October 2024 Paul Smith
What is your current position and who is your employer?
I’m a self-employed photographer, based in Los Angeles, covering entertainment events for my business, Featureflash Photo Agency.
I mainly shoot red carpet events in Los Angeles, such as movie premieres, awards shows, Oscars, Emmys, and film festivals. I love the spontaneity of being there in the moment, the colorful fashions, and catching those special moments with celebrities.
When did you become a PPAGLA member?
I can’t remember exactly, certainly over 20 years ago.
How long have you been a photojournalist and how did you get started?
Born in London, UK, I started taking pictures at the age of 13, and joined the local Streatham Camera Club. On leaving school, I worked for my dad’s engineering business for a year to earn some money to get some decent camera gear.
Around 1973 I was then very lucky and managed to get a job as a photographer with a small Fleet Street photo agency - Monitor Press Features - which specialized in stock portraits of celebrities, politicians and royals, etc.
After a couple of years I left the agency and started my own freelance photography business, which I’ve done ever since.
In 1980 I set up my own agency - Featureflash Photo Agency - and rented an office and darkroom on London’s Fleet Street, at that time the heart of the British newspaper business.
I specialized in shooting entertainment and royal events. For several years, I was the principal nighttime entertainment photographer for the London Evening News and London Evening Standard newspapers, covering red carpet premieres, Royalty, West End show openings, and post-event parties.
In those days, after covering a premiere, I’d come back to my office to process the films and make the prints. We’d literally run our prints down the streets to the various national newspapers. We’d drop the prints on the photo desk, and hope to see my images in the papers the next morning. When I took the London Underground to Fleet Street the next day, it was always a kick to see fellow commuters with their noses in their morning papers and my photos on the front page staring back at me.
Please share some career highlights:
In 1979 I traveled to the South of France to cover the Cannes Film Festival. Although it was extremely hard work I loved covering the Festival and vowed to myself to cover it every year from then. Remarkably, 45 years later and I’ve never missed a year!
In 1988 I was covering a party at the Conservative Party Conference and noticed the then Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke puffing on a big cigar whilst holding a glass of brandy. I grabbed a quick shot, before being asked to leave, but I knew I had a great picture which several of the British tabloids were happy to use. I found out a few years later that Clarke also used the picture in his autobiography!
British Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke, M.P., at the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton 1988.
Following several visits to Los Angeles in the late 1980s to cover the Oscars and the Emmys, I decided to up sticks and move to Los Angeles in 1991.
At that time I was one of the first independent photographers in Southern California to transmit entertainment images back to the UK newspapers using a Leafax negative transmitter.
It used to take around 21 minutes to transmit a single color picture (that was if you were lucky and there was no noise on the phone line). I’d be up for most of the night sending my pictures but it paid off with quite a few spreads in the next day’s papers.
Little did we know then how quickly things would change with the advent of digital technology and the Internet!
Around 1998 I was hired by Epson America to go on a press tour to Japan. The tour was to promote Epson’s new photo-quality printers and it was a great opportunity to visit Japan and see behind the scenes at a couple of their factories.
I was one of the first photographers to purchase one of Nikon’s game-changing professional digital cameras - the Nikon D1. At that time I was spending a small fortune on hundreds of rolls of film and processing each month. Suddenly, within a month of getting the D1, I practically stopped shooting film completely.
Los Angeles, with its many entertainment photo opportunities, has been my home for over 30 years now. I became an American citizen and have a wife and a son in Los Angeles.
What advice do you have for students and those hoping to become photojournalists?
Unfortunately these days, it’s becoming harder and harder to actually make a living as a photojournalist. So my main advice would be to always have a backup plan if things don’t work out.
Find a type of subject that you love shooting and specialize in that.
Keep your copyright and build an archive of your images. It could become your pension in the future.
You never know where your pictures may turn up. I recently sold a picture I took of Mama Cass Elliott in London shortly before she died in1974.
Last year I happened to catch the CNN coverage of the memorial service for Lisa Marie Presley. There was a large print of her on display on the stage, I thought it looked familiar and, sure enough, it was my picture that I took of her in 2002.
Lisa Marie Presley picture; CNN screen grab of memorial service.
What is something you know now that you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
Know when to say “No.”
Learn the business side of the industry.
What is your favorite part of being a PPAGLA member?
Being part of a community of other L.A.-based photographers and being inspired by seeing some of their work on the PPAGLA web site and the annual “Just One More” publication.
Oh, and of course the Press Parking placard!