Photographers Blog

It’s cold, it’s very dark and oh…. of course it’s raining. I have no idea if or when I will actually see the Prime Minister after standing here for hours.

That’s my enduring memory from 10 years (1989-1999) of covering Downing St. as a photographer for Reuters. I still tell people that Downing St. is the coldest place on Earth, no matter what month it may be!

Twelve years later, I walked up Downing St. as a veteran of the White House Press Corps for Reuters, and things were very different indeed. The sky was blue, the air was dry and warm and sunshine washed in from Whitehall. This couldn’t be the same place where I regularly photographed Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair all those years ago.

On this perfect day, as I awaited President Obama’s arrival at 10 Downing St., I reflected upon the many differences between covering Downing St. and the White House.

To start with, my days at the White House are actually spent inside the White House. My days at Downing St. were spent literally on the street. We were held inside a press pen made of bicycle rack-style gates designed to keep us in our place. At the White House, we are given a very detailed schedule of events to be covered. We always know if and when we will see the President. At Downing St, we were never actually told the “ifs” and “whens.” We were never actually told anything. When we needed a photo of the Prime Minister, we would simply camp out in the press pen all day in hopes the Prime Minister would actually emerge at all.

There were probably more than a billion people who would’ve loved to have been inside Westminster Abbey to see Prince William marry Kate Middleton and to soak up the glamor of what was, for a day, the world’s biggest news story.

I was lucky enough to be assigned a position inside the abbey, but though I got to witness the spectacle through a camera lens, my experience was less about pomp and pageantry and more about perils and pratfalls.

With the congregation dolled up to the nines, even the photographers were expected to smarten up. Abbey staff told us to wear “a suit and tie or female equivalent”. Dressed accordingly in my smartest jacket and skirt, I felt the part – right up until I saw the ladders.

The guest list was finalized weeks ago and the invitations sent out. For the lucky ones their presence was requested, nobody refused.

There was no fancily decorated envelope from the lord chancellors office landing on our doormat, but an email from the UK chief photographer asking you to be part of the Reuters team to shoot William and Kate’s wedding is an invitation you don’t turn down.

It’s like any other wedding in many respects; you worry about what to wear. How do you keep dry and warm whilst dressing for a wedding? Not as easy task.

So what do you do when the TV and radio news are all telling you not to travel, and then you receive a group SMS from your company saying stay at home?

Well it’s the worse snow storm to hit London in 18 years and all you want to do is get out there and shoot it.

I get to my car and as I am wiping the snow off it I look up at the window and see my kids looking at more snow than they have seen in their lives. I watch their little faces light up as it dawns on them that all this snow means only one thing — NO SCHOOL. Now let’s face it, that’s just about as good as it gets.

A short while back I collated a few choice quotations and sayings on photography and the picture-taking process: ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’.

I think various gems were omitted first-time round, so here are a few more:

“There are few professions where even when you are right at the top and a household name, you might still be standing on a draughty street corner with your feet getting wet and cold, waiting for something to happen.” (Philip Jones Griffiths)

Above – A British Airways aircraft taxis past BA tail-fins at Heathrow Airport, west London. Photograph by Toby Melville

Among my first photo assignments when I moved to London from Rome in 2006 were the most popular horse race meetings of the British summer. The Epsom Festival and Royal Ascot turned out to be High Society galas and a rendevous for betting maniacs rather than just straighforward sporting events. Still today all the funny hats amuse me and make me believe that cultural differences can be a powerful source of inspiration.

In all probability I would never wear one of those huge and colourful hats, but nevertheless I wouldn’t judge them immoral or socially corrupting. Then, yesterday, some pictures from a stringer in Tehran really shook me up and gave me goosebumps.

‘Morality Police’ detain a man with unacceptable hair and clothing styles during a crackdown on “social corruption” in north Tehran. 

On first impression it’s enough to put a nesting Robin off its stride for good and liable to bring other garden creepers into disrepute - but it’s just the English celebrating Spring.

The caption to Toby Melville’s picture informs us, “A costumed festival participant marches in the Jack In The Green procession in Hastings in southern England May 5, 2008. The traditional annual May Day festival has origins at least as far back as the 17th century, with hundreds of costume-clad dancers and musicians – many dressed in green foliage – marching through the coastal town and symbolically slaying a giant Jack at the finale.”.

Some are more ‘out’ than others.

Elsewhere other revellers cover themselves in the remains of dead animals and 

Yesterday May 1 saw voters in England and Wales go to the polls to elect their local authority representatives. Londoners will have to wait until this evening to know who will be their new mayor but it is hard to imagine that it won’t be either the incumbent Labour Party candidate Ken Livingstone or the Conservative challenger Boris Johnson. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the other contenders, this has pretty much been a two horse race almost from the start. 

Some reports have said that Mayor Ken Livingstone has looked rather weary and Stephen Hird’s picture (which appears on the front of  yesterday’s FT), shows him taking a break from the last day of campaigning, at what is colloquially know in this country as a ‘greasy spoon’ cafe. Intended, I suspect, to demonstrate his ‘just-like-us-ness’. It may in fact have succeeded rather too well because he does look just like any other tired old bloke.   

Traditional symbols have been mercilessly exploited. Boris, an old Etonian had as his campaign bus one of the famous old red Routemaster London buses that Ken, as mayor, banished from service (Toby Melville).

Spring in London has finally sprung. The lid of concrete grey cloud has occasional cracks in it allowing the sun to shine through which completely transforms the appearance of the place.  

The seasonal ‘showers’ this year have had a monsoon-like intensity but having suffered the discomfort of long days of rain, Londoners have been rewarded by some wonderfully dramatic sunsets as Toby Melville demonstrates

The rain has transformed London’s parks into an explosion of lush new foliage and sprawling suburbs are transformed by cherry blossom. 

The State visit to Britain by French President, Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni drew widespread attention not the least from the massed ranks of photographers and televison crews keen to record the couple’s every step.  No cliche was left unturned as members of the press vied with one another to describe their partnership.

But… a state visit by a French President would always draw interest, and with the added glamour angle you had a winning formulae.  The drab world of formal visits was to be given a makeover - I for one hoped so. In my view, the visit was not so much a breath of fresh air blowing away the cobwebs, but a mix of contrasting elements standing together. With this visit we hoped to  see contrasts of age, style and appearance. In addition the sense of anticipation was heightened because the people involved represented the historic differences between the English and the French. Would they come together in a new entente cordiale? Would the charge be led by the French President? Not on your life, it was led by his wife, the amabassador extraordinaire.

Did Carla Bruni-Sarkozy disapoint? Here are the photographs, judge for yourselves.