“Show Notes”
Phillip Noth Coombes started Photographers United as a Facebook group. Graham Diprose is also a part of this. He was a commercial photographer in the 70s to 90s. And then taught at the London College of Communication. He also wrote books about the River Thames, and one about Henry Taunt. You can find all Graham’s books here
The group is now called Photographers United Pro. The group started in 2018 from an idea Phil had on a dog walk. He thought photographers were all working alone at home, and he wanted photographers to be able to communicate. So he built a community of commercial photographers to help each other and help sustain the industry. Graham is a real help in bringing in the photography students with all his work with photographer education links.
Sam asks if Phil has created a modern version of a photography association. Phil thinks that he has, but in some ways, this group is different. This group doesn’t charge; it’s about helping each other. There are also no grades within the group. Everyone is equal and has their skills and experience. There are about 3,400 members on the Facebook group, and lots of members are sharing their ideas and helping each other.
There are other parts of the group beyond the Facebook group. They try and arrange socials so people can meet in person. They also arrange in-person meetings where they bring people together, and some speakers give talks. The group also deals with education, which Graham is dealing with. The group also has a range of discounts for members.
A member of the group got a job at an auction house. So some members put work into frames and put them into the auction, and lots were sold. The group don’t run courses themselves, but have a very good idea of what courses are on offer in the UK and can guide people to the right place. Lots of leaders of courses are in the group too, which is a great benefit to student members.
Marcus asks if they have some advice for photographers. Graham says Be prepared. He says when working with film, a lot less gets edited post-shoot, so the shot had to be perfect. This meant planning had to be spot on, and that is a really useful skill even with digital photography. Graham says that being able to complete a risk assessment is vital to protecting yourself. Phil says Get out there and meet people. Be bold, creative and make connections. Phil says he started by literally knocking on doors. His second idea is to keep fresh, keep re-inventing yourself and keep clients. He says these things are linked, as having new ideas means you have something new to offer your regular clients. Phil asks Marcus the same question. Marcus says ideas are very important. Phil says building a great team is also very important, and as part of this, an assistant is very helpful. Graham says as part of this that many photography courses have students in their second and third year who are looking for experience. And they can make amazing assistants. Graham says he is happy for photographers to contact him to get help with this.
Graham has been doing quite a lot of work on neuro-diversity and looking at how this can be seen as an asset in some areas rather than a problem.
To join the Photographers United Pro group, you have to have :
- A website
- A business
- Insurance
This ensures that only those in the industry are in the group. The Facebook group is free, but the website with further resources is £30 a year.
You can reach out to Phil and Graham via the Facebook page.
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“Show Transcription”
Marcus: Well, hello there, Sam. How are you doing?
Sam: Very good, Marcus. How about you?
Marcus: Very well, thank you. Very well indeed. A little bit cramped in the studio today. We’ve got two guests with us, so we’re all fighting for a bit of elbow room in here. But it’s all going to be good. It’s all going to be good. Hopefully we’ve got to… Do you know what? I’m going to let you guys introduce yourselves. Philip, tell us who you are and what you do?
Philip: I’m Philip North-Koons, photographer. I’ve been a photographer for 38 years in the commercial advertising business. In 2018, I decided to start a group called Photographers United, which was started on Facebook originally. Since then, we’ve sort of expanded to a website and various other outlets. But we have a website and we’ve got one on the Facebook page. So, yep. And I’ve got Graham, who’s with us here. He’s in charge as well. He’s part of the admin of the group and a critical part of PU as well.
Sam: Amazing. Thank you. And just for listeners, all of the stuff related to the group will show in the show notes. So you’ll get all the links for those. So you started off then. Marcus, do we want to maybe let Graham introduce himself first?
Marcus: Okay, sorry. I just got straight in there. Graham, please introduce yourselves.
