Picture Power: Portraits of Five Leading Press Photographers: BBC Radio 4 – 3.45pm Monday 31st Oct.
BBC: ‘Miles Warde presents the first of five programmes featuring famous press photographers. Largely recorded in real time, they offer drama and insight into professionals at work. In the first programme James Hill of the New York Times gives up the chance to go to Libya in order to shoot the famous balcony kiss at this year’s royal wedding between Catherine Middleton and Prince William.’
“I don’t know if this was a reward, or a punishment. Perhaps it was both,” says the Moscow based photographer, winner of both the Pulitzer and the world press. His paper paid £900 to put him on the stand at the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, but he is further from the balcony than he had guessed, and he has the wrong lens. James Hill shares his thoughts on this ‘blink and you miss it’ event – the anguish and stress – via a microphone we gave him before the day began.
Also in this series – Lewis Whyld of the Press Association at the first night of the Tottenham riots; Mike Goldwater back in Rwanda 17 years after the genocide; Geoff Waugh on the final alpine stage of this year’s Tour de France; and Jane Mingay of the Telegraph, who took the most famous picture at the London bombings, in New York looking for images of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.