by Tim Gander

The News Itch

Sometimes I hanker after the good old days when I was rushing about covering news events. Of course most of it was pretty mundane stuff (community group cheque presentations, councillors on self-promoting visits to local Scout clubs and so on), but covering Magistrates or Crown Court, while often time-consuming was an interesting challenge. Or a stakeout waiting for some local scallywag to emerge from their last known address, house fires, road traffic accidents… these were not enjoyable, but you felt you were doing a useful job bringing the news to your readers.

Yes, I miss the rush of covering hard news and sometimes I ponder how difficult it would be to start covering local news without the backup of a recognised publication. The problem is, I often spot newsworthy things around my home town of Frome, but there isn’t a local newspaper that would pay for the photos and I’m not prepared to give them away for free to a commercial entity. Instead I occasionally post pictures on my photography Facebook page, and it’s interesting to see how many hits these posts get. It often results in a little spike in visits to the page, which makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be doing more.

Police cordon off an area outside The Cornerhouse pub in Frome, Somerset, after a fight.

It’s not art, but local incidents get little coverage in the papers

Naturally it always comes back to questions of whether I can afford to peel off from whatever task I’m on to go and take pictures of an incident just to share them on my Facebook page, as well as the question of whether, as an individual without the remit of a picture editor, I can really justify approaching police and fire officers to get the necessary details for the caption and gain the access required to get pictures which fully tell the story.

At least when I was a card-carrying press man I had something which said “within the constraints of the law and my professional codes of conduct, I have a right to be here taking photos.” I find it harder to do now that I’m just another bloke with a camera.

With the local publications increasingly ignoring the difficult-to-get or the stories breaking out of hours, I suspect I’ll find myself taking more pictures of the things which happen around my town. I’ll rely on experience and training to know what I can cover and how far I can push my access, because lord knows I have no interest in getting arrested or punched, but if you want to see how I get on and keep up with what I do, you can always Like my Facebook page or keep an eye on this blog.

If you’re like-minded and local, why not get in touch? It might come to nothing, but you never know, we might be the start of a new publishing empire!

in My News / Personal Work 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Where JP fail, others choose to follow

I had promised myself I wouldn’t re-visit the subject of Johnson Press or anything else quite as depressing for a while. The reaction to that article was incredible, receiving over 360 hits in two days which, for a modest blog such as mine is quite a big deal.

Indeed I had every intention of keeping things upbeat for a while, but then I got one more reaction to the article which I just couldn’t ignore; an email from someone whose situation perfectly illustrates the insanity which has overtaken newspaper publishing in this country. The victim of another publisher taking a short-term view and discarding both staff and reader loyalty in the hope of bigger margins.

There’s really nothing I can add to what this photojournalist says, so I’ll let their email speak for itself. Reproduced with permission…

Great to read your blog about Johnston Press.

Days after their announcement the publisher that I work for as a retained photo journalist also announced that it was going down the free content route and will no longer require my services!

The new model is to copy and paste press releases, and the associated pictures, thus removing my position.

I gather that everything is now geared towards ad revenue and pleasing PR people and press officers in the hope that they will advertise with said publishing group. As a result, all critical reporting has been banned in case it upsets said PR departments and everything will now be portrayed as sunny, regardless of the reality.

On the odd occasion a picture is needed from an event the ad man or webmaster will go along with their tablet, iphone etc and take a picture that is “good enough”. The parting shot was “with digital photography nowadays, we don’t need a retained photo journalist”

An editorial policy where PR people dictate content, as that’s what will happen, is an odd policy to adopt for a news publication. But hey, got to keep those PR people happy!

I was retained for 10 years and they just cut me adrift as if I never mattered. Over that decade the publisher would constantly apologise for not being able to pay me more (1k a month), but when they abolished my position this figure suddenly became a “considerable amount” . Loyalty, what ever happened to it?

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 by Tim Gander

Back to my roots

With my roots firmly set in newspaper photography, it’s always a pleasure to get a commission to shoot pictures for a client that require that newspaper style. It’s not the same as shooting for a corporate website or brochure which generally requires a bit less story telling and tends to be more polished. For a newspaper style you can work faster and produce a wider range of image options. It’s ok to pull in props from what’s around you if it helps, and you’re not looking for a totally slick look, which can leave a photo looking less genuine when it’s for a news context.

A good recent example is a job I shot for Positive Outcomes, a national training company, who offer a range of training and apprenticeship services to companies and organisations and training to help a whole range of people looking to improve their work skills.

In this example two people, Holly Drew and Alistair Johnstone, completed their on-the-job training while volunteering at the St Peter’s Hospice charity shop in Westbury on Trym, Bristol and I was asked to produce a set of images suitable for local press and web use to help tell their story.

