Thursday 9 April 2009

Right Place Right Time

How does a press photographer get to the right place at the right time? They can be lucky like Rocco Morabito's story in yesterday's blog. They can be patient and it may involve waiting at a venue where a famous person will arrive. It can be that you wait near Downing Street so that secret documents can be clearly visible on photos.

A few years ago Robert Kilroy-Silk had a bucket of slurry thrown over him as he was going in a hall to take part in 'Any Questions'. Well if Peter Mandelson can have a small cup of green custard thrown on him then Kilroy-Silk may also be a target. One person who was there that evening for the radio programme told me that the area was very quiet, the slurry came out and so did a national press photographer. What a coincidence! You can't buy this publicity near election times. And nobody has targeted him since then. You would think that his enemies would not want to give him such publicity.

More recently, most protestors at the G20 summit were peaceful. However one person was intent on smashing a window at the RBS and a few people were seen stealing from the building. However the vast majority of bystanders had expensive cameras in their hand. One protestor was seen urging the violent protestor to stop. The rest of the photographers were busy taking photos. I mentioned yesterday that we are people first and photographers second. In this case we are not talking about one photographer and thousands who are starving (or fighting or in danger or waiting for rescue or trying to smash a window). What message is this sending to us? Do your job and forget that you can make the world a better place. If anyone anywhere is trying to break a window let's try to stop them before we get our camera out. Despite this...

Happy snapping.

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