PRO CASE STUDY
I started my career as a news photographer in 1991 with the Daventry Express, before moving to the News Team agency in Birmingham. In 1996 I joined the Manchester
Evening News. I moved to London in 1998 to work with Reuters, mainly as an editor, but also shooting news and sport. The Times offered me a job on the picture desk, and in 2004 I was made picture editor, responsible for the entire visual content of the paper and website, and a team of 12 photographers and 30 desk staff.
As a picture editor I looked at around 20,000 news images a day. The images had to be eye-catching, relevant to the news agenda, or surprising – the kind of image that raised eyebrows, made readers smile or be curious. A submitted image has to be of a really high standard, interesting and wellcaptioned. Most photographers forget this bit – the importance of information to accompany the image is key to being able to sell it. A photo editor doesn’t have time to phone you for a chat about the image, and if they do have to call it will be short and usually quite blunt – they won’t shower you with praise.
Out of 20,000 images we use around 200, and images are usually rejected because they aren’t good enough, relevant, or don’t arrive early enough. A morning newspaper like The
Times has a conference at 4pm – if your image is not in before then it stands little chance of making it. It is so important to have a full caption embedded in the image, with your name, address and contact details.
Also, make sure the image is dated and current – archive images sent to illustrate main news stories are the worst thing because it is easy to be fooled into using one, which leads to apologies having to be printed!
I think as a photographer, working on the desk gives you insight into how stories and pictures come together for the way the paper wants to tell the story. It teaches you the importance of space and not wasting it. As a picture editor my experience as a photographer meant I could brief photographers and editors to the “real” possibilities and not the make-believe world many editors live in, where they imagine a photograph and think it exists. Managing expectations is key to the role!
Make sure the image is dated and current