Photographers – Page 3

An open letter to Time Inc UK

When several photographers started getting letters from Hamish Dawson, Publishing Director of Time Inc.(UK) Ltd, Specialist Sport and Leisure with a new rights grab which asked them to agree to sign away all rights in any work that they carried out for the magazines and websites in the group we decided to write to him. Below is that letter and below that is his reply.
We are pretty sure that few people will bother to go down and read what he said in reply but it is worth noting that in the final paragraph he says:
“If an individual contributor does not wish to enter into an All Rights agreement, it may be possible for that individual to negotiate a different arrangement, for example, a Qualified Rights agreement. Each case continues to be considered on its own merits, and that decision remains with the senior team on the brand concerned.”
This is a long way from being the response that we would be looking for but it is a course of action that is open to individual photographers to follow if they are offered work by one of the Time Inc UK titles and they don’t want to sign the new contract.

Dear Mr Dawson

What would make a photographer with well over twenty years experience, a mortgage and a family tell one of his key clients to “get lost” – using language that we couldn’t and wouldn’t want to post on a public facing website?

The answer is your new rights-grabbing contract which includes a not-so-subtle line giving them a choice between signing what appears to be a massively unfair deal or losing any and all chance of supplying you ever again. Sadly, you aren’t the first major publisher and buyer of photography to decide that you want to tear up long-standing agreements which saw you buying licenses to use the photographs whilst the copyright remained with the photographer. Sadly, you probably won’t be the last either.

The reason that the old one was a ‘long-lasting agreement’ was because it was fair – the word ‘equitable’ even comes to mind. The fees paid were OK but the ability to re-sell the work after an initial period of exclusivity made the jobs worth doing. Had you, the publisher, substantially increased the fees payable to the photographers to redress this balance then that sense of fairness may have been saved from what most of those photographers feel will be a sad, painful and untimely death.

Receiving these letters just before Christmas has been causing anger, resentment and pain for a large number of photographers who can be excused for assuming that the calculation within the Time Inc UK management must be that enough existing people with no real option to do otherwise will sign and enough struggling photographers who don’t yet work for you will grasp their opportunity to get more work and keep their heads above water.

Make no mistake, this is not a small adjustment to the terms and conditions under which so many photographers supply work to you. This is moving the goalposts, repainting them and renaming them as ‘scoring portals’.

We would like to give you the opportunity to explain why this is being done. We probably know the obvious answers about maximising shareholder returns and the less obvious ones about protecting the brands but what about the relationship that you had with talented, creative and dedicated suppliers?

Does a rights-grab of this magnitude make it worthwhile destroying relationships that have stood the test of time and that have worked well?

Any explanation that you can provide will be shared with photographers because many of our members are struggling with your decision.

Kind regards

Neil Turner

[email protected]

Dear Mr Turner,

Thank you for your e-mail.

As you correctly observe, we are not the first publisher to re-evaluate our rights purchasing position, and a number of our agreements are indeed long-standing.

Unfortunately, while the agreements may not have changed, the markets, media and commercial circumstances in which we all operate have changed quite dramatically over the last few years, and we now operate in quite a different publishing and media landscape to the one which pertained when many of our existing rights agreements were first set up.

I would first make the point that most of our existing agreements are between IPC Media and the contributor concerned. Since becoming Time Inc. (UK) Ltd., we have viewed it as necessary to bring these agreements up to date. Secondly, many of our agreements do not acknowledge the fact that the company now has significant and rapidly growing, digital publishing platforms and the new agreements reflect this development.

We have also been encouraging our specialist editorial staff to improve the clarity of their commissioning and written communication, and have set out some standards which we expect to be followed, and which we believe are in the interests of both contributors and the brands alike.

Regarding the All Rights agreement that is being sent to Time Inc. (UK) specialist contributors, it has been our practice for a number of years to ask many of our freelance contributors to enter into either an All Rights or Qualified Rights agreement when we purchase content from them. In many instances we’ve asked contributors to sign on-going agreements to cover all the material that they sell to Time Inc. called ‘Core Rights Agreements’. So the agreements that are now being dispatched, while they have been updated and re-worded, are not a new innovation and having a Core Rights Agreement in place ensures that payments can be made to contributors much more speedily than might be the case if individual contracts had to be sent out and agreed on a job-by-job basis.

If an individual contributor does not wish to enter into an All Rights agreement, it may be possible for that individual to negotiate a different arrangement, for example, a Qualified Rights agreement. Each case continues to be considered on its own merits, and that decision remains with the senior team on the brand concerned. Contributors should, however, bear in mind that commercial realities dictate that we will be using the content that we purchase in many different ways, both now and in the future and quite clearly, unless both parties are willing to enter an agreement that suits them both, there is no viable basis on which work can be commissioned or accepted.

