many of her generation had no formal training as a photographer, starting out by winning a photography competition run by a London evening paper. She was noticed by the Observer where she contributed work during the 1960’s before being taken onto the Sunday Times before the decade was out. She stayed on her beloved paper for more than 32 years working for esteemed editor Harry Evans and design maestro Edwin Taylor, reluctantly retiring due to problems with her knees and as black and white analogue film photography gave way to colour and subsequently digital image making.

Sally told me in the early 90’s that she was scouring London and buying up all the Nikon FM2 film cameras that she could find once she had been told that her favourite camera wasn’t going to be made anymore. I don’t think Sally and modern digital technology would have got on together, so a good time to call it a day.

Sally was a pure image maker, the eyes were everything, get the eyes sharp and you will have your reader, she said to me once. She would talk her subject into submission if he or she proved to be reluctant to have their photograph taken. She charmed and cajoled, often writing to her subject in advance of the photography session as well as reading their work if an author, or watching their films or plays if an actor. She saw herself and her work as the equal of the writer and the written word when covering an interview, not for Sally the three minute photo-op session dictated by a hovering PR, which is now seen to be the norm, Sally demanded and got as much time as she needed to produce her work.

Although Sally did specialise in portrait work for the paper, producing some of the most eye catching imagery to grace the pages of any newspaper in the land she was also a dab hand on the political scene. I personally worked alongside her on many occasions, Sally on the ST and myself on The Times at many a political conference during the 70’s through the 80’s. I was always surprised to see her visual summation of the week in her paper, normally a quiet reflective moment caught without fuss, just a fine quality image that would make you think a while.

I also worked alongside Sally in Israel whilst covering a general election in June 1981 featuring Menachem Begin and Moshe Dyan, both of whom she had entré to with one phone call. Her portrait of General Dyan on the Golan Heights ranks, IMHO, as one of her finest images. She introduced me around to those that mattered and arranged passes and some access to this then relative green horn, but that was just so typical of Sally, she would help just about anyone but especially new guys and gals on the block…there is a long line of news photographers working now who all owe Sally a great debt of personal gratitude, myself included.

 She had a heart felt affinity with Israel, being born Jewish (born Winkleman), and when based there during the Yom Kippur War between Israel and a coalition of Arab States led by Egypt and Syria in October 1973 she was recalled by Kelvin Brodie her Sunday Times picture editor (and a former top flight news photographer) as it was deemed by the ST management as being too dangerous for Sally to stay after the death of ST correspondent Nick Tomalin. The group of Arab commandos who stormed the beach outside her Tel Aviv beach front hotel made the point more emphatically. She returned to Israel a week later to cover the km101 peace talks.

Sally may have been slight of frame and stature but she was strong and a fighter…Sally never ever gave up, she always found a way to achieve what she wanted, with a gushing smile, a hand hold, a squeeze and it must be said a fair bit of feminine schmoozing…Sally really was one of those unique individuals who was a friend to many, a mentor to many more and a bloody good photographer…oh, and a really nice woman. RIP Sally.

Brian Harris © 2019

An open response to a recent social media post about gender in press photography

The BPPA has come in for some criticism from a group called Women Photographers of the UK about what they refer to as the uneven representation of women in the current Assignments 2019 exhibition. You can read their open letter here on Medium. This is a response from Lynne Cameron, Vice Chair of The BPPA.
 
Dear Suzanne, Anna and Susannah
 
We would like to reassure those expressing concerns about the representation of women in our industry that we are very aware of the issues and are currently working on projects to support and help current and future female members of the organisation. We were disappointed that these concerns were not directed to The BPPA in the first instance as we welcome all constructive criticism. It is one of our core values to work transparently with all parties in any matter related to photography.
 
The issue of gender imbalance is a complex one, not just related to photography but to wider society.
 
The association is proactively working to improve such imbalances. As an example The BPPA elected me as Vice Chair and Julie Edwards as our Social Media and Website Editor at last year’s AGM. We are both long-standing professional photographers who have first hand experience of gender related issues within our industry. Julie and I are bringing our experiences, energy and ideas to The Board and welcome further positive constructive comments which could help address this wider topic.
 
In relation to the exhibition (it is not a competition) we would like to reassure those concerned that images were curated by highly regarded members of the profession who were deliberately not given any information about the name or gender of the photographers in order to make the selection process ‘about the images’ as far as is humanly possible.
 
We are extremely proud of Assignments – an exhibition designed to promote and highlight the amazing work that is being produced by our members.
 
The Board of The BPPA welcomes constructive input from anyone who wants to help to promote and inspire great photography. If you have ideas on what more can be done on the issues raised then please get in contact with me or any of the other members of our Board.
 
Lynne Cameron
 
Vice Chair, The BPPA
 
 
 
Statistics:
 
1. The BPPA has 321 paid-up members of whom 40 are women – which is approximately 12.46%.
2. 16 photographers joined or rejoined in order to take part in Assignments 2019 of whom 25% were women.
3. 161 photographers entered photographs for Assignments 2019 of whom 18 were women – 11.2%
4. 1,351 photographs were entered of which 148 were entered by women – 10.95%
5. 110 photographs were selected for exhibition of which 10 were by women – 9.3%

Assignments is back – and not just in London!