Graham: Okay. All right. Graham Dick-Prose. I’m semi-retired these days, or trying to be. Basically, I worked as a commercial photographer through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and also taught at London College of Printing, as it was to start with, and then London College of Communication in the design school there. And that meant that we were very much pioneers of the digital age and beta-tested equipment with lots of the big names today, you know, Phase 1 and LEAF and Epson and Adobe and so on. I became a research-based lecturer, which allowed me to do books on my favorite subject, which was the River Thames. So there’s a book called London’s Changing River Scape, which is a panorama of the River Thames from London Bridge to Greenwich, both banks, echoing another one done in 1937 before most of it got knocked down during the war. And another one, the footsteps of Henry Taunt, who was the first photographer to ever document the River Thames from its source down to London, and the footsteps of Henry Taunt. We went back and found all his tripod spots. After that, I wrote a textbook, co-wrote a textbook for Thames and Hudson called Photography the New Basics, which is in the library of a majority of British universities, I’m delighted to say. You can also have it in American, which was a much more difficult translation, and Chinese Mandarin, which was a much simpler translation. For my sins these days, I chair something called the Eva London Conference in electronic visualization in the arts. So I’m still involved with education, working with lots of London’s major postgraduate courses in the digital arts, and obviously with delegates from all over the world.
Philip: So you can see why Graham’s in PU.
Marcus: I’ll just go back to my major question. Is it photography united or photography united pro?
Philip: It started off as photographers united, which is, you know, it’s all in the wording. But since then it has grown to photographers united pro.
Marcus: Just in case our listeners are trying to find it or whatever. So probably if you did want to search for it, photographers united pro. So tell us about what is the group, who’s in it, what’s the point of it?
Philip: Right. Well, I started it in 2018. I was out one morning walking my dog, and I thought, you know what we’re lacking nowadays? Photographers, because being one myself and going through the same experience, photographers are spending a lot of their time in their office at home, doing all the digital computer work, editing, et cetera, et cetera, and not actually communicating with each other.
Sam: Yeah, it can be very isolated, can’t it?
Philip: It can be very isolating, very lonely. And especially nowadays, you know, in the old days of film, as we all know, you got together in labs. You met up and you went for coffee, you went for a few beers, you know, you chatted.
Marcus: Dad, coffee, beer. Exactly right. Or maybe not quite in that order.
Philip: No, exactly, beer first. So I felt that was lacking, and I wanted to build a community of commercial photographers, basically. Worldwide is really what we’re looking for, but obviously a great deal of them on UK-based. And that was the plan behind it, really, to bring a community together so we could all help each other and help sustain the industry.
Sam: Amazing.
Philip: And the key thing too, really, is one reason why Graham is such a great part of PEU, is bringing students as well as assistants, as well as graduates, all through part of PEU right up to retirement. So what we have is we have a huge range of experience that we can all share. You know, you’ve got people who’ve retired in photography now who have incredible experience, incredible knowledge about the industry, and they can share that with the student who’s studying photography at the University of Edinburgh or wherever it is. So that’s the key behind it.
Sam: Is this almost like a modern version of some other kind of photography associations? I mean, some of those have now started to kind of, that some of them have gone, some of them have kind of started to amalgamate. Is this almost kind of the new version of that, a kind of online version?
Philip: I like to think so. I mean, I have had, I have been approached by a couple of the associations. Initially, I think there was a lot of weariness because they weren’t all concerned about what I was doing. And, you know, I get that. But I think, to me, it’s not about profit. It’s not about, it’s a nonprofit. It’s about just building this community of photographers.
Graham: I think community is the key word here because the other various organizations, the professional photographers charge you quite a lot of money to be a member and PU doesn’t. They’re not really into the self-help or advising each other in the same way that we do on PU all the time and able to pick up on each other’s experience. We don’t believe in having various grades like associates and fellows and all the rest of it because some really bright young person who just knows the Capture One and raw file in post really, really well is as good as I am in that I may have some more experience. But they are as invaluable to the industry as I am. So I’m not going to have someone starting at a lower level.
Marcus: I’m a proud member of PUPro, so I’ll just put that out there straight away.
Philip: Glad to hear it.
Marcus: How many members have you got on the site now then?
Philip: On the Facebook group, we have about 3,400 members. So it’s a good, solid group. And I must say, I’m very impressed with most of the membership. Everybody is happy to share. Everybody is happy to help each other. And when someone comes out with a question, it’s incredible the number of people that respond to try and help. They take the time and the effort to do it. And I think that for me, we’ve got photographers united at a point now where that’s the mentality. At the beginning, we had a few teething problems. There were a few people that were quite disruptive. But we seem to have got the point that people understand what we’re about and what we’re trying to achieve. And it is about diversity. It is about what Sam said, equality. And it’s about bringing all the generations together because our industry is in an interesting phase. We need to have a community. We need to sustain our industry.
