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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Rosa Carr's first budding steps in the world of photography
PICTURE: David CarrEveryone can try being David Bailey now
Sorry to dampen the Jessica/Jason/Sir Chris-induced mood of national euphoria but I have a depressing photograph to share with you.
Nothing wrong with the subject matter. Jason Maguire getting mounted in the parade ring at Bangor last week, watched by Donald McCain.
Nor with the picture itself. Nicely composed, with the heroes to the fore and the clouds making a good background. In focus too.
But that's the problem. For it was taken by my five-year-old daughter Rosa on my wife Em's mobile phone - she also took other shots of my elbow and a blurring of rails but she certainly produced this one unaided.
Which only adds to the impression that in these days of digital
cameras, anyone can take a decent photo. An impression which turns Ed Whitaker, Dan Abraham and their like into giant pandas - lovable creatures who aren't always as cuddly as they look but who need protecting from the threat of extinction.
It's a precarious existence being a racing photographer and an
expensive one too.
The equipment is not cheap and liability insurance is a condition of holding a press badge yet fewer and fewer papers are prepared to dip into their pockets to pay a reasonable sum for their handiwork - their budgets are squeezed and outside the big days why pay for the accumulated wisdom and undoubted quality of an experienced snapper when there are freebies around and 'anyone can do it'?
And owners prepared to help make a photographer's ends meet by paying for a picture are getting thinner on the ground - you'll often see their friends taking standing on the official lensman's toes in the winner's enclosure, taking their own shots.
You get what you pay for and if nobody other than the Post and a few others on the big occasions are prepared to fork out for work that can sometimes border on art then it is going to get increasingly rare.
Mind you, with the Olympics dominating every agenda at present there would have been scarcely a photographer at Catterick this afternoon even had Shergar had been in action, making his jumping debut in a hunter chase ridden by Lord Lucan.
Nor was there anyone from the 'Drinkmore Stud', owners of seller winner Geanie Mac. Shame, as they sound interesting guys - there is no real 'stud' and they are just friends from London and Glasgow who like to 'drink more'.
And though former owner Ian Ender was here, his brother Neville had better things to do on his 50th birthday, as you'd expect from someone who will always be a footnote in history as the first man to commentate on a race on the internet, back in the early-1990s.
That rather started something, didn't it?
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