Doorstepping. It comes with the territory. Any news photographer will tell you that.In fact if you can remember back to the last time the Conservative party were in power, doorstepping Members of Parliament was so common that it prompted one colleague to refer to himself as a professional milk bottle. There are doorsteps that require immense amounts of waiting time, where at any given second the subject could arrive or depart into a melting pot of strobes, elbows, quantum cables, screaming producers and the occasional passing mother and child with pram. And while all this is happening it’s also raining and the traffic warden is quickly putting a £100 ticket on your windscreen.
Then sometimes you are lucky enough to get the Nobel Prize for Literature doorstep. In fact twice in two years I have by chance landed the call “……..we’re just getting the address…..”    

Both Harold Pinter and Doris Lessing were either at home or within walking distance. Pinter was in fact in the middle of his lunch and suddenly appeared on his doorstep sporting a cap and a black eye from a recent fall. There were half a dozen journalists and photographers and the light was perfect. Similarly with Lessing, who arrived by taxi, only to be told by a Reuters journalist that she had in fact won the prestigious prize. She then sat on her doorstep and conducted interviews. At this time there were only a dozen members of the media and again the light was perfect.

Two authors on two doorsteps in two years winning the grandest prize in the literary world. Both sets of pictures were aided by virtue of the fact that the UK picture desk searched for and obtained both addresses in record time. It meant that as the photographer, I had an advantage when I arrived. Almost unheard of on a doorstep, where the usual scenario involves everyone poised at the start line, a door opens, and we all scramble for the finish line together.