Alamy Calamity

Alamy, the 15million plus image stock library, is a big supplier to the UK press. Or rather, it was.

Some newspapers have reduced the number of Alamy shots they use by 70 per cent according to Alamy's CEO James West.

UK newspapers are haemorrhaging readers and staff. Advertising revenues have fallen dramatically. Print sales are falling fast. Online versions of newspapers are yet to make money.

It's only going to get worse.

And the photographer is about to feel the pinch (like he hasn't been feeling it already).

Unlike most photo agencies, Alamy does not run a contract system. So they have been the first to be excluded by cash-strapped picture desks who have been told to only use photos from fixed-fee subscription agencies like Reuters.

Their solution is to work on a new subscription service priced below what a particular newspaper paid Alamy in total over the previous 12 months. But the new subscription service will offer unlimited picture downloads.

Simply, that means revenue due to the photographer is likely to be severely dented.

Alamy CEO states that some picture prices will be just below those of 2008 but others 'might fall by up to 50% or perhaps even more.'

If you see any photographers out there actually making a profit, give them an award.

I congratulate myself on becoming a master of not one but two dying industries.

NOTE: See the Alamy blog for more information

End of an era, end of Woolworths

Saturday, December 27 will go down in history as the day Woolworths died. Riddled with bad debt and apparently no direction, the Pick 'N Mix delight has ceased to be.

Since news of the store's demise circulated it has been the busiest shop on the high street as shoppers swooped like vultures in search of that extra special discount.

For a documentary photographer, stores like Woolwoorths attract your camera like an electro-magnet. This Preston store was 98 years old and the second Woolworths in the country. Once a huge part of people's lives, getting an image of Woolworths is irresistible.

The reality was a little less romantic. At my local store in Preston, Lancashire, there were stories of staff being abused and punched because discounts were not big enough. I saw customers queuing with basket-loads of discounted merchandise to the checkout, demanding further discounts, then dumping the stuff when staff said no.

By the final day of business, much of the store had been cordoned off and what remained looked more like a bad bring and buy sale than the thriving shop this place once was.

I hold my hands up and say these photographs were taken without having sought prior permission. I just felt the desire to document an institution was greater than being told 'no pictures' after going through all the corporate red tape.

I saw a reporter and photographer from the Lancashire Evening Post outside the store. The photographer had been denied permission to take pictures. I'm glad I got mine.

I remember the one on Northumberland Street in Newcastle when I was a kid before it closed down. The one that remained, in the downmarket part of town, was much bigger at one time.

In later years I used to single out Quality Street coffee creams in the Pick 'N Mix until Nestle stopped making my favourite favoured chocolates. Perhaps that's when it all started going wrong for Woolies.

Raily stupid

PHOTO: How British trains used to be - a lot better than they are now.

In the last few weeks I have been to Holland and Israel. Fantastic places, remarkable people.

But this is not a look-at-me-and-where-I've-been-aren't-I-special blog. This is about trains.

The Netherlands. You arrive at Schiphol Airport, the most impressive I've been to yet, go down a gleaming escalator and wait a few minutes for a shiny, clean huge double-decker train to pull silently into the station. And you're off.

Train travel in Flatlands is efficient, quiet and almost surgically clean. I was impressed. I'm told that sometimes Dutch trains aren't perfect, they do run late. Sometimes. They are a shining example of how to run a train network. I went from Schiphol to Deventer to Amsterdam to Den Haag without fuss or fear or wallet damage.

Getting from Israel's Ben Gurion Airport train station to Tel Aviv and from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was a little less convenient. Less frequent trains combined with my Hebrew reading skills meant it took me two hours to take the short journey into Tel Aviv. This included 50 minutes waiting on the platform, followed by a 10 minute journey in the wrong direction, followed by another 50 minute wait on a station platform somewhere else.

But I can't blame Israeli railways for my stupidity.

The trains themselves were either huge, spacious single-deckers or even huger double-deckers much like those in the Netherlands. Israeli's train stations were so clean you could sit on the floor. The trains were a little dusty on the outside but, be fair, this is the Middle East.

And so we come to this proud land. Great Britain. Inventors of the steam train, pioneers of the railway. Keepers of the developed world's worst rail network. Have you ever got on a train from Manchester Airport? It's a shitty little 'cross-country' thing with about as much charm as a Glaswegian family on holiday in Benidorm.

Ugly and dirty (the train, not the Glaswegians) and if you're really unlucky you get the two-carriage version which is fitted-out with the kind of seating you get on a 1980s bus.

Forget the fact that British trains are inexcusably expensive and notoriously unreliable. They are just awful, out-dated and embarrassing.

Even in Ukraine, a former Soviet nation which the British like to think is still a little bit backwards, their rail and underground system (in Kiev) is super efficient and mega cheap - a staggering five pence a journey, actually.

When I travel the 300 miles from my home to London I go by car. British Rail is too expensive and, crucially, too unreliable. And when you consider how congested the British motorways are and how expensive petrol and diesel is in this country, that's saying something.