After about an hour on site I had a good selection of images, both upright and landscape orientations to suit picture desk requirements. I thought perhaps you’d like to see a selection of the results.

Showing Holly and Alistair interacting as they work adds an extra layer to the picture story

Offering a vertical alternative reduces the risk of a photo being ditched just because it doesn’t fit the page design

Showing Holly and Alistair at work in the stock room is another opportunity to show them at work

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 by Tim Gander

Keeping On The Ball (shortlisted for feeble pun headline of the week)

As I may have mentioned previously, I tend not to get work directly from newspapers these days. The pictures I take are usually commissioned by corporate clients, but my roots are in newspapers, so it wasn’t without a nostalgic twinge of pleasure that I got a call to take some pictures for The Sun for a feature piece on Frome Town Football Club’s girls’ team training.

Typical of a press job it happened in terrible conditions; cold, dark, and the rain was coming down sideways. The girls train at the Frome Leisure Centre all-weather pitches, which are floodlit and I have to say that although the lighting isn’t perfect, it was better than some I’ve experienced.

In addition to the adverse weather, I feared my Canon 5D MKII wouldn’t be up to the task of sport action, and it’s true to say that since I no longer own a 1D-series body it’s not so easy to catch action with the 5D’s 3.5 frames per second, but that’s where timing and a bit of extra thought comes in.

Under the conditions, I couldn’t just “spray and pray”. I had to find the angle, see where the pools of uneven light were at their brightest, and work hard to keep focus and capture the peak of the action.

In addition, I don’t think I’ve shot football of any description in over a decade, which added an extra little frisson to the evening’s assignment. That and the fact this was for The Sun, not a local paper that would be grateful for anything recognisable as football.

I shot the standard team shots and portraits of Julie Peet, the poor, suffering coach who had to put up with the rain, the cold and the fact that these girls are… let’s just say full of spirit. It was like watching a cat-herd at work.

I’ve posted some of the results here, including the “alternative” team shot which I couldn’t resist as a more fun alternative to the standard team photo.

In the end, the job was a pleasure. These girls have incredible spirit and humour to do what they do in a sport dominated by boys. They deserve to do well, and who knows? Maybe I have pictures of some future stars!

 

Apologies for not posting anything last week. Work has been crazy and continues to be so. I do my best 🙂

girls playing football

These girls clearly enjoy football

in Case Studies 9 comments
 by Tim Gander

Case Study: The Photo Call

Rebecca Adlington

This photo call test shot of Rebecca Adlington was more interesting than the shot the PR lined up for us.

Since the majority of my work now involves working directly with companies on their corporate photography, I don’t get to do so many photo calls as I once did. Besides which, photo calls aren’t so popular as they once were.

Back when I was on staff at The Portsmouth News, and subsequently when I freelanced for national newspapers and agencies, photo calls were generally used by police forces for missing persons appeals or during a crime investigation. It was one way to control how much information got out to the press. Other photo calls would be for a new theatre production, a gallery opening, book signing or product launch. Anything really where a few different publications and maybe TV and radio would be invited along to help publicise something.

Though they are less common for PR uses, the police still use photo calls. For PR they can be a bit tricky to manage effectively, and if managed too effectively everyone ends up with the same stagey photo. Often a PR will do better to get some decent shots taken by a single photographer and send those out with the press release than have a room full of clever-clogs press photographers managing to make something amusing out of the wording or shapes on the wall behind the main speaker’s head. I’d still argue that press coverage is press coverage, and if the pictures are too sterile they’ll get no news space at all. You takes your pick…

Perhaps the other reason photo calls are out of favour is that newspapers have let so many staff photographers go, and cut freelance budgets so far, that they simply don’t have the resources to send someone along to an event which might take them out of circulation for over an hour while they’re wooed by PRs, held up by shifting timetables and badly planned itineraries and then have to be dragged away from the canapes and free drinks to go to the next cheque presentation.

It’s easier for a paper to wait for a finished press release, complete with photo, to waft into the newsroom so they

Martine McCutcheon book signing Harrods

Martine McCutcheon wrote a book about the first ten minutes of her life.

can add a reporter’s byline and publish the story and photo verbatim. Job done.

The photo call used to be a good chance for me to catch up with fellow “smudgers” from other agencies and newspapers, but on the rare occasion I am sent to one now I tend to find myself in the company of people who have a camera, but no real clue.

It may be that as new media channels open up, and quality returns to journalism (I happen to believe and hope that tablet computers may be the dawn of a return to quality content) the photo call will make something of a comeback, though I suspect it may be dead for good/better.

in Case Studies 3 comments