SWNS

Following on from my work experience at The Times I wanted to see how a big agency worked and so decided to go to the highly respected South West News Service (SWNS) for a week. They deal with the national press on a daily basis and have a team of extremely talented photographers. Being able to work alongside such good operator's was once again invaluable.

On the first day I was literally in the office 5 minutes before rushing to Bristol Magistrate's court to meet and shoot with one of the SWNS photographers. Lib Dem Councillor Shirley Brown was in court after sparking a race row by calling an Asian colleague a coconut. ( http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/wdp/news/Race-row-Bristol-councillor-coconut-slur/article-732900-detail/article.html )



Straight after this I learnt that I was going to Bath to photograph the Euromillions winners. The couple seemed really down to earth and deserving of the £56million, wouldn't mind some of that! With it being the biggest ever UK lottery win there was inevitably a BIG media presence there - I can count 17 photographers in one of my shots and then there were ITN, BBC and SKY amongst others. As SWNS already had one photographer there (red top in first frame) I tried to get something different from the edges. Paid off in the end - Gareth got front page of the Evening Standard and I got front page (second shot) of the Western Daily Press (Bristol's local rag).





Wednesday saw me doing a portrait shoot for the Daily Express in Salisbury of a nice guy called Spike Bell. Spike used to suffer from sleep apnea due to his weight, however after losing a significant amount of weight he was able to cure it and he can now sleep perfectly.



Bristol was hit by snow storms on Thursday morning; whilst most people stay nice and warm inside during this type of weather, press photographers tend to spend all day out in it trying to catch some nice images. I definitely need to invest in some proper gloves, fingerless ones are useless when it's that cold. A 45 minute trip out of the office to take some shots at the local train station paid dividends: The Sun (first shot) and Daily Mail (second shot) used an image each online, The Times (third shot) used one the next day and the Bristol Evening Post used the same shot as The Sun on page 4.







After a productive morning I headed with two of the staff photographers to Wootton Bassett in the afternoon to cover the five soldiers body's passing through the streets. Much has been said of the apparent 'media circus' that now accompanies this all too common ritual, personally I think that such images are important and need to be seen. The silence, the numerous standard bearers and the large public gathering really do make a fitting tribute.