Press photographer dodgy tricks...

 Now I cant see me returning to press photography in any serious way in the future so I'm going to pass of some of the tricks I was told or picked up. Now none of these are my original idea (most have been used for decades) and some are dodgy legally and could get you into trouble with the law.
 I'm not suggesting you use any of these, this is for information only.

 One tip was if "doorstepping" (waiting to get shots of someone outside their house/work etc) a suspected criminal or someone on a murder or serious case.  What you were told to do was ring the police and say there was a fight at that address. You'd then get the police outside his house often with your subject talking to them.  In the paper this would go in as Joe Blogs was charged or suspected or whatever, it just looks more serious with the police there than some bloke with his daily paper.  This is the dodgy one, it's wasting police time at best, and could lead to other charges as it could cause a fight when the police turn up. Other tricks were to call a taxi to the house to get him to the door.

 The next idea was one I personally really don't like, it's to carry a teddy bear and childs shoe, then when covering a road accident involving a child you'd place one or both in the road in the foreground. The idea being to make the image more emotive.  I point blank refused that one, the family are suffering enough at the loss of a child without fake bullshit in the photos.  They'll know it's not their childs teddy.  This was very common back in the 1970-80-90s you dont see it so much now.

 Set up sports pics. Back in my day you'd often have to cover 3 football games on a saturday afternoon, all starting around the same time, obviously you don't have long at any one game. One trick was to get to the first game early and get your home goaly diving into the net saving a few practice kicks. Then if he managed to save a goal after you'd left that match you had a shot.