Jury 2010

Alan Sparrow

EXECUTIVE PICTURE EDITOR, METRO NEWSPAPER (UK)

Since 1999, the Metro newspaper has had a massive impact on UK newspaper industry. Distributed for free and designed to be read in 20 minutes by commuters on the way to work, the paper now has 14 localized editions around the country and a print run of 1.25 million.

Alan Sparrow has been the Executive Picture Editor since the newspaper's foundation and oversees a picture desk that has to search through an ocean of images for Metro's mix of articles on travel, arts, homes, style, health and entertainment. "We have to look through twenty thousand pictures a day and get them down to the few dozen that we use in the paper."

Due to the increasing amount of photo agencies and digital images, the amount of images a photo editor has to evaluate per day is increasing year after year. What changes has Alan seen in the industry since he started as a messenger boy at a Fleet Street picture agency after he left school?

"I suppose normal produce for a day’s work 30 years ago would have been 100 or 200 photographs but now we get that in less than an hour. So on Oscar night in 2007 we had something like 900 pictures of Dame Helen Mirren alone. Every three seconds a new image arrived. At this year's Oscars, we had in excess of 12,000 pictures on the following morning to sift through."

These numbers almost pale in comparison with the record. "The most images we’ve ever had in one day was 42,000 - again on Oscars night. But this was closely followed by the Haiti earthquake this year. Including other news on Jan 12th, it pushed the number of photos to about 40,000 in 24 hours.  That’s a huge number of pictures to sort through."

Alan is also the chairman of the Picture Editor's Guild. The organization was established in 1977 and is formed by around one hundred members from the picture desks of the national press, regional newspapers, international press agencies and domestic photo agencies.

What does he love about photography? "I love the instant message that a picture can bring. As for sports photography, you have to chance to see so much passion and energy which I'm looking forward to see in this year's Red Bull Illume."

www.metro.co.uk