CONTENT PRODUCTION - EVENT PHOTO LIAISON - IMAGE RESEARCH - RIGHTS CLEARANCES - CONTRACT NEGOTIATION - REVENUE MAXIMISATION & RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
Ensuring rights-holders, events and sponsors maximise their photography investment and operations
Unrivalled experience from a 15 year career in live event photography, including 7 Olympic Games, 15 Open Championships and 4 Ryder Cups, in maximising visual content relationships between sport governing bodies, rights-holders, sponsors and photo agencies or individual photographers.
Proven track record of coordinating and delivering on long-term contract coverage commitments, individual projects and major event briefs ensuring high quality content is on-message, that all internal and external stakeholder needs are met and clients are getting full return on their photography investment.
Approaching all projects with experience of working in content generation and commercial roles.
Client work
How I can help you
You’ve invested in photography with an agency or freelance photographers for your event, brand or season but have no dedicated resource to liaise with stakeholders, write and communicate creative briefs that work across all content channels, drive image capture to brand/style guidelines, monitor the output for quality and ensure that images are correctly delivered to deadline. I can help.
During a long career in sports photography I have seen rights-holders, events and sponsors unable to maximise their investment in photography without the staff or time to commit to it. I can help.
Areas of Expertise
Major Events
experience onsite at 7 Olympic Games, 15 Open Championships, 4 Ryder Cups and 3 AIG Women’s Opens
coordinating large photographic and technical teams to deliver on multiple, concurrent briefs
content delivery to live media and to clients via digital asset management systems
Coverage Commitments
overseeing photographer assignment, creating briefing documents and mood boards for on and off the field of play and ensuring content delivered is on-message and to budget
driving shooting style and delivery methods to suit individual client and commercial stakeholder needs
ensuring imagery is properly audited and stored with relevant metadata for ease of use
producing athlete toolkit studio shoots and other pre-event marketing/pr/social media content
Photo Operations
Photo Manager for the R&A since 2021 at The Open Championship and AIG Women’s Open
coordinating with the Championship committee on placement of photo positions, networks and photographer routes
liaison for all accredited photographers during Championship week
Commercial
experience of negotiating and managing long-term complex partnership contracts, individual image sales and assignment budgets
assistance in establishing client-owned, revenue generating image collections
advice on copyright issues and athlete/model releases
Achievements
The R&A/Open Championship/AIG Women’s Open: Since 2021 have managed the creation of all R&A owned photo content at their professional (The Open and AIG Women’s Open), amateur and grass roots events - selecting photo teams and developing and overseeing more engaging shoot styles to complement their content, comms and branding strategies. Assist the commercial, communications and marketing teams in supporting their sponsor and stakeholders image requirements.
International Olympic Committee: PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics - coordinated a team across Korea, the UK and India to capture and deliver (in real-time) ready-to-use portraits of all competing athletes to IOC broadcasters. A project never before attempted and to be replicated at Tokyo 2020.
European Tour: over 10 years managing their weekly agency editorial and commercial coverage needs and delivering on extensive photography briefs at events they own, including Europe-staged Ryder Cups. In 2016 worked with the in-house marketing team to capture (in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Mexico) their first ever studio shot toolkit imagery of their playing members for use across OOH campaigns, event promotion and digital channels. The successful shoots have been repeated over subsequent seasons.
Testimonials.
Rob has been an invaluable support to The R&A for more than a decade. He has excellent experience and knowledge of the commercial photography industry and has been both an innovative partner and trusted sounding board for people within our organisation. We continue to work closely with Rob due to his expertise and independent viewpoint. I would recommend his services to anyone looking for consultancy relating to photographic imagery
Malcolm Booth - Sales & Marketing Director, The R&A
I worked with Rob on campaign and pr photography for Speedo, New Balance and Ellesse. He was great at listening to the client's needs, translating them into deliverable briefs and then liaising with the photographers to ensure delivery of high quality and on-budget content.
Paul Phedon, CEO Gung Ho
Rob was superb at managing The European Tour’s photo agency relationship, working closely with us as we rebranded and developed new digital and marketing strategies. Understanding the range and style of content we wanted from our event coverage, both on and off-course, he took direct responsibility for event briefing and quality control, always exploring opportunities for photographers to be more creative. As well as overseeing live tournament imagery for the European Tour’s digital channels he also ensured multiple stakeholder and commercial partner requirements were delivered for The Ryder Cup and the premium Rolex Series events.
Roddy Williams, Head of Content, European Tour and Ryder Cup
Rob and I worked together on a UEFA Europa League campaign for Kia Motors. He helped with our editorial approach and logistical planning for this series of time-sensitive events and ensured quality photographic content reached the client in real-time. I’ve always trusted Rob when I’ve needed to commission dynamic photography for my clients and look forward to working with him again.
Lee Korman, Head of Partnership Services, Right Formula
Earlier this year when we were looking to reinvigorate our visual marketing content at key events we automatically turned to Rob for help, given the relationships he’d developed across the European Tour when he was our partnership manager at Getty, and how we trusted him to both understand and deliver the creative imagery were looking for. Rob has always been a fantastic source of expertise and I always trust him to get great results.
Tom Johnson, Head of Marketing, European Tour
