A career in photography - 2

Photograph by Ron Burton


Here is the photograph by Ron Burton that I spoke about yesterday. This is the picture that inspired me to become a professional photographer over 40 years ago. It triggered my determination that some day I would work for a national daily newspaper. It had a tremendous effect on me - initially, I suppose because of my boyhood interest in aeroplanes, but it was much deeper than that. Before this picture I never thought that there was actually a real person behind the camera when pictures appeared in newspapers - here was a picture actually showing the face of the photographer right in the centre of the action - that's where I wanted to be, in the middle of the action.


It took Ron Burton six weeks to finalise the details and gain permission to fly with the Red Arrows. A Nikon F camera with a 21mm lens was fixed by the RAF chief engineer to the ejector seat in front of the photographer. The shutter was triggered by remote control. The Red Arrows normally fly in stepped-down formation so that each pilot has a clearer view of the aircraft next to him, but Ron persuaded them to fly stepped-up for this picture so that he could photograph them all more easily... quite a dangerous formation manoeuvre.


I seem to remember that Ron was working for the new Sun newspaper - when it was a quality newspaper! This picture was part of Ron's portfolio in 1965 when he won the British Press Photographer of the Year Award.


I met up with Ron some years later at another Press Photographer Awards ceremony in London - I was then working as a staffman on The Daily Express and had won the News Section with a picture of an armed police raid. Ron and I became friends. He was a true professional in every sense of the word.

A career in photography - 1

After some considerable prodding, I promised that from time to time I would write about how I got started in photography, and some of the stories behind my career. So here goes, this is the first one...

I was fourteen years old when I decided I wanted to be a press photographer. I’d seen a photograph on the back page of Dad’s newspaper. They’d call it a ‘light bulb moment’ these days, but then, way back in the early 60s, something much more powerful than your average 40 watt bulb was ignited inside me. I knew at that moment what I wanted to do with my life.

The picture showed the photographer in the cockpit of one of the RAF Red Arrows jets. The camera, with a wide-angle lens, was in the front of the cockpit looking back and it showed not only the man who took the shot, but the tight formation of aircraft behind. It dawned on me that that man was not in the Air Force, yet there he was flying with the Red Arrows. That was the life of a press photographer, and that was what I wanted to do. Years later when I was a staff photographer on The Daily Express in Fleet Street, I met that photographer. His name was Ron Burton, and he became a friend. He was enormously pleased to hear that his picture had inspired a 14 year old kid to set off on a career in photography.

That very evening I announced my intentions to Mum and Dad.

“I want to be a press photographer. I don’t want an office job, and I really don’t want to work in a dirty old factory like Dad. I’d like to get out and about, and some of those London photographers get sent all over the world taking photos. Just you look at the pictures in Mirror. That’s what I want to do.”

Mum looked doubtful and I half expected a dressing down for saying what I had about Dad’s job at the diesel engine factory – it put the food on the family table after all. But Dad himself chipped in here. He paused from filling his pipe with the richly-scented mixture of St. Bruno and thick twist that bulged in his well-worn leather tobacco pouch and looked up.

“Now that’s what I call a proper ambition – see the world at someone else’s expense, and I don’t mean in the bloody army, either, square bashin’ and peelin’ spuds. Well paid, too, I’ll bet. You might even be famous and get your name in the paper one day. You give it a try son, I’ll write the letter for you if you like.”

That was it. Done and dusted - to Dad it was now all perfectly clear cut. With his total confidence in the talents of his only son it would be inconceivable that I would be turned down for a job as chief photographer on a top London daily newspaper. Not, that is, once he had written a letter asking the editor to give me a job. But then, Dad was also very sure of his own letter writing talents.

According to Dad’s bullet-pointed letter, those newspaper editors would be missing a golden opportunity, in fact they may even be negligent in their duty to their readers, if they did not immediately offer me a job.

