Picture of the Day 15 October 2024

Today’s Picture of the Day is of a Virgin Voyager departing Birmingham New Street on 30 September 2002 – the day that Virgin launched Operation Princess. Link to picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/190687851@N02/53784253462/in/photolist-2pWJmJS-2pWJmJr

On the lead up to the launch of Operation Princess, it became known that Virgin was planning a lot of contrived events, which invariably would result in contrived pictures and not really the kind of thing a photojournalist is looking for. I also knew that Virgin would be pushing these pictures hard to all the media outlets, so I had to come up with something unusual to make sure I kept the PR pictures out of the magazines.

My thoughts immediately turned to the Rotunda – this was when it was an office block, some years before it was converted into luxury apartments. After some effort I managed to locate the building manager who, after some persuasion, agreed to me coming back on 30 September to make the pictures I wanted. In 2002, many of the floors in the Rotunda were in a terrible state, with ceilings falling through etc. It was on one of these floors that I found myself on the cold and bright morning of the launch. During the hour or so I was there, I made hundreds of pictures – not knowing if I would ever have the opportunity to return. As fate would have it, Virgin had paid for a huge advert above the station, with the words ‘A New Beginning’ accompanied by an illustration of a Voyager – which proved an excellent addition to the pictures I made.

By that same afternoon, the pictures had been emailed off to various publications, appearing in print in due course. Once the Virgin press office saw the pictures, it contacted me (obviously annoyed that its pictures hadn’t been given the prominence it desired) to ask how I had made my pictures. During the course of the conversation it transpired that in the internal press meeting, the press office had (wrongly) concluded that I must have been hovering above New Street station in a helicopter!

Following the strong impression my pictures had made in national publications, I was soon being approached to carry out publicity pictures for a number of train operators.

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