I hope that this clarifies our position.

Kind regards

Hamish Dawson
Publishing Director

Time Inc.(UK) Ltd. Specialist Sport and Leisure

Golf Monthly; Rugby World; World Soccer; The Field; Shooting Times; Sporting Gun; Shooting Gazette; Shootinguk.co.uk; Angler’s Mail; Amateur Gardening

If you know any photographers who are affected by this or who might be affected by it in the future, please share this with them. The terms and conditions under which many of us work are being steadily eroded by publishers who seem to opt for the ‘nuclear’ all-rights option rather than consult with their previously loyal contributors and explore the more equitable route of agreeing licenses that suit the current world of publishing. It is also interesting to note that Time Inc haven’t tried to do this to their US photographers… YET!

Anyone for Polo

I was covering The opening of The Field of Remembrance (the crosses with poppies laid every year by The British Legion) at Westminster Abbey, which this year was by Prince Harry, when I first heard about his trip to Oman and Dubai.The Telegraph’s Royal correspondent Gordon Rayner was down to go and I explained how happy I’d be to accompany him. A few forms later and I was on the list to go. Not a big list but a very manageable one for the Palace press office. John Stillwell from the Press Association, Chris Jackson from Getty, Time Rooke for Rex Features and Darren Fletcher from The Sun.
Harry was arriving on Tuesday night and I got there Tuesday morning having flown through the night. The arrival was pooled , covered by Tim and Chris but Darren and I still turned up at the rather plush hotel just in case we were allowed to crash the pool. We weren’t so we retired to the bar for a beer then met up with the others to travel back by minibus to the hotel we were staying in. It was “National Day” in Oman and the traffic was horrendous. All the locals seemed to be out in there cars wearing masks and hooting and beeping their way around Muscat. We ended up having to walk the last few hundred yards to our hotel which gave us the chance to take a few frames of the festivities. Everyone seemed really friendly, they were having a great time, though a few had had their exhausts adjusted to make a sound that was very similar to gunfire, which did throw one particular reporter to the floor of the bus when we heard it for the first time.

The following morning was a 6am start for the minibus journey to Nizwa Fort. Charles and Camilla visited earlier this year and took part in some local tribal dancing involving swords so obviously we were crossing fingers for a repeat royal performance.
We retired for several coffees whilst we awaited Harry’s arrival and took the opportunity to take some pictures of some of the children and some of the locals who were waiting to meet the Prince.


I did a combination of pictures on my iPhone 5S and my normal Nikon work cameras (D4S D3S and D3)
The picture of the man with the walking stick was then put through ‘Snapseed’ and ‘Instagram’…the version that looks warmer was not. I do like to use my iPhone for work pictures but I’d never have the guts to shoot an entire assignment on one….unless of course I was asked to.
A lot of photographers complain that filter Apps like ‘Snapseed’ and ‘Instagram’ make everyone capable of producing “great” photographs. I tend to disagree. If you haven’t got the right image there’s nothing an App can do for you. So far Apps can’t find a picture for you, yeah they can polish a turd but it’s still going to be a turd.
Apps are tools as is the camera on your iPhone. You still need to know how to use the tool to get the most out of it.
Anyway, Harry played ball. Not once but twice. He had a go on the sword then went for a tour , then had another go on the sword. Our local Omani embassy chap did a brilliant job of positioning the dancers in front of Harry twice. We all got what was required.





The next day was going to be a long one. Harry was visiting The Grand Mosque in Muscat first thing then we were flying to Dubai followed by a bus-ride to Ghantoot Polo ground, Abu Dhabi, for Harry’s ‘Sentebale’ charity match. We were told all sorts of celebrities would be attending..in the end it was only Geri Halliwell and her new fiance that anybody recognised.




We went home and Harry stayed to watch the Grand Prix…a few people cynically commented that that was in fact the reason for the visit.
Anyone for a pre-Christmas shopping trip to New York ?

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Away day… to Poland

As if often the case in the era of multimedia news gathering I was recently despatched to Poland on a whirlwind visit to shoot stills and video. A British armoured Battlegroup have been taking part in war games with the Polish military entitled “Black Eagle” for several weeks and the press had been invited along to coincide with a visit by the Chief of the General Staff – General Nick Carter .
We had to be at the army base in Poland bright and early on Friday morning so our only choice was to fly late Thursday night to Berlin and then drive for the border – luckily only a two and a half hour drive. Our hotel for the night was literally a truck stop motel, with a bit of a Swiss chalet style thing going on, but being a 10 minute drive from our rendezvous point the following morning it was bearable .
Now, I have this thing as many of you probably do where I conjure up in my head a “ best case scenario” of what to expect on a job and then set myself up for disappointment . In this case I envisaged myself in a trench with a screaming corporal throwing smoke grenades as the tanks roared forward all shot on a 24mm …….
As if….. After being transported to the range with a host of other media from the likes of ITN, The Times (sans photographer) the BBC and a likeable but complete anorak from Combat and Survival mag we found ourselves on a Soviet era style viewing platform from where we were expected to shoot all our images. No chance of using a 24mm here !
The again they were going to be firing live rounds so probably was best to be have some distance between us. Luckily due to some advice from a former Telegraph colleague who now picture edits for the Army I had begrudgingly brought a 300 and an extender with me without which I would have been in deep trouble, but was still utterly under-lensed for the live fire part of the exercise .