And we need to be all together in order to do that, work together. And that’s PU.
Marcus: Yeah, very well put. But you do other things besides the Facebook group, don’t you?
That’s an open question there.
Philip: It is an open question. As in, it would PU or as in, personally?
Marcus: Yes, I make with PU. It would PU, yes.
Philip: We try and arrange socials so people can get together as well. We also try and arrange various meetings. We had one not long ago, which Graham, rightfully shared, where we bring together various people within the industry, agents, photographers, creatives come together and talk and basically give a talk about what they do, the experiences they have and share it amongst everybody else. We work a lot with the education side, which is Graham’s baby. He deals with a lot of that side of things and done an incredible job. And we have a lot of students on there as well as the systems as well as graduates.
Marcus: Well, that’s how I met Graham initially before I joined PU Pro because Graham was an external examiner on my course where I was a senior lecturer on our Fashion and Advertising course. And Graham, you did a fantastic job supporting our course. I’d just have to quickly say that out there. I wouldn’t dwell on it too long. But thank you very much for that, for supporting us.
Graham: Well, it was great. It was great fun to do it. The way you get a worthy course, it’s worth looking after.
Marcus: So we’ve got different ages. We’ve got different abilities. We’ve got the old help and the young. We’ve got the young help in the old. We’ve got lots going on with connections and meetings and so on and so forth. Anything else? Have you guys got the pipeline?
Philip: Support is a great thing, I think, support. I mean, supporting each other, I think that’s essential. But things in the pipeline, I think, well, we’ve got a website also. We’ve also got, obviously, we’re on Instagram and social media things. But we have a website, photographersunited.co.uk. And, you know, a lot of people to join. It’s 30 pounds a year to join. So we’re basically just trying to cover our costs. You know, there’s no incentive here to make money. It’s all about community.
Sam: Okay.
Philip: We’re hoping to arrange to have some more. Sorry, Sam.
Sam: Sorry, go on. We’ve got a slight delay.
Philip: We’re hoping to arrange to have more meetings. Yes. We’re hoping to have a few more meetings where we can bring creatives together to talk, especially with the way AI is featuring at the moment and the effect that that will have on us.
Marcus: Oh, that’s interesting. Did you have a question there, Sam?
Sam: Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what it’s going to maintain today. But yeah, I’m just going to try and kind of summarise what you do, also, kind of effectively. If you want to get involved, there’s the Facebook group, which, from the sound of it, there’s a lot of help out there. There’s a lot of discussion out there. So you can bring your expertise, but also ask your questions. So I don’t know. You could be a wedding photographer and go, no, I always find this bit of the wedding hard. What have you guys done? And lots of people will help. There’s then kind of things.
Marcus: Well, it’s more… I should just point out, Sam. Sorry, just interrupt you. I’m sorry.
It’s more commercial than weddings. Am I right in saying that?
Philip: Yes. It’s not a social…
Sam: No, I meant as in wedding photographers.
Philip: No. Yeah, but even…
Sam: It’s more the commercial photographers.
Philip: It’s the advertising.
Marcus: It’s like our show.
Sam: So it would be more, yeah, branding photographers, first year, headshot, whatever it is. So yeah, you could be like, okay, I keep doing headshots. Have you got any hints and tips for making people smile and keeping them entertained rather than going, say, cheese? Just, you know, there are lots of discussions of problems.
Philip: Discussions, technical discussions as well as… And I think a lot of…
Graham: It can be something like, I’ve upgraded my Mac to the very latest operating system and Capture One doesn’t work anymore, you know, and two days later, Capture One bring out a fix, possibly because they’ve read that there are a number of people out there who’ve got a problem with it.
Marcus: You were talking about Capture One today. Are you having a problem with your Capture One software by this time?
Graham: No, no, they were such dear friends to us. They actually lent us, when we did the Henry Taunt project, they lent us one of three digital backs that you could run out of doors without a mains. And Capture One had one of them, Patrick Litchfield had one of them, and we had one of them. So we spent a lot of time around Paddy Studio comparing notes.
