PROMOTIONAL FEATURE James Gill meets race-loving Alan Crowhurst, who pursued his passion to become an award-winning photographer
My love of horses came before my love of photography. My granddad was a bookmaker and so every Saturday when I was little we’d have a small bet on the horses.”
The first thing that strikes you when calling Alan Crowhurst is his warm and disarming voice. Might we be forgiven for thinking that someone who carries the title of official Royal Ascot photographer for Getty Images, as well as various prestigious accolades, would carry an ego among airs and graces? He may now be a man surrounded by royalty and top hats at Royal Ascot, but his love of horses is grassroots. “My dad was into horseracing as well; Sandown, Ascot, Epsom every bank holiday Monday in August. My love of horses just grew from there.”
While he never rode and was never interested in doing so, his love of horses only ever grew. “The interest in horses turned into gambling,” he explains in a matter-of-fact and down-to-earth tone. “When I first started working at 16, we used to go to the Cheltenham Festival for three days. I loved the horses, but I have to admit that the gambling was an exciting part of it.”
His Estuary-tinged Brighton accent puts us at ease as he explains how a young man completely uninterested in the visual arts became the winner of The Alternative View category at the 2013 Getty Images Editorial Photography Awards and the HWPA Photographer of the Year Award 2009 and 2013 for his work at Ascot, among other venues.
“I was working in Brighton and a guy I worked with bought a camera. This was back in the early ’80s so it was a proper old film camera. I just really took an interest in it. The more I thought about it, the more I liked taking pictures.
“So I decided to stop the gambling and buy a camera,” he says. “That way, I could still go to the races, not gamble, but still have something to do there, an aim. I swapped sides.
“Why did I want to give up gambling? I got fed up of losing,” he laughs. “You just start to realise that you might not be very good at it.”
Alan admits that it was quite a leap for someone who had had no previous interest in photography or graphic design or art to suddenly become an avid equine photographer.
“I don’t know what it was,” he muses. “I just liked the idea of going out, taking the odd picture and collecting your film and looking at the prints. It grew from there.”
From taking the odd picture, Alan was soon having his hobby shots used by newsstand magazines such as The Greyhound – a greyhound racing magazine. At the same time, he was sending his photos to The Racing Post and The Sporting Life. Soon Alan was shooting local football at weekends as well, always thinking what sporting fixture might be next. “I loved shooting sport as a whole,” he explains. “It’s exciting because you don’t know what’s going to happen. You have no control over the outcome. Whether it’s racing, football or rugby, it happens right in front of you live. And sometimes you have to react to it. I guess that’s part of the skill of it.”
Alan joined the Sportsbeat photographic agency, a central place where magazines and newspapers – and now websites – could source photos of anything they might need. His role was in the sales department but now he was completely immersed in the world of photography. What better place to make connections to further his career?
He had always had day jobs while shooting on the side – as a hobby as well as some freelance commissions. But now he had well and truly tired of the last of his many varied nine-to-five earners and decided to make the big move to go completely freelance.
“I rang and visited a few of the picture editors [from magazines and newspapers] that I’d been in touch with when I was at the agency.” Of his contacts, The Guardian became his main source of income. They also gave him the creative freedom he loved. “They didn’t necessarily want to have a photo of the horse winning or jumping the last fence. They just wanted a nice picture to show ‘racing’. I had carte blanche to shoot whatever. They’d ring me and say, ‘are you going to Plumpton?’ I’d say ‘what do you want?’ and they’d say, ‘do me a nice picture’. So I was able to take more interesting photos – it was fantastic!”
He was clearly doing something right because as time passed he found himself invited to shoot for bigger and bigger agencies, from Alternative Press to the Press Association (and of course, latterly, Getty Images). He has had photos used by The Sunday Times, The Sunday Mirror and News Of The World, and features for Rugby World and L’Equipe. Modest as ever, Alan says he doesn’t know why they necessarily got in touch – although one look at his photos is a rather large clue… “Maybe they liked how I would shoot a race, different from other photographers perhaps.”
While his work now took him into many worlds, in and out of the wide world of sports, his passion was loyal: “Horseracing photography was always my number one. It’s always been my favourite thing to shoot.” And Alan was about to nail the deal of a career.
In 2013, Ascot Racecourse approached Getty Images and Alan was given a brief. Alan explains, “Ascot wanted me to capture the unique atmosphere of the Racecourse and its many events throughout the year, including the people and the colour.”
Alan talks us through a piece of photographic software called Snapseed that he uses that has certain filters and effects to make photos ‘really pop’. Many enthusiasts will know the difference between photos on your phone and what happens when you put them on Instagram: saturation and contrast, among other alterations. Many of his photos on Getty use Snapseed – and it shows: colours are bright, lines are defined and skies are dramatic.
“I submitted the photos, as was normal, to Getty and Ascot without running them through the software, but I told them about the software and asked them if they’d like to see the photos with ‘a different look’. They said, ‘Blimey!’ They saw them and loved them immediately. It was a completely different look for them.
“From that point onwards I never had another brief, only for Royal Ascot. For the normal meetings I could just shoot what I liked. I could just shoot what I saw, and they liked what I saw. It was a perfect deal!”
So what is it that’s so special about Royal Ascot for a photographer? A photographer who’s main passion is horseracing?
“To me, and as a photographer,” he starts, “Royal Ascot is perfect – you’re just surrounded by material, great subjects, great things to shoot. It has a lot of people, which always works, you don’t get gaps in the crowds. It’s nice to shoot in the summer, the light is right and it has all that great fashion. “I’ll be honest,” he pauses, “you can’t really go wrong.”
Clearly not, as Alan’s accolades suggests: “Well, funnily enough, I was invited to enter the ‘Getty Oscars’ by the company because obviously I work for them, so I entered a racing portfolio.
“Lots of people shoot these Instagram-y pictures so there was another category: The Alternative View Of The Year. We were allowed to enter one picture. And I won it with an Ascot picture.”
We ask how he feels about this amazing achievement – awards don’t get much more prestigious in the photographic world!
“I don’t like to shout about it. That’s not me. I’m pleased but I wouldn’t run up the high street waving my cup in the air. It means a lot to me that I won it with an Ascot picture.”
Born in 1962 and having been taking photos since he was 20, it is amazing that Alan’s passion only seems to grow. He must have taken a million frames and certainly been to hundreds of events over the years, and yet he still remains inspired – there’s always a better shot to be taken, always something you haven’t captured.
“Sometimes you do find yourself back at the same place trying to do a better picture of something you’ve done before,” he says as our conversation nears its end. “The same things happen at every race meet every time: the weighing room, the connections, the jockey, the race, the wash down. But it’s the things outside that often grab your attention – there are stewards and doctors and men in bowler hats. There are lots of those peripheral things that surround the core events that make for great photos.”
And so he continues to furnish magazines, newspapers and websites with imaginative pictures, creative pictures, pictures that show Royal Ascot and other sporting events in all their glory. Alan is a little like his software, making you see things a little differently.
The feature above can be found in the Royal Ascot 2014 Magazine – to buy your copy please visit www.buyamag.co.uk
Royal Ascot takes place from 17th – 21st June and it’s not too late for you to be there. Visit the website for further information and to book tickets. www.ascot.co.uk
