It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when you think of a press photographer, your first thought will be of a man.
This is backed up by a survey in 2018 about the state of news photography, where it concluded that 80 per cent of photographers were male. I was in the 20 per cent of females working as a freelance photographer for a regional newspaper.
I'm currently self employed and love the freedom of working for myself. In this lockdown period, I've been been trawling through old images from my full-time press days, which has made me smile and feel sad at the same time. So I decided to write about them in a blog.
I will try to change names where I can, although to be honest, I've forgotten a lot of them. (I have been working as a photographer for the past 20 years and you meet a lot of people in that time).
Names I may forget, but people's faces stay with me.
Often I've been in my local supermarket and seen someone I recognise, sensing I have taken their picture. But by the time I've connected them to a story, they've walked past and I'm left looking puzzled in the cheese aisle.
The face behind Miriam Cunliffe Photography