Philip: But also just to mention, with PU, we are fortunate that a lot of companies give us a lot of discounts. So we’re usually 10% or more. So there’s a lot on the website, there’s a whole list of discounts.
Sam: Okay, so there’s kind of other benefits to being a member as well in terms of that sort of thing.
Philip: I mean, for £30 a year.
Sam: Yeah, so it sounds like that. And then you get the meetings as well, and then where you can get from the sound of experts in giving talks and the socials as well. So, yeah, there’s a huge amount to it, isn’t it? So, you know, and at a really great price.
Marcus: And also, I do believe you had an auction.
Philip: I’ll let Graham talk about that.
Graham: Okay. Yes, there was a member of PU who used to do social photography, got a job during the pandemic for a more persuasion house in Harrogate. And we thought it would be very interesting if mainly our members could put work into this auction and see how it went. And there were some people who bet the farm on it amongst our members and printed on aluminium and all the rest of it. Little old Graham here sort of dug out a few pictures from his folio case and a couple of frames he had kicking around in the shed and managed to sell everything I did. But that was the way it went. But yes, I have a mentee from my London College of Communication days and she sold one of her pieces for £500. So that was nice.
Sam: And then on the education side, so if you’re kind of starting out or feel there’s areas you need help, do you guys also do courses and that sort of thing or is it more that communal help from each other?
Graham: We don’t do courses. We have good connections with two or three of the best courses in the United Kingdom right now. We are on very close terms. Well, yeah, it’s really if someone says I want to do documentary photography, you might send them one place. If someone says I want to be a commercial photographer, you’d send them another place. And if someone says I want to be an art photographer, you might send them somewhere else.
There are some dreadful online MA courses and there are some fabulous online MA courses. And luckily, I know the good, the bad, and the wrong ones. So I can advise people.
Sam: An excellent place, not necessarily to get you courses, but to go get the advice, find out which courses will be beneficial, which ones to avoid, which ones will be right.
Graham: I occasionally write up… I’ll occasionally write up someone’s UCAS or something like that, you know, as a recommendation, or give the course leader who’s a long time later by in a ring and say, please interview so and so.
Philip: And actually, a lot of the college leaders in photography and various universities are in the community as well.
Sam: So there you can… Yeah, that’s a good point. …as well and say our courses, yeah.
And courses are actually taught to the people behind them.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah, it also gives us an opportunity because we’re at the coalface and we’ve got people who are working all day, every day in it to actually collaborate with course leaders to be called in, you know, for our members to be called in to do one-day lectures if they’re not, you know, or half-day lectures or something like that. So it gives them a good opportunity for connections with the industry.
Marcus: Let’s take it. Let’s take it. Let’s take that advice that you give to your members. To our listeners. I mean, you are uniquely positioned to see, have a great overview of the photographic industry. Can you come up with some, maybe suggest some help, some tips, some help for our listeners? Some advice?
Philip: I’ll let you go first, Graham.
Graham: Okay. All right. Be prepared. If you work, if you worked with film, as I did for 25 years, you haven’t got a set chance to fix it in post afterwards and you get into the habit of actually planning everything. You know, as far as you can, the sun is going to come out at 11 o’clock and go in at 12:30. So you actually will sit around with models chatting to them till 11 o’clock and get everyone nice and friendly. And then you’ll be doing the shoot in that slot. Back in the old days, we even used to phone up the local RAS station for local weather and things like that, which we probably wouldn’t get away with now. But it is absolutely planning, planning, planning. And the one thing I would say, and then I’ll finish, is sooner or later someone is going to ask you to do a risk assessment. Whether it is actually so you can hang your pictures in a gallery or whether it’s a job where you’ve got an electronic flash unit and water in the same studio at the same time. And it would be very good for anyone who’s listening to this to learn how to do a risk assessment and to have a go at one, even if it’s a dry run or something they’ve done a shoot of already, so that they know how to do a risk assessment when they’re asked because risk assessments can actually save your tail if something goes wrong.
