RUSSEL BOYCE - MIDDLE EAST, AFRICAN EDITOR

Russel Boyce originally got a degree in fine art studying at Hull University. He started his career doing printing work, PR, commercial work and news photography. Russell stuck with tabloid photography as that where the money is apparently. He told us how he has travelled round the world shooting news events, sports events and current affairs. Russell is currently working for Thomson Reuters, which is 160 years old and built on a trust principle written in 1941. It consists of six different photographers globally. They move 2000 images a day in two different offices on either side of the world. As he was explaining his job he was also discussing the down fall of it. This is how he is supposed to make money from this however no one pays to watch the news meaning theres less money for him to make. 

Thomson Reuters is currently in major competition with Twitter and Instagram. The reason for this is because these social media websites are able to release news within minutes of it happening in real life. They are able to wirelessly transmit images from a camera onto their system in order for the picture to be broadcasted quickly. 

Russel then went on to discuss how he goes about photographing images for the news and the different features he would look at in order for it to be a successfully sold image. 

Wider image story telling 

• general view - setting the scene where it happens 
• portrait - what does the person look like
• action - what does the person do 
• why/impact - what does that person do it 
• detail - reveal a detail of something interesting 
• wow factor - hero image 

We were informed about how Russel uses news planners in order to plan what pictures he needs to take the next day or where he needs to be in order to shoot a story or event. This is helped along side their ‘Tracer’ software development at Reuters. A software which allows you to scan the internet for other news stories about similar events or the same event. It can be used to clarify whether an event actually took place or not. 

At the end Russel was discussing his feelings towards taking images of such explicit content. He said that in some aspects he has a duty to show the public pictures proving that people are being killed but then again it is disrespectful for that family plus it is violent and disturbing imagery. 

Chloe Dewe Mathews: Guest Lecture

Chloe started her career off practising film and working with several different teams and large production groups. She says that she finds the film industry, “…like a bubble.” “Its like another world, whereas I wanted to be in a real world with real people.”

She worked on a project that was called Banger Boys. This was a project about people who would buy cheap cars and then modify and race later on in the week. Chloe explained how she appreciated the subculture and how people were putting into work to create something and then destroy it. This was their way of getting the most out of the machinery around them, a,”… surge of excellence.” 

I personally really like how Chloe isn’t a massive fan of having her work displayed in a magazine and would rather present it in person. For example with the Banger Boys project she displayed some of the prints onto aluminium. I thought this was really clever as she’s using authentic materials to present her work on. She also had them shown in a garage which tied along with the theme as well. From this she was able to sell one of her pieces for £3000. 

Another main project that Chloe has worked on was when she hitchhiked from China back to Britain with her husband which took 10 months and ended up shooting 1400 images on film. This project was about the relationships between the east and the west. She said that this project wasn’t about research of looking into the culture of that particular country it was about going out there and talking to people and hearing it first hand. Her idea was to respond to what they were seeing. 

The struggle of trying to be original with travel images when sometimes repetition isn’t a negative thing. After the trip she was looking back on her images and felt as if she had taken nothing that was really good, however after further review it was evident that there were some images that had some very powerful themes in them. She allowed the Sunday Times to publish her work provided the opportunity to ask them to publish more of her work in the future.