I recently bought a Canon C100 video camera, which takes all my EF lenses, which has revolutionised video for me . I now no longer have to fanny about with a 5D taking bits on and off depending on whether I’m shooting stills or video with it’s built in ND filters and XLR inputs . I now have a dedicated video camera which can use all the lenses I have collected over the years . Mind you this doesn’t solve the issue of when to shoot stills and when to shoot video on an assignment where there are no second chances .
Once the demonstration started there was nothing I could do but go with the flow and let my instincts take over. My c100 was mounted on a tripod and as the Challenger II tanks burst out of the tree line I panned with them and when I felt I had enough moved to stills leaving the camera rolling . I continued in this fashion alternating between camera until the tanks were probably a 750m off in the distance shrouded by a cloud of smoke which only the muzzle flashes of their powerful guns could penetrate. At one point I even mounted the 300 2.8 on the c100 for a few long shots and the 1.5 crop factor really helped.
Afterwards we got to have a short walk about where I bumped into an old school friend I hadn’t seen in 30 yrs who is now a Brigadier and shot some short lens stuff of soldiers and officers that made a huge difference. Finally there was an interview with the general and piece to camera with the reporter Ben, whom I had worked with a lot over the years and has now gained the confidence needed to stand in front of a camera, a skill which is not to be underestimated.
After a quick edit, caption and send of the stills we jumped back into the hire car for the drive back to Berlin with only around five hours before our flight was due to depart forcing me to edit whilst Ben drove down the dual carriageway westwards. The stars we clearly in alignment that day as miraculously my 4g mifi worked flawlessly (never usually does when it really matters!) and was able to file the video before going through to departures and the luxury that awaited with our Easyjet flight back to Gatwick .
See the video here https://vimeo.com/113108829

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The one on the left is a snapper…

On the left we have a Snapper, it’s a type of fish, on the right we have a photographer – please learn the difference.
Would you like to demean everything I have achieved in my career with one word? Great! Then just call me a snapper – you won’t be the first or the last person to do it.
With few exceptions, the term snapper is used as a description for photographers by almost everyone we work with – from journalists, to PR professionals, picture editors and other press photographers. What began as a jokey phrase used amongst photographers has been taken from us and turned into a widely accepted description of what we do.
Often when I bring this subject up the reply I get back is something along the lines of “What’s your problem? It’s just a word. I think it’s quite fun”. Well, here’s my problem…the term implies that our sole contribution at work is to own a camera and turn up on time. In nobody’s dictionary is a snap considered to be something that took any skill or input to achieve – it is without a doubt a derogatory term when used to describe a photo.
Of course, most people using the do not really believe we are just taking ‘snaps’. I’ve heard the term used by many colleagues and clients who I know to have a great respect for, and understanding of, what we do. But the term has slowly seeped into our collective consciousness and rarely gets questioned. Whether the person using them intends it or not, some words are loaded with meaning.
One defence of the word I’ve often heard is: “Well OK, obviously some of you guys are photographers, like those who do reportage and high end portraiture – but you can’t exactly call waiting outside court or a night club and taking a few snaps of someone leaving photography”. Yes you can. If you think having five seconds (that’s not an exaggeration) to get a sharp picture of someone running towards you in the dark isn’t a skill then I suggest you try it for yourself. Afterwards you’ll need to talk to quite a few people to make sure that you’ve identified the right person in your photo. But it’s just a snap so maybe don’t worry about that part too much, eh?
Some of my colleagues will no doubt think that I am getting carried away over an insignificant and almost endearing term. And they might compare me to a cabbie who would like to be know as an Executive Transportation Route Consultant (sorry cabbies – if that’s what you want, then that’s fine by me!). Indeed, the online forum where the majority of Britain’s working press photographers discuss their profession is called Snapperweb, so obviously not everyone feels the same way as me.
But I believe if press photography as a profession is going survive the transition to online then we need to learn to acknowledge and communicate to others the contribution we make to journalism – and the language we use is a powerful symbol to the wider world as to how we view ourselves.
Despite what some people will have you believe, press photography is alive and well – most of the space in our national newspapers and news website is given over to photographs and most of these photographs are taken by professional news photographers and not amateurs. This tells you all you need to know about the power of the still image and the skill of the people taking these pictures. Yet shift rates have remained the same for over a decade, the public view our profession with complete disdain and staff positions are almost unheard of. That tells me that as a profession we do not have the power or influence that is commensurate with the contribution we make – stopping using the term “snapper” to refer to ourselves is a small, easy step we can take towards rectify that situation.
So then, just to sum up – a snapper is a type of fish and not a press photographer. Spread the word!
I’d love to hear your thoughts, whatever side you take in this debate. Leave a comment below or tweet me and the association – @mikaelbuck and @TheBPPA
The views expressed here are solely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of The BPPA.
You can see Mikael’s gallery page here.