Sam: And that’s interesting because nobody’s ever mentioned those before. And, yeah, I mean, people are out in the public and out and about a lot. So I think you’re right. That could save you getting in a lot of bother if something goes wrong, that you’ve actually done the risk assessment. Actually, it is part of your job and part of your due diligence, isn’t it? If you’re out there, you know, with the public, you’ve actually thought about this.
Philip: Well, I think that’s the key thing, isn’t it? This is a business, so you have to operate it as a business. A key factor I would probably bring out. I had a couple, actually. One of them, I think, is get out there and meet people. It’s all about connection, assuming the right people.
Just get in the industry, meet people. Be bold, be creative, but get out there and meet people. It’s amazing. If you can connect with people, how much work you can get from them. I know nowadays it’s very difficult. People get emails and inject email and don’t bother with email, but you’ve just got to knock on doors.
Sam: That’s it. Secondly, I’ll just spend a little bit longer on Photoshop when eventually it’s like, no, get away from the screen. Yeah, meet people, network.
Philip: Knock on doors, knock on doors, meet people. I mean, that’s how I started. I know it was a long time ago and things were very different then, but I literally just went there and knocked on doors. The other thing I would say is keep fresh. Keep reinventing yourself. The important thing is to retain clients. Keep your clients. My career in photography, I’ve been very proud of the fact that I’ve kept clients for 10, 15 years and it kept coming back to me. When that happens, what’s really important is retain your client, but also give your clients something new each time. So be creative, whether it’s a new type of camera, whether it’s a new process, whether it’s a new way of lighting, anything, but just keep it fresh.
Sam: We’re not just coming back and it’s kind of same old, same old.
Philip: The same thing. And then the client, you want to wow the client every time you will. So show them something different. They go, wow, I haven’t seen that before. That’s incredible. So it’s keeping it fresh. Reinvent yourself if you have to. I mean, I started in fashion, 15 years I shot fashion, high fashion and then I got bored with that whole side of things. So I decided I reinvented myself and went into more of a sports brand, sports advertising. And I love that area. And I did that for the rest of the time. So it’s what I do now. So that’s my key aspects.
Marcus: Nice one. Excellent tips there.
Philip: And I’d like to ask you something, Marcus, if I could. I mean, you’ve been in the advertising world for many years as well. What are your key factors? What are your experiences that you would want to put out there?
Marcus: Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity to ask you questions. I’ll answer your questions. Do you know what? My big thing that I’m pushing at the moment, Philip, in fact, similar to what you just said, it’s about ideas. It’s the value of having ideas. And in fact, I’m just about to go in the talking circuit and doing workshops all about my new thing, which is the idea of ideas. I saw a podcast. I was watching a podcast today by a great photographer. And he was saying that you only need two things to be successful in this business. You need to be different to everybody else. And you need to be a nice person. The second bit I’m working on.
Philip: I don’t believe that. Another thing we were talking about, Graham, which I think is worth mentioning is building a great team.
Marcus: And how in our gaming fashion.
Philip: Oh, absolutely. Having a great team behind you that you can trust. Trust you. It’s about the team. It’s not about one person. It’s about the team. And I think the key factor that I spoke to Graham about was how important the assistant or assistants are. That you have such a great, you’ve got each other’s backs. And so if you’re going out there as an assistant photographer or you’re looking to be an assistant photographer, bear that in mind.
Connect with the photographer. Look after them. It’s all about taking care of each other.
Sam: And then, so a lot of our listeners are photographers that work on their own. So if they are working on their own, then they’re listening and thinking, yeah, it’d be really great to kind of work as a team like that. As a solo photographer, who would be the first person to think about kind of bringing in to start to build a team? What sort of things could they do?
Philip: Well, I would say an assistant. Assistant. Digital operator. I mean, a team would include people like hair and makeup, stylists, depending on what genre of photography you’re in. I mean, a lot of commercial photography that I’ve experienced personally, we’ve always had a big team. So I’ve always had a digital operator.
Sam: But you were talking about a team on a shoot rather than a team permanently with you.
Philip: Exactly.
