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 was (and still is) the plat du jour. Moving to Sky News in Osterley, they sent me on multiple assignments to Bosnia, and then to South Africa to cover Nelson Mandela’s victorious election.

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The world's largest news agency, The Associated Press (AP), was recruiting for their new television arm, and offered me the position of Production Director. It was here that 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.

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The following year, the madness of the FIFA World Cup circus came to town, and as the millennium was being celebrated, the American network CNN sent me to Kosovo. In 2005, 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 on the waves to look for her ... and I've not been back to sea since!

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Over the next decade, I travelled Europe working for numerous respected broadcasters, filming and editing headline news reports and, notably BBC News, BBC World and the BBC's Newsnight and Panorama.

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I stepped sideways into news and editorial stills photography, and was fortunate to have been represented by NTI (UK), World Picture News (NY), and Le Desk, a Paris-based agency, The bulk of my work were commissions from anglophone newspapers and magazines, but I also picked up ad-hoc breaking news and current affairs stories in and around the French capital.

 

Juggling my time between television and stills, the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme asked me if I'd like to to lecture their students in television news production. I jumped at the opportunity and guided them through techniques, preparing them for practical assignments.

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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.