Has The Princess Of Wales Saved Photography?

Sometime in the late 2000s I was buying drinks for a bunch of newspaper photographers.

They’d been fired or were sure they were going to be. All were crying into their beer.

These were skilled guys, in some cases absolutely brilliant and moreover brave snappers who had covered dangerous wars for disgracefully ungrateful newspapers.

Why were they so glum? Because some idiot called Steve Jobs had invented this thing called the iPhone.

This meant that almost anyone could take a useable photo – a reporter, or just a passer-by.

The picture and design desk back home could tidy up the image, make it look like it was a professional job. In fact, they could do pretty much anything they liked with it.

Make Madonna look thinner. Or fatter. Or whatever they felt like.

The photographers’ pessimism wasn’t misplaced. They were right. These days some newspapers don’t employ even a single staff photographer.

They rely on snaps taken on phones, by freelancers, by agencies and on PR handouts.

Perhaps the Princess of Wales – or her phone expert – has just done the photography trade a great service.

Her Mother’s Day snap designed to kill off the mad internet conspiracy theories as to her whereabouts – she’s been abducted by aliens, murdered by the ghost of Prince Philip – has instead turned into a row about photo manipulation.

The public response is mostly, roughly, well we all doctor our holiday photos, but we aren’t presenting them as pieces of news.

(Obviously, I have no idea how to manipulate photos or my byline pic wouldn’t have me as a pudgy nightclub bouncer).

My favourite response to the fake picture story will be anything said about it by Piers Morgan, who got sacked from The Daily Mirror for printing fake pictures of British soldiersabusing Iraqi prisoners.

That was in 2004 – it’s not like we didn’t know photos in newspapers aren’t always accurate.

But the Kate Middleton issue moves things on more than a bit.

If it were honest – which it is not – the newspaper trade would soon start labelling stories written by AI as just that, and printing disclaimers next to photographs admitting they were probably doctored.

Perhaps, as a start, they stop using any material provided by the royals.

For the flak trade, I think it is time for renewed caution on photo handouts.

Is your CEO really that good looking?

Perhaps both the hack and flak trades can go back to hiring professional photographers.

I knew we’d miss them.