Sam: So you’re thinking more solo business, but on the day, a big team.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think that many of us can actually support a full time assistant these days with having to pay for their pension. And if they’re a young lady, they’ve got to have a separate loo and all the rest of it. So no, we work freely. Yeah. I mean, one quickie to add there is that there are some extremely good courses in commercial photography, as we’ve already mentioned. And they would love some of their second and third year students, who are already very savvy in the technical side to have a studio experience or two. So if you work mainly alone, but would like to have someone along to carry the lights and watch what you’re doing, yes, okay, you’ll be teaching them a bit of stuff, but they will sure teach you a little bit of stuff if it comes to the tech side. And that can work very nicely all round. And that could actually build into something that you head hunt them when they leave college and become a graduate because you’ve enjoyed working with them for the last year, which is what happened to me. I nearly failed my third year at college because I was already working as a studio.
Sam: So then, Mr. Coates, there is probably one. Talk to your local college, whether they’re doing photography courses and about…
Graham: You can talk to your local college or anyone would be very welcome to contact me. We know which of the best courses for various things. And I can point them in the right direction. And the people who are the course leaders on these courses are good buddies of mine. I can put you in touch.
Philip: And the other thing I just want to bring out is the other side of that because I didn’t go to university. I didn’t go to college to study photography. I basically knocked on doors to get into the industry. So if you’re not doing the education, that’s fine too. But you’ve just got to be very determined, very focused and just start knocking on doors.
Sam Excellent.
Graham: Yeah. I mean, it’s possible to do things self-taught. Some people… One of the interesting areas that I’m looking at at the moment is neurodiversity. When I did an internal subject review for Kingston School of Art, we came up that an awful lot of their art students were neurodiverse in one way or another. And in fact, young Opal Turner, whom Marcus knows because he’s one of his alumni from the University of South Wales, has been working with Ogilvy Advertising Agency on how they tap in to the neurodiversity that they have amongst their present creative team and actually use it as an enhancement rather than a disability. So there’s stuff like that, which I think is important. I call it a creative gene rather than a disability, personally.
Sam: Perfect. And then…
Graham: That’s also… It’s also, incidentally, because I got thrown out of teacher training college for bad spelling because spell checks hadn’t been invented.
Sam: Well, they had been when I came along. Anyway… Okay. So if people want to join the group, is there a kind of trial or is it just kind of sign up and pay? How does it work if people want to come along and join?
Philip: We have… We do ask people for specific things. They have to have a website.
They have to show their commercial photography. And they have to show they have insurance to operate as a commercial photographer.
Sam: Okay, so it’s not like there’s some people in there who are kind of just wondering what’s going on. It is you are select as whose goes in. So it is all people who want to be there.
Graham: Yes, we don’t want a keen… Yes, that’s right. We don’t want a keen camera club person who want people who are really trying to get into the industry even if they’re in… Even if they’re early career, that’s fine.
Sam: And they just want to… Can they try it or is it kind of pay and join up or is there kind of a month?
Philip: No, there’s no paying for basically joining. And that’s it. The only thing you pay for is for the website.
Sam: Oh, I see, excellent. So effectively it is like… There’s also… You can go to the website, you can go to the Facebook, take part in that and then if you like…
Philip: Decide if you want to be part of it.
Sam: Oh, perfect.
Philip: And also we have a photographic selling and buying page. Because the idea of that too is to have all between photographers united. So it’s only photographers united members that are in there. So you have that trust of selling equipment and buying equipment.
Sam: Okay. Excellent. And we are starting, I think, Marcus, to run out of time, aren’t we, unfortunately?
Marcus: We have, unfortunately. A little bit over. It was worth it.
Sam: Really interesting chat. Lots and lots for our listeners there. They will enjoy the show, I am sure. And listeners, what you need to make sure is that you don’t miss any future shows.
And the way to do that is to get onto the shoot to the top mailing list. Then the shows arrive in your inbox every single week and you don’t miss them. And you get tips from Marcus and I. You get news and all sorts of exciting stuff. So to get on the mailing list, simply go to shoottothetop.com and fill in the form. So make sure you do that now. So Philip and Graham, thank you so, so much for being with us and making an amazing show.
Philip: Thank you for your time.
Sam: And Marcus, I’ll see you next week.
Marcus: See you next week, Sam. And thanks, guys. I look forward to chatting with you on your Facebook group.
Philip: Lovely to meet you both.
Graham: Cheers.
