Roy's got it wrong

I was truly shocked to read a blog entry by the Guardian's Roy Greenslade arguing that the Johnston Press decision to get rid of staff photographers up and down the country "makes sense".

Greenslade said "relying on... citizens with smartphones to provide pictures is far cheaper than having photographers on staff". He added that there was always someone on hand to "snap a picture" and so "newspaper photographers are therefore redundant".

I worked in the newspaper industry for more than 30 years (and still do a fair bit of freelancing). When I took redundancy, I decided to pursue my passion for photography in the hope that I might switch careers.

I didn't pick up my smartphone and start straight away. I've worked with photographers and photographs, so I know there's far, far more to the job than that. In fact, I felt I had so much to learn I enrolled on a full-time course.

Here are just a few examples of why professionals matter:

• Technique: taking a photograph involves so much more than pressing a button. Even before you pick up you camera, you have to understand the light - probably the most important subject to master
• Trustworthiness: employ a professional and you can count on his or her word about the photographs they produce. Could you trust a 'citizen snapper' not to have doctored an image, or even that the photo was taken where they claim it was?
• Dedication: citizen snappers just happen to be in the right place at the right time when an incident occurs. So many newspaper photography assignments involve knocking on doors, or flitting from one sports event to another, or standing outside a court building for hours until the subject arrives. Which brings me on to...
• Legal issues: professional photographers are trained in the law as it affects their job. And they are also given guidance on ethical issues. Not so for a citizen snapper.
• Deadlines: unless you have worked in journalism you might not fully appreciate the pressure of having to produce material for a deadline that might be just a minute or two away. The presses are waiting to roll, the paper is complete except for the main front page picture... and that's down to you!
• Captions: being a professional involves more than actually taking the pictures. In the newspaper world, pictures are pretty worthless without a caption explaining what is going on and naming the individuals featured, plus their ages, job titles etc. I really don't think citizen snappers go to that trouble.

So I'm afraid Mr Greenslade is seriously misguided if he thinks newspaper photographers are dispensable.

As a freelance sub-editor, I have access to daily newspapers' contributed images. The last time I looked in the basket at one newspaper I work for there were lots and lots of submitted pictures, but the vast majority were landscapes, there were flower pictures, photos of steam trains and a tiny proportion of photos that you might call documentary images - for example, a series taken at a country show, which featured craftsmen and women. And most of the images really did look like they were taken by readers, rather than professionals.

I rest my case!