This country is carpeted with railway tracks but British Rail has for too many years been a shambles, both as a nationalised outfit and a private business. The Dutch can do it, the Israeli's can do it. My god, most of the rest of the world can do it. Why can't we get it right?

NOTE: In December 2008 diesel cost £0.99 a LITRE at the cheapest pumps in this country, down from a record high of £1.30 - again at the cheapest pumps.

NOTE 2: The photo is of the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway near Lake Windermere. If you want to catch a train (and a delightful ferry for that matter) visit furnessrailwaytrust.org.uk

Photographing people

Taking photographs of people can be tough. If you want good results you need to get in peoples faces. It takes a bit of courage, a bit of cheek, a bit of balls.

The problem is that a lot of people don't like being photographed, especially in their ordinary, everyday lives. This can be a problem if you like photographing people in their ordinary, everyday lives.

Mathematically, there is direct inverse proportion between how ordinary a situation is and the likelihood of someone saying 'no' to a picture request. So, if you're at a music festival you will find people smiling deliriously at you as you snap away. If you are down the high street on a wet Wednesday afternoon people will growl at you because you are obviously a weirdo.

Sadly, you can't persuade the steadfastly unwilling that a photograph of them dripping wet in their C&A raincoat is just what you're after.

But there are certain things you can do to give yourself a fighting chance of photographing Britain in its everyday unexcitedness.

Make eye contact, smile and wear a luminous workmen's jacket can all make things a little bit easier for you.

And there's also these two quotes from experienced photographers.

In a recent Photography Monthly article, Garry Cook said: "Think like a professional - be like a professional. If you are holding a camera, you are a photographer (at that moment anyway). So don't shuffle around apologetically."

And in an interview in the The Times Travel supplement , Martin Parr said: "Behave as if you've every right to be there."

Proof, as if it was needed, that great minds think alike.

NOTE: These photographs were taken on the streets of Bethlehem.

Toony Blair, Sting, Jimmy Nail, Ant & Dec, your wallets will take one hell of a beating

Catastrophically catastrophic football club Newcastle United are trying to instigate an audaciously audacious fans' takeover of the club. It'll only cost them £300m, they reckon, to buy out their heavily hated super saviour, Mike Ashley.

The savenewcastle.com fans group reckon the Toon Army has 300,000 fans worldwide. That equates to £1,000 per fan. I reckon as they only have 52,327 for a home game - on a good day - that's a tall order.

Even with the help of Ant & Dec, Jimmy Nail, Sid Waddell, Sting and ex-Prime Minister Toony Blair it's still a taller order than persuading Kevin Keegan that Dennis Wise is a fun guy to take a taxi ride with.

Still, we all have dreams. The Toon Army do have a few fans. This photograph (above) was taken on the 20th April, 2008, in New York City's Nevada Smiths bar (74 Third Avenue, between 11th & 12th). It's the official home of Toon Army NYC. But can you see this lot forking out £1,000 each (that's $2000, 1,300 Euros)? No chance. It's Dubai or bust for the barmy Barcodes.

NOTE. Newcastle beat Sunderland 2-0 in the game during which this photograph was taken. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to me dad for publishing a photograph of the people who give Geordies a bad name.

The Netherlands cliche

What do the people of Holland do? They ride bikes. It's a cliche, it's a fact.

Dane and dusted

On Sunday (August 17) at around 2.30pm Nikolaj Sørensen finished his two-month walk from Lands End to John O'Groats.

Nikolaj, a history teacher from Denmark, CouchSurfed with me a month ago on his way up the length of the British Isles.

On Sunday Nikolaj, 38, told me: "I'm hurting today, but now I can go home." I think he found it a very tough journey (it is a very tough journey) but he fulfilled his ambition. I applaud him.

More rain, more Blackpool

For the third weekend running I was back in Blackpool. Can a person take this much fun?
It was raining. But it was still fun.

Summer holidays

This is British tourism at its most average.
Taken at the Wild Boar Park, Chipping, Lancashire in July 2008.

A summer in Blackpool

Had a heated discussion with someone in the office about the merits of a weekend in Blackpool.

I was of the opinion that the resort as a drinking destination is a dirty, depressing, soulless place. A sh*thole, basically. While my colleague was from Blackpool. He vigorously disagreed.


The brash trash of the town is seductive in its own way, but the grubby bars and the hoardes of heavy drinking stag parties leave me cold.

Can't see what appeal myself. Each to their own like. Did you know people from Scotland come down the M6 to Blackpool in their thousands? Some of them even stay for a whole week! They have to come past the Lake District to get there. What are they thinking?


Over the 2008 summer season I am visiting Blackpool regularly to photograph the resort and, more specifically, it's visitors. No portraiture, no poses. Just the people as they patrol the promenade and stagger between the bars.


Interesting fact: British rail have cancelled the Blackpool to Manchester Airport train at 1.10am. And the ticket man will make you buy a new ticket for 3.35am train because returns are only valid until 2.30am.