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Insurance and what to look for

Let’s start off by stating the obvious – professional photographers tend to own a lot of expensive gear. Most photographers have insurance for that expensive gear and one of the most common queries that you’ll see on discussion forums frequented by those professionals is about which insurer is the best/cheapest. Insurance is proof of two of life’s most enduring truths:

The best is rarely the cheapest (unless price is your only arbiter of ‘best’)
The devil is in the detail (or the small print)

Having spent days or even weeks looking into insurance for photographic equipment I thought that it would be useful to write down a few things that you might like to consider and a few questions that you might like to ask when assessing the relative merits of competing quotes. The first thing that you need to know that the company offering to sell you insurance is most likely to be a broker and not an actual insurer (or underwriter).

Insurance broker noun A person or company registered as an adviser on matters of insurance and as an arranger of insurance cover with an insurer on behalf of a client.

There’s nothing wrong with a good broker – they know their industry, will have worked with people like you before and will generally know where to get the best deals with the right cover. The actual insurer will be an underwriter.

Underwriter noun A person or company accepting liability under (an insurance policy), thus guaranteeing payment in case loss or damage occurs.

There are about six or seven underwriters who have products and experience in the professional photography arena and each of them lays down their own specific rules and exclusions when offering policies through brokers. That is how it works: you go along to a broker who then offers you a policy underwritten by someone else. Most brokers stick to the same two or three underwriters for specific types of policy and will generally pick up very quickly what you want and be able to advise you on which policy to take out.
That’s all good if the broker has made an accurate assessment of what you want. Sometimes all they hear is “cheap” and will just get you the lowest priced policy which may or may not be a perfect fit for you and your work. Sometimes all they hear is “comprehensive” and get you a policy with all of the bells and whistles at a higher cost and the chances are that you might not need some of those bells and whistles. This brings up a whole series of things that you might want to know the answer to before you speak to a broker.

What kind of cover do you want? Theft and accidental damage?
Are you prepared to have a high excess payment?
How would you describe the kind of work that you do? Is it hard news, sports, features, PR, general editorial?
Do you have secure locks on all potential access points to your home and/or office where you will be leaving your equipment?
Where do you live? Town or country, house or flat?
What kind of vehicle do you drive? Saloon, estate, hatchback, convertible, van?
How good is your security on and in your vehicle?
Where and when do you leave your gear in your vehicle? Daylight, overnight, only when working?
Do you need to be able to leave gear in hotel rooms? If so, where in the world?
How often and where in the world do you travel with gear? Most UK insurers limit you to a total of 90 days.
If you travel, is you gear covered in the hold of an aircraft or elsewhere whilst in transit?
Does your work take you into area or scenes of civil unrest?
Do you need to insure rental or loan equipment?
Do you need to insure laptops and other IT equipment? Does that include software?
Do you need to insure an archive?
Do you need Public Liabilities Insurance? If you do, is £2million enough or would you need £5million?
What about Professional Indemnity Insurance?
How do you want to pay for your cover? Annually or monthly?
Do you want ‘new for old’ cover or will you accept a ‘wear and tear’ reduction to get the cost down?
Have you got a figure including bags, cases and accessories for the kit you want covered?

That’s a long list of separate questions and each of them will have a bearing on which underwriter a broker should steer you towards and by answering each of them honestly you will get cover that suits you. Sometimes there won’t be a perfect policy and you will have to accept a compromise but you need to remember that all underwriters are in business to maximise their income and minimise the number of claims that they have to pay out on. If you give false information on your application they will do their level best to avoid paying some or all of your claim. We have all heard scary stories about people who have had claims dismissed over seemingly innocuous details and when our gear gets damaged or stolen the last thing that we need is to find out that we weren’t covered for that eventuality.
There are plenty of things that you can do to help get the cost down and/or your cover up and you can can go through the list above and see what you can do to help. Improving home security (some Police forces offer free checks) is an obvious one as is improving the security of your vehicle. Some underwriters offer discounts if you have recognised security cages or locking compartments permanently fitted in your car whilst others give better deals/improved cover for saloon cars with separate lockable boots. Further down the list, if you don’t insure your software (easy if everything is recorded and/or under subscription) you can save money – not much, but it all adds up.
What else can you do to help? The most obvious is to keep a full and up to date list of your gear complete with serial numbers. A simple spreadsheet stored on a cloud somewhere is an easy win but registering your gear with either Canon or Nikon Professional Services is also a good idea. Fairly new to the market is Lenstag – which in their own words was “designed to get your gear on record with the least amount of effort, the strongest ownership claim and as quickly as possible.” It is a simple concept with a central registry of owners, gear and serial numbers which can be managed via their website or their smart phone apps.

