Is it easier to become a F1 driver than an F1 Photographer?

There is a bit of a debate over on the excellent TenTenths forum about the restrictions being placed on spectators taking photographs at race meetings these days. This is an extract from the terms and conditions of entry at the Motorsports Vision circuits, which includes Oulton, Brands, Cadwell and Snetterton:

The use of photographic equipment is allowed for private non-commercial purposes only. Any other recording or transmission of audio, visual or audio-visual material or any information or data by any method in any media relating to the Event or any part of it is prohibited. The ticketholder hereby assigns to MSV (by way of present assignment of future rights) the copyright in any audio, visual or audio-visual materials produced by the ticketholder at the Event.

So, effectively you sign away all future rights to the photographs you take, when you buy an entry ticket.You are also barred, it would seem, from even writing about an event, for example on a blog, social networking site or homepage.

This draconian set of regulations is nothing compared to the further restrictions placed on any professional photographer working at the circuit with accreditation. It seems the circuits are issuing accreditation in two forms, media and commercial. The requirements for media accreditation are a commission from a recognised publication, clippings showing previously published pictures from the venue, and details of your public liability insurance which must be for a minimum of £5 million…

Seems like a classic Catch-22 situation. You can’t use pictures taken as a spectator for publication, and to get accreditation, you need not have had photo’s published first!

The terms of a media accreditation are that you can use photos taken at the event only for editorial use in the journal for which you are accredited. You are not allowed to use them in advertising or PR, or to sell them to third parties. This would require a separate commercial licence for which you have to pay “a sum of money”. In the good old days, the only way to make motor racing photography viable, was to “hawk” your photos round the paddock, selling them to drivers or sponsors who’s image you had captured at a previous meetings.

The money you received for covering an event for one of the specialist publications would hardly cover your petrol and shoe leather, and don’t even think about recovering he cost of all your photo gear. I found an old statement from one magazine recently, which came with the cheque for covering a meeting at Oulton Park in 1987, words and pictures, which was the princely sum of £28.50. For this, I had to drive to and from the circuit, watch the racing, take pictures, write 1000 words, hand copy the meeting results into the correct format, and send them together with a couple of rolls of film via Red Star from Piccadilly Station in Manchester  (a parcels service run by British Rail back then) no later than 9am on Monday morning after the meeting.  If you were not able to sell your photos as well, it would have been a fast way to lose an awful lot of cash.

When I started covering the sport, it was thanks to a small circulation publication called Rally Sport, edited Dave Orrick. I had been a spectator at a very snowy club rally at Knowsley Safari Park, and managed to capture a couple of spectacular pictures of cars struggling in the conditions. I submitted these to Dave, and to my amazement they were published. So I began chatting with Dave about getting more work published and I suggested a column on club motor racing, which was a bit cheeky as it was not exactly topical in a rallying paper! Once again, I was amazed and flattered that he agreed with my plan, particularly as he didn’t even know if I could write!

Armed with a letter from Rally Sport, signed by the editor, I was able to obtain media accreditation for all the UK circuits.

Back in the late 80′s, Formula 1 was still developing as an international sport, and had yet to become the multi billion dollar industry of today. Consequently, media accreditation for F1 races was relatively easy in comparison even to taking pictures today at Cadwell Park. I found that it always helped if you helped the press officers at Silverstone and Brands during the season (Dave Fern and Martin Whitmarsh – yes the one who went on to head up Ford’s motorsport division), by letting them use some of your photos for raceday programmes.  It came in useful when GP accreditation time came around.

I also got some good advice from Maurice Hamilton, then editor of Autocourse, who suggested that I should avoid the big, prestigious races such as Monaco, and apply for FIA accreditation for less popular races, such as Portugal. He was, or course, correct and I managed to get accreditation for the Portuguese GP in 1986, even without a commissioning publication.

These days, it near impossible to get media accreditation for a Grand Prix. The FIA and FOM control access by the media and issue a limited number of permanent passes to those who meet a rigorous set of criteria which is based largely on your previous experience and published work. Here are the FIA’s basic requirements:

The FIA only accredits publications and agencies:
a) with a minimum circulation whose size and quality fulfill the criteria of the FIA;
b) with a format and quality which fulfill the criteria of the FIA;
c) which are available to the public in sales outlets (for publications only);

If you don’t qualify for a permanent pass, then the only other option is to apply to the organisers of the individual races for accreditation. But don’t think this is going to be an easy ride. For example, the number of photographer passes available to the entire UK media issued for the British GP last season was 12. That’s right, just a dozen passes to be shared by every newspaper in the UK.

To qualify for a permanent photographer’s credential the applicant must have attended at least 14 events during the previous year’s Championship. Only in cases the FIA accepts as force majeure the number of events may be lower than 14. Additionally, to qualify for a permanent photographer’s pass, at least 240 photographs, per pass issued, must have been published in the print press during the previous year’s championship.

When I look at what has to happen before you get the opportunity to take photos at Grand Prix in 2010, it makes me wonder how anyone can make the grade these days. Just getting on the first rung of the ladder takes not just practice, skill and perseverance, but a huge chunk of luck. And once on that first rung of the ladder, working your way upwards, gaining in reputation and competence, honing your skills, making the right contacts, appears in many ways to be a challenge similar to one faced by prospective F1 drivers, or in some ways it is even harder…

You may think this is a pretty lame suggestion, but before you hurl abuse, let me explain why I think this assertion has a grain of truth about it. Back in the mid 80′s when I was active, there were a number of photographers who you would regularly see credited against F1 photos you saw in magazines and books; Bernard Asset, Paul Henri-Cahier, Keith Sutton, John Townsend, Lucas Gorys and others.

25 years later, all of these photographers are still active, and attending Grand Prix as FIA permanent pass holders. When you consider that the average career of an F1 driver is probably little more than a handful of years, I think you can see where I’m coming from. A considerable number of the photographers who cover F1 have been doing so for decades, and because a) it’s their job, and b) they are above all else enthusiasts of the sport, the chances of them hanging up their kit bag and opening up a vacancy on the permanent pass register are close to zero.

The number of permanent photographers credentials to cover F1 is strictly limited (for fairly obvious reasons) and to obtain one you have to have covered a minimum of 14 races the previous season. Considering that to be able to cover 14 races without a permanent pass requires you to apply to each individual race organiser, who has no more than 12 passes available to distribute for members of the national press, you can guess that going down this route would be about as easy as winning X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing in the same year!

Nevertheless, despite the almost impossible mountain that a photographer has to climb to get into F1, there are some that do, and the reason can only be that the FIA Press Commission, who control the allocation of credentials for the photographers and journalists, is made up of working media professionals. The filter mechanism that is the FIA accreditation system is there to first of all dissuade spurious applications from the great unwashed, and ensure that the guys who really need and deserve to gain access are given the opportunity to do so.

After the successful 1986 season, which saw my work used in many publications, I received an offer from a fairly big London photo agency to cover the GP circus for them. Becoming a full time Formula 1 photographer was something I always wanted to do, but changes in my personal circumstances in 1987 meant that I could no longer pursue this ambition.  I often wonder how things would have turned out.