A Westcountry MP with an eye for photography got the chance to turn professional when he joined the Bristol Evening Post for a day.

Dan Norris, MP for Wansdyke, recently won two photographic competitions for parliamentarians.

His success prompted Evening Post photographic editor Shaun Thompson to offer him the chance to spend a day shadowing one of the paper’s photographers.

Dan spent a day with award-winning Barbara Evripidou, who showed him how she manages to capture the right images to satisfy a demanding picture editor.

The first job of the day was to photograph a family who had been victims of an arson attack at their home.

Dan said: “It was interesting talking to Barbara and hearing her thoughts on how the photographs should be taken.

“She wanted to make sure the children were comfortable having their photographs taken and that their mum was happy.”

Dan also accompanied Barbara to a job at the Harbourside in Bristol where he found it wasn’t all plain sailing.

He said: “We were taking pictures of a group of people and there was one person who didn’t seem to want to smile.

“It was hard work but I got the picture I wanted in the end.”

After several other jobs Dan returned to the Evening Post’s Temple Way headquarters where he was able to see how images can be cropped and altered on computer and how pages are designed.

He said: “It was really fascinating to be on the other side of the lens.

“I didn’t realise how much time and effort goes into getting a good photo.”

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