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Mentoring young photographers

It goes without saying that the business is now unrecognisable from the one that I entered in the early 1990s. Then, the structure was relatively linear and there was a clear defining path to an editorial career. Now, every photographer has to be a brand and use social media to shout their wares and tout their abilities. It isn’t even clear what editorial or documentary photography actually is anymore.

I’ve talked before about a ‘bleed’ from the art world and as previous postings on this site seem to indicate, a good deal of photographic education now wraps itself in talk of ‘practice’ and pseudo academic language.

As an editorial photographer and one that works in a documentary tradition, I’m actually delighted that new ways of seeing are being utilised but I’ve always tried to make work that is simple and engaging. I firmly believe that if you’re photographing people in (often) difficult situations you have a duty to be clear and straightforward and that your work should be similar. Your work should be about the subject and not about you.

It’s hardly surprising then that there’s a good deal of confusion about how to progress within the business – or more crucially how to make pictures that won’t fade with current fashions but have a longevity that speaks to an audience with simplicity and crucially, I think, a beauty.

In the past, when I was stuck visually or with an issue of editing, I could ask older, wiser members of my agency for help and advice. That old agency structure has now by and large fallen (in some ways a positive step) and it often leaves people working in a vacuum.

Photography – documentary photography, photojournalism – whatever you call it, is analogous to its written cousin. It is fundamentally a craft that has elements that are worth learning. I’ve always thought that if you are trying to communicate with an audience by showing them the world (perhaps with a view to changing/challenging their opinions) your work must be clear and simple. That isn’t to say dull, but it must be engaging and understandable. There are so many images now and so many photographers producing them. If everyone’s a photographer then you have to make sure that even if your Tweeted voice isn’t the loudest, the work that you produce is the absolute best it can be.

Over the last decade I’ve had dozens and dozens of young (and some not so young) photographers writing to me to ask if they can assist me or just get feedback on their work. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but if someone sends me a half decent email I‘ve always responded and if I’m in the UK, often arranged to meet.

Phil Clarke-Hill emailed me several years ago to ask my honest opinion of his images. We met up several times and it was clear that although he had talent and a strong desire to shoot, he wasn’t as focussed as he could be and his way of shooting was too loose. Some of his frames had a picture in them desperately trying to get out.

I had him shoot some exercises, I lent him an old lens. I set him a project to work on. I made him change where he stood. I made him look up some photographers that I really admired and crucially explained why I thought their images worked and still work. Moreover, I made him aware of authors that wrote beautiful reportage. I’m convinced that there is a symbiosis within all journalism and in the best practitioners there is an erudition, a refinement, a clear, simple way of communicating a story to an audience that transcends the medium.

Phil listened and really engaged. He started to make pictures that were clearer and that said what he wanted them to say – images that could be read visually. Two years later, he’s in a very different place. He’s shooting assignments for good magazines and specialising in South America – especially Brazil. He regularly emails and sends me stuff and asks advice about the things that don’t often get discussed – travel, visas, logistics, pitching – essentially, being a professional. He’s just about to make a book and has an exhibition soon. It’s surprised me how much I’ve enjoyed the process myself – seeing someone benefit from my experiences and (many) mistakes.

Someone else that I’ve worked with over the last couple of years is the young Bangladeshi photographer Farzana Hossen. I taught a workshop in Chittagong four years ago for the Pathshala Institute for a group of local and visiting Norwegian young photojournalists.

Farzana, it was clear, was an exceptional photographer with an inherent and classical visual sense and she was full of questions – not about ‘how’ but ‘why’. The series that she was working on, about her own family, was both mature and subtle. Her next work about violence against women in Cairo was more straightforward visually but much more complicated to shoot. We spoke over email and ‘phone about the logistics and dangers of the work (during the 2013 demonstrations) and I did my best to advise on fixers and contacts for her work. Later that year when she came to London I helped edit her project on acid attack survivors that won her the Ian Parry Award.

