Simon Hill, 'Not Quite the Journey I Had Imagined' - Tuesday 3rd October 2023.

    

On Tuesday 3rd October, Morpeth Camera Club held their Annual Open Event with guest speaker Simon Hill, HonFRPS
and President of the Royal Photography Society. Simon is an award-winning professional editorial photographer living
in the north of England and working internationally. His work has appeared in almost all UK national newspapers and
in over 300 books, journals and magazines around the world.

His presentation was entitled ‘Not Quite the Journey I Had Imagined’ and Simon opened with a chronological account
of his beginnings in photography, from having his first camera at three years old, paying for a better camera with the
proceeds of his paper round, through to his more sophisticated equipment he uses today. He joined the RPS in 1980
as a teenager and began to work towards achieving the Society’s distinctions, gaining his LRPS while still at school,
his ARPS while at Art College and his FRPS shortly after graduating with an HND in Professional Photography from
Blackpool College of Art. He also has a BA(Hons) in photography from the Open College of Art, and an MA from the
St Martins School of Art.

He realised very early on that he had wanted to be an editorial photographer but despite this he answered an advert
for Cadbury’s in York which involved photographing packaging and chocolate ranges. It was not a bad move in that it
taught him how to use light, but it was not really for him. A different career path took him to York Archaeological Trust,
photographing relics from excavations, and then providing images for the Archaeology through the Lens Exhibition and
subsequently for a series of book covers. During this time the Yorvik Viking Exhibition was being updated and the old
exhibition had to be dismantled and Simon, together with friends, bought it and kept it in containers.

Anecdotes of travelling around Iceland and finding a museum, who would house the exhibition followed. This set him
off on a route to museum design and payment for this enabled him to concentrate on his own photography. Work for
the Public Record Office, the Tyne & Wear Museum Service and a contract with UNESCO followed. He is passionate
about English History and people and his next consignment was to provide images of ordinary people doing traditional
English trades for the book ‘England in Particular.’ This included allotment owners, steam railway workers, dry stone
wall builders and graveyard workers.

We saw images taken for his International Federation of Photographic Art ualification; of portraits, café and street life,
city scapes, waterfalls in Iceland and portraits of Vietnamese children. Having lived in Ireland he returned to Harrogate
where he was commissioned to photograph the Great Yorkshire Show, cycling championships, the British Institute of
Professional Photographer of the Year, and in the same year was elected a trustee of the Royal Photographic Society.
He continued with information and images of past presidents of the society and how he had achieved this accolade.

What is editorial photography he asked; it tells a story that is used in conjunction with a journalist to illustrate a
piece. When freelancing, one has to keep in mind the different styles of the publications for whom one is working.
He then followed with a series of editorial images from protest marches such as Kill the Bill, XR Extinction Rebellion
and COP26. It is important to think ahead to place oneself in the best position possible to capture the moment, he
said. Simon had also worked on an exhibition of monochrome portraits of Holocaust Survivors, explaining how the
subjects were lit and the equipment used.

He concluded by saying that he had followed his chosen route to be an editorial photographer but there were many
diversions along the way on an eventful journey. Gathering many accolades in his career, he has certainly achieved
his goal.

          

Morpeth Camera Club Chairman, Peter Downs thanked Simon, adding that his talk was a very interesting insight into
editorial photography.