GREAT SHOT!
The snapper who talked Steve Davis into playing snooker in the desert — and Enoch Powell into posing with his teddy
BOOK OF THE WEEK WHAT A LIFE! 50 YEARS OF FLEET STREET PHOTOGRAPHY by Ted Blackbrow (Whittles Publishing £18.99)
WHen Ted Blackbrow left his east end grammar school at the age of 15, his headmaster told his parents he might get a job as a dustman.
Headteachers often misjudge their pupils. Blackbrow went on to become an outstanding Fleet Street photographer and worked for 37 years for the Daily mail.
Young reporters who know no better tease photographer colleagues by describing them as snappers. Yet a good picture is worth a thousand words and can tell a story in a way that no wordsmith can hope to emulate.
There are many such pictures in the 195 pages of What A Life! — among them a young Prince William, head bowed, walking behind his mother’s coffin; Princess Anne, at the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, suitably dressed along with all the other royals in mid- calf hemlines, glancing disdainfully at Princess Diana displaying a little royal leg; 007 Sean Connery looking grim in grim east Berlin; the stern-faced enoch Powell cuddling his teddy bear; Tiger Woods at his first British open.
one Blackbrow masterpiece is the photograph of Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry playing snooker in the desert.
But such pictures don’t just happen; they require cunning and ingenuity on the part of the photographer.
For many years, Blackbrow worked with the legendary sports writer Ian Wooldridge who, on this occasion, wanted a picture to go with a feature he was writing about the ridiculous situation where, 100 miles south of the war in Kuwait, a handful of very wealthy Arabs were watching the Dubai Classic in an airconditioned palace.
Wooldridge asked Blackbrow to set up a snooker match in the desert. Steve Davis agreed immediately, but Hendry would take part only after Blackbrow promised to keep him out of his airconditioned limo for just two minutes.
Forty Arabs manhandled the table from the truck to Blackbrow’s chosen spot, but the balls wouldn’t stay still. He stuck them down with chewing gum. He took his picture and the cost of setting it up was repaid many times over by the money the mail earned from syndication.
Similar ingenuity was required to get the photograph of the two nuns being married to Christ as they took their final vows.
Undaunted after being refused entry by Cardinal Godfrey because the chapel was too small, Blackbrow successfully appealed to the nuns’ mother Superior, who said he could work from a small side door. He HAD been sure he would earn a fortune from the Catholic and women’s magazines, but was disappointed to get less than £6. So he sent his pictures to She magazine, which rejected them. He was more successful with Woman’s own. not only did it want his pictures, but offered him £125 — the equivalent of around £3,000 today.
‘I staggered out of the office, rang my wife and told her to prepare to celebrate,’ he said.
Photography, such a vital ingredient of successful, popular newspapers, was revolutionised during Blackbrow’s career.
He started with a plate camera in the Fifties that allowed only two shots per minute, and moved on to Rolleiflex and nikon 35mm film cameras.
modern digital cameras now allow 14 shots a second.
If he wasn’t near a photo agency or a hotel when covering a sporting event in his early days, Blackbrow would have to knock on doors, hire the use of a room and a telephone line and work from there. now when photographers need to wire a photo, they take a card-reader from their pocket, attach it to a smartphone and press a button.
When he was covering sport, says Blackbrow, there was a permanent smile on his face.
But he does tell one story where there was no smiling — only grief.
He was in Moldova, where England was playing football, when he was diverted to photograph children at an orphanage. He was greeted by 20 children covered in their own filth, some crying, some screaming, and a sickening stench.
He focused on one boy staring into space with a fly on his lips. Blackbrow refused coffee from the manager, walked to his car and wept.
There was, however, a plus side: the England manager Glenn Hoddle organised a friendly match at Wembley with all the proceeds going to the orphans, and Mail readers in turn donated more than £100,000.
A heartrending picture is not only worth a thousand words — it can also be worth many thousands of pounds.