Currently, I’m working with a photographer in New Delhi (where I’m still partly based) and another in the UK. What’s really interesting for me, is that I feel the process has invigorated my own work. I have a new book out next year and I can honestly say that some of that work was influenced as much by working with (and learning from) several younger photographers. It may be clichéd but it’s true that it’s been enormously gratifying to be able to help someone and pass on what (limited) knowledge I have.

My mentoring isn’t intended to be a competitor to a University course – many of which I’ve guest lectured at – I see it as guidance for people who are actually trying to work in an industry that is both confusing and constantly moving.

Stuart Freedman is a Freelance Photojournalist and Mentor who points out that his degree is in Politics rather than photography. His website is https://www.stuartfreedman.com/mentoring/

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Commentating on the race to the bottom

Yet again The BPPA finds itself responding to a piece by Professor Roy Greenslade on The Guardian’s website. Yet again Professor Greenslade adds his influential voice to the drastically mistaken notion that anyone can take a picture good enough for a newspaper these days. Seriously? Have you looked at some of the utter rubbish that gets used in some of our newspapers? To assert that anyone with a camera can take a picture isn’t only an insult to the skilled photographers who make silk purses out of sows ears on a daily basis it also invites the bean-counters who are behind the decisions to axe photographers jobs to question the need for written journalists too.
I can just imagine the conversation between the accountants and the owners with an editor sitting there listening to the conversation;

Owner: We need to save some more money. Sales are still in decline and sacking the photographers hasn’t saved us enough.

Accountant: Well, members of the public are providing all of our visual content so maybe we can get them to supply the words too.

Editor: But…

Owner: Brilliant idea. Let’s start with all of the senior reporters who really know what they are doing. Editor – we need you to sell this to the staff.

Editor: But…

Owner: They’re all scared for their jobs anyway. Accountant – you are a genius and you will be rewarded for your work with a big pay rise.

Editor: But…

Accountant: Thanks Owner, maybe we should discuss a few other money-saving ideas that I have over a drink or two. Do we NEED editors?

How long will it be before expensive columnists get their marching orders in favour of a few blokes with word processing software who “can write a bit”? Who will those people actually be? Will they be honest and concerned citizens or will they be people with an agenda and an axe to grind?
We are already at the stage where a large percentage of the ‘supplied’ images being printed in some papers are not properly checked for honesty, accuracy or ownership (not to mention quality). Beyond that, nobody seems to care whether members of the public are putting their own or other people’s lives in danger to get the pictures that they are giving away for free. Even Professor Greenslade has to agree that journalism stands or falls on its honesty and accuracy even if he has already thrown the towel in on quality.
One of the numerous responses to his Media Guardian article points out that very few people remember the words after the event compared to the number who remember the images. You might think that newspaper owners would forget this at their peril – unfortunately they have forgotten and their newspapers are in peril. Another response points out that newspaper decline could well be a chicken and egg discussion. Which did come first – the fall in sales or the loss of photographers?
This is rapidly becoming a race to the bottom and it really doesn’t help the case for quality newspapers and quality journalism when one of the highest profile commentators on the industry has given up on any notion of defending the simple idea that quality products have longevity and cheap ones don’t. We’d wonder if The Guardian’s own Picture Desk team would agree with The Professor’s odd logic or if its own sub-editors would approve of his fact checking.
Losing reporters would be the largest and most recent nail in the coffin of local and regional journalism. National newspapers, radio and television get a lot of their best people from the superb training ground that is (or maybe was) local journalism.
If I were contemplating training as a journalist right now I think that I’d have second thoughts about it. If the learned Professor is right maybe those currently on his course should consider switching to accountancy before it’s too late.

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The Copyright Fight

As the song goes ‘There may be trouble ahead’…except this time there is no ‘maybe’ about it. For those that recall the less-than-wonderful “Clause 43” of Labour’s “Digital Economy Bill” which proposed to legalise the use of Orphan Works and Extended Collective Licensing – well, despite its defeat it’s back and this time it’s personal.
Hidden away in a completely unrelated Bill – namely the ERRB (the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill) – are pretty much the same clauses that got thrown out before. The IPO (Intellectual Property Office) – a bunch of Patent-based Civil Servants in the fashion of Sir Humphrey from “Yes Minister” – were so miffed at their attempt to undermine photographer’s copyright being defeated that they’ve snuck their insidious plans back into Parliament hidden in a bill that has absolutely nothing to do with copyright.
There are many reasons why every photographer should be up in arms about this and we’ll list them below summarized by people who know far more about this than myself. The really, really important thing is that we still have the opportunity to send Sir Humphrey back to his Gentleman’s club in Pall Mall with a flea in his ear. They think it’s all over but it bloody well isn’t.
We still have time to effect change to the bill and even get the clauses thrown out (they shouldn’t be there anyway) but we have to act fast. We have to lobby the Lords and then we need to start a firestorm on our MP’s.
Interestingly we have some strange bedfellows as allies on this one including The Associated Press, Getty Images, Reuters, British Pathe, The Press Association, and the Federation of Commercial and Audiovisual Libraries, who have formed the International Media & Archive Consortium. They are threatening a judicial review should the bill become law, but it would be in everyone’s interest if it didn’t get that far.
This affects everyone who works in this country with a camera in their hands.
You all have to take the time to read what it means for you. Even if you just read the summary we’ve provided you’ll garner enough information to include in a letter to your MP or one of the Lords listed.
But it really is in our/your hands to do something for the good of all photographers working in the United Kingdom whether they know it or not.
Eddie Mulholland.
The proposals hidden in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill would do very serious damage to the livelihoods of UK photographers if adopted. We believe that the clauses should be removed rather than amended because:

