Working As A Cricket Photographer
Do you work in particular parts of the country as a cricket photographer?
No, far from it. No. I think the first game I did this season after getting back from the World Cup, and before that Australia, was a one day match in Durham. I left home at half past five in the morning and I got back at midnight, which I'm sure is not very safe and healthy when you're driving. But, no, anywhere; wherever the cricket is.
Do cricket photographers work internationally?
Yes you do. I have been on 27 consecutive tours with England. Every tour they've done for the last 27 years.
Have you had an exhibition of your work?
Not knowingly. No I'm not sort of into that. I don't don't do exhibitions, I don't think – I'm trying to think if. No if I won prizes then they go up on the wall. But I don't even enter competitions now. I haven't done for years. I don't enter competitions. I don't do my own books. If someone is writing a book and say. "Can we have your picture to go in it then fine, I send it off. I don't do my own books, I don't do exhibitions, I don't do any of that sort of stuff. Sorry, I just find it a bit ponsey. I work day to day, like today I will cover a match. Get it all out of the way, today, get it all sorted. Everything filed away – put in the library, on the road system, get it all done tomorrow is another match. Each day is a different match, a different day and you just work from the one to the other. No, I don't - a retrospective. Sorry, it's not me.
How many cricket games do you work on in a week?
Well, seven. Yeah, I mean at least five, six, maybe seven. I get a month off, say at the end of the season in October. Before I go on tour I might have another month, if there's no World Cup in the way, at the start of the year maybe in March. But apart from that I'll be working every day right through the summer. I won't have a day off.
Do cricket photographers choose the games they cover?
I mainly choose the game. It depends who you're working for. A lot of people will take your advice anyway, if you're working for the Times, the Sunday Times. You'd phone up and say, "okay, tomorrow there's this, that, and the other," and they'll say, "yeah, okay, fine," or "well, we've got an idea that we're doing this." You don't know, there might be something that they know in the office that you don't know, and that they're trying to tie it into a feature, or something else. You always bounce it off them, but basically, if you've been doing the job for that long, you near enough know roughly where to go. If something happened at a match untoward, there's no way of telling. You can always be at the wrong game, but you narrow it down a bit.
Do you own the copyright of the photos you take?
Yes, yes, copyright mine is over, oh be now well over a million pictures in the library and yes they are my copyright
Does a cricket photographer get a salary?
No, if it rains, well The Times (newspaper) are good, you know? I mean I'll be working for them and you might get to the odd game where it rains and nothing happens but you're on, you're working – you get paid, that sort of thing, but I try not to do that too many times. But otherwise, no. Working purely freelance and there's no salary. There's nothing if you go and break something or if it rains for a month then that's just tough.
Have you ever been asked not to print a photo?
Yes. Yes I get it every so often. I mean not so much now. Because now there are so many people taking pictures. There's so much TV coverage that if anyone came up to me and said "Please don't publish that picture", they'd have to go to everyone, and TV and twenty-six cameras that they use and all the rest of it. So I have been asked by various cricketers, I won't name them, have been doing certain things, but on a cricket field, in full view of everybody else, which they shouldn't have done. They know I've got a picture of it. They've asked if I wouldn't get it published.
Do you know the photo you need before you take it?
You don't know the photo you need, you know roughly, say working for the Sunday Times, I'll be driving to the match on a Saturday morning and they'll phone me and say right this is the shape, this is the size, this is what it's got to fit in the paper. So you know the size, so you know you have to do either upright, or landscape or whatever you're going to do. The photo is purely random. You don't know, first of all, who's going to bat or bowl or what's going to happen in the game at all. So, no you don't. When you've taken it, you've got a good idea. As soon as you've taken the picture you think that's probably going to be the one they're going to use tomorrow. So you've got an idea afterwards because that helps you edit. You could take hundreds of pictures. You know which one to go to, you know which ones you don't bother with. So you sort of, you can hone it down to those pictures that you've taken which, yes, you've got a fair idea that may be the ones they use as long as they're the right shape ,right size. Also now, there's a trend with photographers now to do reaction rather than action. So, don't worry about the wicket, somebody getting bowled or whatever it is. Just worry about a bowler running along punching the air. It gets a bit boring but that's maybe what people want in papers or magazines or something. That's what tends to be the trend now, where people just go for players reacting to something. I'd rather do the action myself.
Do you work closely with cricket journalists?
Yes. If I am working with a paper then I will liaise with a writer and see because they could have something up their sleeve that you do not know about. They may not necessarily phone you up and tell you that. And then you get a phone call at five o clock from somebody in the office saying well where is the picture of? And well ah, news to me. You two could be twelve thousand miles away and they do not realize that I am sitting down at the boundary on one end of the grounds and he is sat up at a press box up at the other end. You have not spoken. You have not met that day. So you should liaise. We are in the communications business after all.
