Motoring
As a regular diary photographer for OK ! Magazine , Graham Reading gets to see celebrities up close and personal – even if it ’ s sometimes through the end of a zoom lens . Which means that an hour spent chatting to him will have the conversation peppered with anecdotes featuring well-known names , from Mick Jagger and David Beckham to HM The Queen and Shirley Bassey . Graham , a regular contributor to Island Life magazine , turned his passion for photography into a profession after a local newspaper editor in Ealing offered him a Saturday job . At the time , he ’ d worked as a newspaper advertising sales rep and a primary school teacher – but taking pictures had always been his hobby . The Saturday photographer gig – which saw him chasing around taking weekend pictures for 10 newspaper titles in and around London - soon made Graham realise that photography was really what he wanted to do . “ I ’ d previously trained with a wedding photographer and did weddings semiprofessionally , but it had never occurred to me that you could do photography as a job !” he says . “ It was great to get the press training , of life
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and that was when I realised that I really enjoyed doing the celebrity pictures - even though it often meant a lot of waiting around in doorways .” He moved on to a staff job with the Slough Express and after a few years took the big leap into freelance photography . Two days in as a freelance , one of his pictures from the Paddington rail crash made the front page of the Daily Mail – and that reassured him he ’ d done the right thing . “ It gave me confidence and showed me I was doing what I was good at ” he says . One of the first jobs he landed was a commission for OK ! magazine diary , and he has worked for them regularly for over 16 years . Among the scores of photographs he has had published in national newspapers there was a Miss Great Britain candidate doing ballet on a horse in the snow , and breaking the news with a photo of the new girlfriend in Jensen Button ’ s life . Among his many anecdotes , there ’ s the tale of his encouraging an air steward to ask Mick Jagger to pose for him on a plane , and managing to get Shirley Bassey to pose for a unique backstage shot at Madame Tussauds - after the PR
A view
behind the lens
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