Cards on the table, I've been around a bit ...

I earned my stripes working for an independent television facility as a news cameraman in Westminster, where politics is the plat du jour. Moving to Sky News, they sent me on multiple assignments to Bosnia, and then to South Africa to cover Nelson Mandela’s victorious election.

 

On returning to the UK, The Associated Press (AP) were recruiting for their brand new television agency, and offered me the position of Production Director. Here, I taught news camera and VT editing techniques to the next generation of multi-skilled operators. In 1997, I returned to my field camera/edit role, and the AP transferred me to Paris, where five months later, Princess Diana’s car crashed in the Pont d’Alma tunnel. I was on the scene an hour later.

 

The following year, the FIFA World Cup circus came to town, and in 2000, the American network CNN sent me to Kosovo. Later, Ellen MacArthur (now Dame) was on her way back to France after sailing around the world on the Vendée Globe, so the BBC sent me out to sea to look for her. For the next decade, I travelled Europe, filming and editing some headline reports and working for numerous respected broadcasters, notably BBC News, BBC World and the BBC's Newsnight and Panorama.

 

I added another string to my bow by stepping sideways into the world of news and editorial stills photography. Represented by NTI in the UK, World Picture News in New York, and Le Desk, a Paris-based agency, I received commissions from anglophone newspapers and magazines, while also covering ad-hoc breaking news and current affairs stories in and around the French capital.

 

Of course, I was still working in television. The Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme asked me to lecture in television news production, guiding students through techniques, and preparing them for practical assignments.

 

Just shy of 20 years of living and working in France, I returned to the UK, where I continue with news and editorial photography, and as an active member of the Industry Media Review Panel at Windsor Forest College.