When the letter was finished it was decided something was needed to illustrate my ability as a photographer. We hit upon the idea of enclosing with each letter a contact print of some of the snaps I’d taken with my new camera, an Ilford Sporty. The photos showed next door’s ginger cat, sat on the coping stones of the wall that separated the back yards of our houses. The cat had feathers stuck to his whiskers and a very satisfied expression on his face. At its feet, balanced across the apex of the soot-blackened wall, was the bedraggled corpse of a freshly-killed house sparrow. The Daily Mirror in particular was always keen on animal stories, so surely the editor would see from the evidence of this picture that I was an animal photographer of some distinction. These two-and-a-quarter inch square, black and white snaps of next door’s cat made up my entire ‘portfolio’.

I copied out the letters in my own hand, popped a contact print into each envelope and rushed down to the post office in the centre of town. Strangely, every editor wrote back within a week explaining that there were no photographer’s jobs available just then, but one of them did suggest helpfully that if the sparrow had been a little more chirpy he might even have considered using the picture in his paper. He also said it would be a good plan to get some more ‘hands-on’ experience with a camera before applying for a job in Fleet Street; perhaps on a local newspaper as an apprentice.

So Dad got busy again with his pen, paper and dictionary. He composed another letter to be sent to every weekly newspaper in a twenty mile radius of home. The replies came in dribs and drabs over the next few weeks, but each brought the same depressing news – there was still no prospect of a job when I left school in a few months time.

Right,” said Dad, who was beginning to take this as a personal slight on his letter-writing abilities, “Perhaps it’s more of a case of ‘not what you know, but WHO you know’. There are plenty of jobs like that, so maybe we should try and think of someone who might be able to help. We need what’s called a ‘contact’”.

He was absolutely right of course. I needed an introduction, a personal contact who could smooth the way a little; open a door just enough to get my foot in. With a solitary ‘O’ Level in art and a profound loathing of school, it was obvious that I had no future as an academic. Photography seemed to be the only job that would offer me the life I dreamed about. It was a job that had everything; travel, excitement, fame, the lot, and, as far as I could understand, you didn’t need to pass any exams to get to the top. My mind was made up, my heart was set on it; I simply had to become a press photographer when I left school after my fifteenth birthday. But after so many disappointing replies to all those letters, hopes were definitely beginning to flag. No one in the family knew anyone even remotely connected with journalism, photography or newspapers, perhaps it was hopeless after all.

Next - sometime soon - how I made my first 'contact'

A Practical Guide to Press Photography - 1

Over recent days I’ve posted some short passages from my book published way back in 1986 by Oxford Illustrated Press, ‘A practical Guide to Press Photography’. This book became a standard work in universities and colleges, and I heard of many college tutors who would read passages straight from it as part of there lectures. Anyway, I’m persuaded that much of the information in the book is just as relevant today as it was 22 years ago. As I’ve no intentions of re-publishing the book, I’ll be posting short passages from it from time to time – updating the information as I go. There are many tips that are just as useful to the hobbyist photographer as they are to the professional or aspiring photojournalist….

You can call a photojournalist a literate press photographer if you like, but I’ve always assumed that the two titles describe one and the same person. That is – someone who makes his or her living by taking photographs for publication in a newspaper or magazine. In the true sense of the word, I suppose a photojournalist should be capable of seeing the job through from start to finish: conceiving an idea, organising the assignment, taking the photographs, writing the story to go with them, and presenting the finished results as a useable package to an editor. Whereas a press photographer is more likely to be sent on a specific assignment determined by the editor and be responsible only for getting the pictures. A reporter will take care of the words.

The idea of reporting events in pictures is far from new . It goes back to the Stone-Age and beyond when primitive man first daubed hunting scenes on the walls of his cave. It happens that things are a little more sophisticated today. Mind you, looking around at present social trends, I sometimes wonder. However, the desire to convey and receive information in visual form is still just as strong. Pictorial reportage can transcend obstacles of language, race and culture to become a universal language of communication. However, it would be naïve to run away with the idea that all newspaper photographers are blessed with the missionary aim to change the world with the impact of their pictures. To most it is just a job like any other, and often a tedious job at that. Only on infrequent occasions will the average press photographer be well-placed to put across any sound of profound message in pictures; major stories and the type of on-the-spot news events that produce award winning pictures just don’t happen in front of every photographer every working day.

For the most part, the photographer will be involved in the manufacture of entertaining pictures from run-of-the-mill, and often re-hashed stories to feed the conveyor belt demand of a newspaper, be it local, regional or national.

