Spotlight Feature with Entertainment Photographer Doug Peters

For this month’s News, Sport and Entertainment Spotlight we’re featuring the work of photographer Doug Peters. Doug has over 31 years of experience and works primarily in the entertainment industry. With the awards season currently underway with events including the GRAMMYs, Oscars, and BAFTAs, we caught up with Doug to gain an insight into what it’s like to work as an entertainment photographer.

LP: Please tell us a bit about yourself and what made you want to get into photography?

DP: I was always interested in Art at school, so I think someone noticed and I was given my Great Uncle’s very old 35mm camera to use. I used to get up extra early before my paper round to cycle up to the local woods to capture the sunrise. Perfectly normal thing for a 15-year-old school kid to do, right? I was definitely too keen back then!  Something must have struck a chord as I asked for a ‘proper’ camera for my 18th birthday, a Canon 650 which was a 35mm film camera.

After going down the route of A-Level Art, followed by a Foundation degree in Fine Art I specialised in photography before heading to the Kent Institute of Art and Design to study Commercial & Editorial Photography.

Leaving there in the early 1990s, a college friend told me to come to London as there was some work going at the celebrity picture agency All Action Pictures where they were now working. Whilst photographing celebrities was not top of my list of dream jobs it did sound pretty interesting. When I arrived on Monday morning, the boss was busy, so I was asked to start doing some slide filing in the library. Five days later (and still in the same clothes) I was still filing. I returned to All Action on the Monday, but I never did have an interview, no one told me to leave, and didn’t actually get paid anything for the first two weeks, but that was it, I was working there.

My timing was pretty good as it happened, the 1990s was the birth and boom years of celebrity culture which carried on through to the early 2000s. This saw the expansion of the whole celebrity industry, including the photo agencies, so I hit it at just about the right moment. It’s been about 31 years now since my freelance photography journey started and I’m still waiting for that job interview.

LP: What made you want to become an entertainment news photographer over other photography areas?

DP: I’d be lying if I said I’d always wanted to photograph celebrities, but that early job opportunity shaped everything and I’m very glad I took a punt as it’s made for a great, although pretty unpredictable life in the industry. Early on I was a big fan of Sebastião Salgado, Alec Soth, Robert Capa, Garry Winogrand and Dorothea Lange. I dreamt of driving the Alaskan Highway bottom to top photographing what I found  — snow, probably.

The first photography book I read was Don McCullin’s autobiography when I was dreaming (like a naïve idiot) of being a conflict photographer. Well, that book put an end to that, talk about a reality check.

LP: What do you think is the best way to prepare for an entertainment event?

DP:  If you work in the UK, check the weather report! Charge your batteries, bring a stepladder, and don’t be late!

LP: Do you work well under pressure to get that ‘perfect’ shot?

DP: Yes, I think. I’m more of a stress-head in the lead up to a big event, most of them to be fair are just another day at the office as I’ve been doing it for so long but the bigger ones, or one-to-ones still get me sometimes. Once I’m there and shooting autopilot/auto instinct kicks in and you just get on with it.

I’m not sure there is such a thing as a perfect shot on a red carpet, and if you think you’re going to get one five times a week then I think that’s a bit delusional. Chance plays a big part, but you can definitely make your own luck, especially if you anticipate a picture that is about to happen and the person next to you hasn’t noticed. Just aim to take excellent pictures, every time, and hope for perfection!

LP: Which Red Carpet event is your favourite to capture and why?

DP: I think it’s the Vanity Fair Oscars Viewing Party. The word ‘favourite’ would be doing some heavy lifting in this example as you are onsite for 12 hours and the red carpet lasts for around 8 hours, which is bonkers. You’ll shoot 6000+ frames and then there’s the edit. Basically you wake up around 4am on the day of the shoot (jet-lagged) and then go to bed at 10am the next day. You get one hour sleep, before checking out the hotel and going to the airport to sleep badly on a plane for the next 11 hours.

So why is it a ‘favourite’? I think I like the challenge. It takes me out of my normal workflow of London premieres, red carpets etc. and you end up in LA for a few days. As long as you can deal with having no sleep for two days it’s great!

LP: Do you have to travel a lot during events seasons?

DP: I’ll regularly be in the US about three times a year, Oscars, The Met Gala and the MTV VMAs. I’ve also shot the Cannes Film Festival for about 25 years which is a two-week job. The MTV EMA’s will also be in a different European city every year. Whilst I am mainly London bound for events, I’ll also do Manchester and Liverpool occasionally, and when it comes to shooting the Royal Family that can literally be anywhere, normally just for the day or a quick overnighter if in the UK. When they go on longer tours, it can take you anywhere in the world. I’ve been to places such as Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, South Africa, Scandinavia, Ireland and Greece. I think the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s visit to Australia and New Zealand was something like 18 flights in 21 days. Pretty extreme but completely normal for those tours.

LP: What’s your go-to photography equipment?

DP: I started with Canon. After that 18th birthday present, I bought my first professional Canon kit with money from my summer job post college. It was an EOS 1n film camera with a flashgun, a couple of lenses and a camera bag. My new agency boss on seeing the (cheap) bag I’d bought immediately told me to bin it and gave me an old Billingham, so I looked like a proper photographer! I switched to Nikon well over 15 years ago when the D3’s came out, and I now have a couple of Nikon Z9’s, too many lenses covering everything from 15mm – 500mm along with Profoto A10 flash guns.

As my work has become a bit more varied in recent years, I now also have studio lights, tripods, light stands, monopods and a bunch of modifiers which come out of the bag a couple of times a week. I also have a DJI Mavic 3 drone, although I don’t use that for the work we’re talking about here, and the same goes for an Ebony 5×4 plate camera and a Bronica SQAi 6×6. Seeing it all written down here, I think I own too much!

LP: Any advice for fellow photographers who would like to work within the entertainment news sector?

DP: Taking the rose-tinted specs off, there have been lots of ups and downs over the past 30 years. Photo agencies that were around when I started are long gone or have been swallowed up. Many photographers have left the industry, but some have arrived!

It is a very different industry to the one I joined. Living in London is now ridiculously expensive for someone just starting out so that’s something you would need to think about. The entertainment industry is still very London-centric. If you want a freelance career, you’ll need to be diverse in your skills and willing to adapt. You need your own equipment, which is expensive but if you manage to get a staff job, then obviously all would be provided.

One route would be taking a Picture Desk position as an editor where you’ll be paid a salary that you can hopefully use towards buying equipment or securing a loan, and then learn from what you’re seeing every day coming in on the news feed. What I did, a long time ago admittedly, was seize an opportunity, sleep on a friend’s floor, work for nothing in the office, but all the time knowing that I had already bought my cameras with my summer job money, so I was good to go when the moment presented itself. And that’s exactly what happened. Other ways in are work experience and internships, be prepared to earn nothing in the short term, hustle, email, phone. And when the moment comes be ready – you have the equipment, you know how to use it, be available, be professional, be reliable. You’ve been stalking the photographers you like on Instagram to see the kind of pictures they are taking on a daily basis, so you know what the industry needs. Other than that, just take a chance! Worked for me.

We hope you enjoyed this month’s NSE Spotlight. To find out more about Doug you can follow his Instagram here. Check out Doug’s full collection on Alamy here.