The exhibition of the best of British press photography returns – and as well as the London show we are taking over the The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke on Trent for a whole month.
The opening night is Tuesday 23 July- and will run until Sunday 25th of August to coincide with summer holiday season.
We are doing things slightly differently this year – full details on the website – but here are the key facts:

  • Entries open on April 1
  • Entries close April 12th
  • Pictures taken between 31st August 2017 and 14th April 2019 are eligible
  • We have increased the maximum number of pictures you can enter to 10 this year
  • There is a £10 registration fee to help us pay for everything
  • There is NO framing fee this year – our friends at Canon and Fixation are very kindly picking up the bill for us!
  • We will be doing the “catalogue” and the “contact sheet” again
  • (every image entered makes the contact sheet – so you can choose your own favourites)
  • Everyone who enters gets a pair of invites to the opening night party!
  • The exhibition is open to BPPA members – but if you have lapsed or haven’t got round to joining you can do so now

Check out the Assignments website for the full rules and details of how to enter: https://assignments.thebppa.com
You haven’t got long – so get hunting through those hard drives now!!

Assignments is back!


The exhibition of the best of British press photography returns – this time on Londons South Bank – taking over the Barge House at the OXO Tower.
The opening night is Thursday 16th May – and will run until the 19th to coincide with London Photo Week.
We are doing things slightly differently this year – full details on the website – but here are the key facts:

  • Entries open on April 1
  • Entries close April 12th
  • Pictures taken between 31st August 2017 and 14th April 2019 are eligible
  • We have increased the maximum number of pictures you can enter to 10 this year
  • There is a £10 registration fee to help us pay for everything
  • There is NO framing fee this year – our friends at Canon and Fixation are very kindly picking up the bill for us!
  • We will be doing the “catalogue” and the “contact sheet” again
  • (every image entered makes the contact sheet – so you can choose your own favourites)
  • Everyone who enters gets a pair of invites to the opening night party!
  • The exhibition is open to BPPA members – but if you have lapsed or haven’t got round to joining you can do so now

Check out the Assignments website for the full rules and details of how to enter: https://assignments.thebppa.com
You haven’t got long – so get hunting through those hard drives now!!

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…

Alamy – a follow-up

The UK Press Gazette quoted The BPPA’s open letter to Alamy’s CEO in their piece about his video signalling his intention to reduce the photographers percentage of royalties to 40%. This morning the UKPG asked us to provide a response to James West’s latest video where he offers to keep the 50% split for exclusive content. We provided the following text:
 
“Alamy’s move to alter their commission structure has brought a large number of other issues to the surface such as the low prices they sell pictures for, their broken promise that when they reduced the photographers cut to 50% they wouldn’t go further and their somewhat grudging acceptance that it is the commitment and buy-in from thousands of photographers that has got them to the positive position in which they now find themselves.
 
The BPPA welcomes Alamy’s decision to reconsider their reduction in the percentage paid to photographers but in making this only for exclusive content they are still going to anger many of our members. One of them has said “exclusivity is appropriate to a delicatessen, not a Walmart” and this sums up how most feel.
 
Should they push ahead with this plan the details of how they manage this will be complex. Will photographers have to make some sort of declaration for every single picture retrospectively? Will the burden for proving exclusivity rest with the photographers? Our opinion is that Alamy are still not listening and are still cutting the income of all those photographers who for very good reasons do not wish to, or cannot, surrender exclusivity.”

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

New Board Member for Social Media & Web

We’d like to introduce you to the new board member who will all be playing an active role in making this yet another successful year for the BPPA and British Press Photography.
I am Julie Edwards and I have been a press photographer for just over 10 years, working mainly in the Entertainment Industry.
I have already introduced a series to the BPPA website called “Members Talks” but my second task is to ensure that all the new (and old) board members write an introduction or “about me” focused not on their photography but what they believe the BPPA should be and how they will help achieve that. It’s not fair that I ask others to do this without putting pen to paper myself first.
With this in mind, what follows is not the normal “I’m a photographer because I grew up surrounded by photography” type introduction  (although I did as my dad was in newspaper distribution and I was surrounded by all the papers every day).
At school I was a maths head and started my career just as the desktop computer revolution started. My father said “computers are the future”, so I combined my maths and design talent in the drawing office running computer aided design systems. This career grew and I ended up as a consultant selling and implementing some of the most advanced design solutions on PC’s, starting my own software company in the 90’s as the internet era was in it’s infancy. Luckily I was working with one of the largest organisations in the CAD field whose investment in Marketing and Sales training was second to none which I benefited from greatly. In about 2007 I gave this all up with a huge change in direction to return to my first love: photography. Well not just photography, press photography, using my sales and marketing skills to get into positions quite quickly that normally take many years in the industry.
Why do I detail this past? My portfolio for the BPPA is Web & Social media. I have a past well rooted in technology and problem solving, anyone who knows me knows I have some of the most bleeding edge and automated workflows possible. This gives me the right background to help to bring the BPPA right up to date into a modern, forward looking, helpful association that press photographers think vital to be part of.
UK Press photographers are not always the most creative but they are without doubt the most versatile, quick thinking and resourceful photographers on the planet. Our work is seen every single day by millions of people. No other group of photographers have their work this visible and yet, only last week, on a train, I was likened to being “no higher than an Estate Agent”. Why do we have this reputation? Probably because the only time we are in the limelight is when it is negative (privacy intrusion etc). The BPPA needs to help change that, it needs to show the world what we do and the web is the perfect platform for this. 
Julie