I started work straight from school at the age of fifteen as a tea brewer and printer of the photo-sales on a local weekly newspaper. Having progressed through an apprenticeship, agencies, evening newspapers and freelancing to a staff position with the Daily Express, and then to have returned to freelancing again, my experience is fairly wide. However, no single photographer could hope to acquire a complete knowledge of every branch of photojournalism… the subject is just too diverse and life just too short. My aim with those posts is to pass on some of the proven techniques and short-cuts and to increase the understanding of press photography – not only to aspiring photographers – but to editors of all publications using the services of photographers.

I hope you enjoy the posts and look forward to your feedback and comments.

Learning to be a press photographer 3

On my sixteenth birthday I bought an old Vespa motor scooter and really learned what it meant to be ‘out on the road’. I fell off that thing at least once a day. As this usually smashed all the glass plates which I carried in a battered leather camera box strapped to the back of the scooter, the chief photographer ordered a special batch of ‘unbreakable’ 5 x 4inch celluloid film from Kodak. This didn’t stop me falling off the scooter, but it did mean that I no longer had to spend half the morning developing the pieces of broken glass plate negatives from my ‘night jobs’, and the rest of the day fitting them together in a sort of panchromatic jigsaw… many a Rose Queen’s ‘royal’ portrait has been scarred by the marks of sticky-tape across her pretty face.

Unlike the young photographers who enter the newspaper world today, for me there was never enough time to attend college to learn more about the theory of my chosen profession. I was kept far too busy taking photographs and getting them in the paper. But, I the little time I had to spare, I devoured photography books and studied the work of top Fleet Street and magazine photographers.

It was difficult within the constraints of an old-fashioned local weekly newspaper to indulge some of the new and wonderful ideas I had learned from my books and magazines, and many of the pictures I produced were received with something less than enthusiasm.

One occasion, the chief photographer took me on one side for a quiet word: looking at my latest creation and shaking his head solemnly, he said: “Bit too arty, lad. Too arty. It’s faces what sells local papers, faces – and I don’t mean like t’ bloody Mona Lisa.”

Learning how to be a press photographer

Printing the photo-sales for that local newspaper was a trial of strength and endurance for a fifteen year old. I trial for which I was ill-matched. But I would put extra sugar in my tea and, on my day of, I would hump around a heavy Dawes 5 x 4inch glass plate camera and fantasize that I was a fully fledged press photographer. My mother encouraged this self-delusion when she bought me a trilby hat (come on, it was the 1960s), but I could never quite muster the courage to stick a press card in the hat band. Besides, I was too young to join the union.

My travels started soon after I changed jobs and joined the town’s rival newspaper as an apprentice photographer: I was given the address of a local church hall and ordered to catch a number 17 bus to go and photograph a dress rehearsal for a church pantomime. I quickly became an authority on the town’s bus routes and looked so young that I was still able to use my school bus pass, travel for nothing and claim the fares on my expenses. It didn’t take long for the bus conductors to get suspicious though, and pretty soon the word went round to kick me off on sight – camera bag and all.

In those days we worked every evening on ‘night jobs’ – photographing functions and events from racing pigeon club presentations to up-market dos in the Mayor’s parlour at the town hall.

Most evening we would have maybe ten ‘assignments’ to cover and none of the club secretaries, society presidents or event organisers who had invited the newspaper to their functions seemed to want the photographer to attend before 10pm. Some of my colleagues would be kept hanging around all night by a local ‘big wig’ who demanded that they ‘run along and come back at ten o’clock’. I would have none of this and, by employing tactics of diplomacy, cunning and downright cheek, I would have a group of people organised and a photograph taken before anyone had time to object.

My workmates soon cottoned on to this ability of mine and, in return for driving me around in the firm’s mini-van, I would take on their jobs as well as my own and we would still be finished before ten. It was not uncommon for them to drop me at the door of the town hall and I would out again with the job done before they had turned the van round.

The technique was simple and has stood me in good stead ever since. Whenever possible. cut out the middle man who is likely to have an inflated idea of his own importance or be frightened of his job. Either go straight to the top or ignore the hierarchy altogether – just get the picture that matters.