They should be subject to full parliamentary debate, not buried in someone else’s bill and secondary legislation.
They rob photographers of their rights.
They would not create economic growth, they would damage it.
They break international law.
They would be subject to judicial review even as they are passing through the Commons.
They allow no room for the new “Copyright Hub” concept which, given time to get working, would deal with most of the problems.
They are no substitute for a dedicated and properly considered Copyright Bill – this is nothing more than a rights-damaging fudge proposed by the Intellectual Property Office.

At some point the IPO should learn to realize that the intellectual property that they are supposed to look after is not only that of big business, inventors but that of hundreds of thousands of small businesses and sole traders whose combined worth to the UK’s economy is substantial.
See a fuller explanation on The BPPA’s website
Follow Stop 43 – the campaigning group who did most to stop the orphan works clauses in the Digital Economy Act

The Seating Plan

On Tuesday of this week I was at The Leveson Inquiry. Not outside behind the barriers. Inside the building inside the courtroom, suited and booted and even wearing a tie. More astonishingly, so was The BPPA Chairman Jeff Moore (although he refused to shave). The most important BPPA person was Neil Turner, fellow Vice-Chairman and the man in the spotlight. The man who was going into battle with some of the finest minds in the British legal system.
Neil had prepared the initial eighteen page submission, so we knew that inside out, but as we spent most of the day before preparing we had no idea what route the questioning might take. Would they demand to know what our definition of ‘private and public’ was? Would they hold up photographs of photographers in bun-fights and demand their names? Would they demand the names of dodgy picture desks and editors?
The night before we had dinner together, whilst going over and over what might happen. Afterwards, Jeff said that it felt like The Last Supper. To put it bluntly we were bordering on terrified, well I was and Jeff admitted to being even worse. There was some mention of his ‘flapping posterior’…..
On Tuesday morning, we met beforehand and had a last minute chat and a hearty condemned man’s last meal. I went for the bacon sandwich. We headed off to Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ) in London, where we were met by a ‘baying pen full of paparazzi’. Oh no hang on a minute, that’s what a television journalist would say. What really happened, was that some of our colleagues greeted us with a wave and got us to pose for photographs. One of the pictures even made it onto the Metro website! It was a little strange being on the ‘wrong’ side of the press pen, but it didn’t last long.
Incidently, the press pen itself was another of our little victories. The pen had been organised at the eleventh hour prior to the start of The Leveson Inquiry proceedings, by myself with Getty Images photographer Pete Macdiarmid and the help of High Court regular Nick Razzell. The Leveson Inquiry kicked off on Monday 21st November 2011 with Hugh Grant and the parents of Milly Dowler. There was no press pen organised in the High Court precinct for photographers. It was going to be chaos. Imagine the footage our television colleagues would have lapped up of the witnesses fighting their way through the throng of fifty or more photographers and cameramen! It would have been very very ugly and luckily a friendly head of security agreed with us enough that an organised pen would indeed be a much better idea. If you don’t ask you don’t get. Disaster averted on the evening of Friday 18th November 2011.
That first week we (press photographers….) were torn to shreds by witness after witness and television loved it. We were getting a kicking and we decided we had to fight back. That’s when we decided it was time that The Leveson Inquiry listened to our side of the story. Things were going to change for us whether we liked it or not, so we had to be listened to. We had to have a seat at the table when the changes were going to be made in the future.
Fast forward a couple of months later and there we were being shown around the Court. We were told we were third up to give evidence, so sat in from the start. It was running over and it was hot, so we were having difficulty staying awake, but it did give us the chance to acclimatise. We never made it on in the morning session, but we were told we’d be first on the stand for the afternoon session. It was starting to get tense again. When we went in, the Court rose and Neil went to the stand to take the Oath. This was it.
Neil was questioned on our submission by Carine Patry Hoskins, Counsel to The Leveson Inquiry. Contrary to what we expected, she explained before we went in what she would be asking us about and pretty much stuck to the script.
It was tremendously difficult to stop myself from sticking my hand up and chipping in. I wonder what my fate would’ve been had I done so….maybe a night in the cells!? We followed every word, muttering between ourselves about answers and generally cheering Neil on under our breath. I sat through most of it with my head down, concentrating. It was going well, but at any moment the Counsel could turn on us.
There were a few points that were at the forefront of my mind. Points that could cause us trouble. I was worried we’d be accused of having members that were involved in some of the worst examples that some of the previous witnesses had mentioned. My thought was, why would we have asked to come here if we thought our members were involved? I was worried they’d ask us what we thought of Paul Dacre the Daily Mail’s Editor-In-Chief’s ideas about changing the Press Card system. We hadn’t had the chance to really tackle this because we’d been in ‘prep’ meetings the day before when he was actually giving evidence. We are totally behind the United Kingdom Press Card Authority, but we had to make sure we didn’t alienate a man who has a lot of clout in our industry. We had to make sure we didn’t appear to think his ideas were rubbish, even if we did. The UKPCA already does most of what he was asking a Press Card authority to do. We had to make sure we were not led down the road of slagging him off. We were there to make friends and get a seat at the table, not make enemies. I was worried how they would react to our criticism about television getting access to events like The Leveson Inquiry whilst press photographers are left literally out in the cold. This was raised, but I think they felt it was a fair point. They certainly failed to pursue the negative side of the suggestion.
My greatest fear was the comment in our submission about “people involved in news stories, not having the sense to stop and talk for two minutes”. To be honest, I’d forgotten about this comment until it came up. I thought that it really made us sound like we think people should do what we want, or face the consequences. Neil played a blinder. He said, it was all about changing the public’s attitude to it. Brilliant and true. Why shouldn’t someone stop and talk, why should they run away!? All we want is a photograph, not to hijack their soul.
Lord Leveson thanked us at the beginning of the session for attending The Leveson Inquiry to give evidence and at the end of the session he commented, (paraphrasing….) “the problem is not with professional photographers and journalists, but professional photographers and journalists are needed for the solution”.
After all our hard work lobbying to attend, we’d finally had our seat at the top table.

Carine Patry Hoskins Eddie Mulholland Fleet Street Hugh Grant Jeff Moore Lord Leveson Milly Dowler Neil Turner Nick Razzell Paparazzi Paul Dacre Peter Macdiamid Photographers Press Card Press Photography Privacy Royal Courts Of Justice The BPPA The Leveson Inquiry UKPCA

The BPPA and The Leveson Inquiry in 34 minutes.

Three submissions, a lot of reading and an awful lot of discussion came down to a 34 minute appearance at The Leveson Inquiry today (Tuesday 7^th February) afternoon. Was it worth it? Right here, right now the answer has to be a truly resounding ‘YES’. Our case has been outlined before; we wanted to impress on the world that there can be a huge difference between a professional press photographer and a bloke with a posh camera.

We wanted to make Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry aware that we are willing and able to be to be part of the process of finding solutions to the issues highlighted in the early evidence at the hearings. Most of all we wanted to highlight the four-pronged plan that we have developed to help ensure that photographs published in the UK news media have been checked thoroughly so that they comply with every law and ethical code that applies to that media in that situation.
Sitting there in the same chair that Paul Dacre, Editor in chief of the Daily Mail had occupied for the best part of four hours yesterday and that the familiar cast list of celebrities had sat in right back at the start of the formal hearings in November was more than a little nerve-wracking. Not so much on a personal level – but representing hundreds of honest, hard working and highly professional colleagues. If that wasn’t bad enough, the editors of The Times and The Sun were up after us!
We really cannot talk about today in terms of winning and losing but it seems that we have made our point and we know that Lord Justice Leveson himself said that

“Mr Turner, thank you very much indeed. Responsible photographers, like responsible journalists, are not part of the problem and they do need to be part of the solution. Thank you very much.”

If, after today, the industry takes us more seriously and if, after today, we are allowed a voice on issues that directly affect the lives, careers and reputations of professional press photographers then maybe, just maybe we can think in terms of a (small) victory.
Of course the 34 minute white knuckle ride was made a lot easier by the quality of our argument and the sentiments in our submissions.
The BPPA’s Board worked hard on this and there are a lot of people to say ‘thank you’ to. So to everyone who contributed, everyone who tweeted and re-tweeted about our submissions and liked our Facebook page. Thank you. It turns out that it was a pleasure to be your representative!
Links to the content of our appearance: TRANSCRIPT VIDEO

Evidence Fleet Street Leveson Paparazzi Photographers Photography Press press photographers Press Photography Privacy The BPPA The Leveson Inquiry