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If you've come across any coverage of the England women's football team recently – and let's be honest, who hasn't? – then there's every chance that you've seen Lynne Cameron's stunning photography. A Women in Football member since our earliest days, Lynne is a professional snapper with a remarkable CV. In recent years she's been the official photographer for the Lionesses, and her work has very often been a vital part of the content surrounding the national team.

"The relationship is key," Lynne explains. "They're as passionate about football as I am about photography, and we kind of meet. I've got an amazing relationship with the players – they trust me, and they know that I trust and respect them, and they know that I'm not doing anything that will make them look bad, or trying to catch them out. My goal is to present them to everybody else as I see them – and I see amazing human beings and lovely people, who just happen to be amazing athletes as well. We have such a tight, close relationship that sometimes I just think 'wow'.

"The players and staff are my work family. It’s a high-pressure environment so downtime is important. We support each other and it’s just a pleasure to work with them – there are always laughs.

"I would consider many of the players and staff to be friends. We chat off camp, keep in touch with each other’s families and meet for coffees. That’s something that’s developed naturally over time and doesn’t stop when they leave the international set-up."

• Lynne and Fran Kirby celebrate the Lionesses' big win

Lynne's journey began early on in life, growing up in Glasgow, when she would borrow her dad's camera and set about documenting family holidays, school events and anything else she came across. "I just really enjoyed the memory-making aspect of it when I was a kid," she recalls. Through a family friend, she secured some work experience developing pictures for the local paper in exchange for camera film.

Although she went to university to become a history teacher, the click of the shutter called louder than the school bell. "The older I got, the more interested in sport I was, and eventually the two managed to meet each other, and that's when I looked at sports photography as a career." Lynne became programme photographer for Greenock Morton FC and took on shifts at the picture desks and at matches for the News of the World and Daily Mail.

 

Excitement

At length Lynne was appointed as a club photographer by Rangers FC – an opportunity she describes as "dream-come-true stuff".

"I was at Rangers for 10 years – it was great. I did the UEFA Cup final, the Champions League, travelled all over the world, had a couple of photographers working underneath me. We built up the photographic function and became one of the first clubs to go online with our photography offering. it was a really exciting time to work at Rangers."

Never one to linger in a comfort zone, though, Lynne took up a post with Scottish Rugby for four years before moving on to the Press Association. "I had to move from doing solely sport to doing news, sport and entertainment," she recalls. "I was there for a few years and it sort of became more and more apparent that I didn't have the same feeling for the news stuff. It was Press Association so it wasn't anything dodgy! But it was always political jobs and royal jobs, that sort of stuff, and it just didn't feel the same."

Taking the plunge into freelance status, Lynne set about persuading editors to give more space to women's sport. Although the level of coverage has increased, she remains unconvinced that the media's commitment to equality is authentic. "Whenever I had covered women's sport – say at the Olympics in 2012 – the level of disdain for it was just incredible. That was the perception then and it's still the perception. People do women's sport now, but I would say 90 per cent of the people that do it do it because they're told to, not because they want to – which is really sad."

• Lynne's behind-the-scenes access captures lighter moments on the training ground as well as match action

When she approached the FA to work with the Lionesses, Lynne did so with a distinct agenda for her photography – which is clearly borne out in the work that resulted. Having noticed the way sports photoshoots would exaggerate the stereotypically 'feminine' in their subjects, she was determined to pursue a more honest style.

"At that time there was a real tendency to portray female athletes not as athletes, to make them something they weren't. So they'd come back from the Olympics and they'd put them all in dresses to say 'yay, we got a gold medal' – and I thought that was just a little bit not authentic.

"Whether that was the way the girls did want to be perceived or whether that was the only way we could make them newsworthy to the mass population, I'm not quite sure. I think it's somewhere in the middle, to be honest. But some images of female athletes looked so uncomfortable that they just didn't look authentic, and I wanted to try and work out if it was the case that the girls felt like that.

"Having spoken to a lot of athletes in a lot of sports, it is the case that they want to be seen as professional athletes first and foremost. And if that means when they're heading the ball their hair's out of place, then they actually aren't bothered about that – it's other people that are."

 

Rewarding

Lynne is keen to support the next generation of photographers and has worked with the University of Derby to boost their students' multimedia skills. "They've got a fantastic course there and that's what Derby's really good at. They don't want to provide someone with a degree who can just write, or just do radio or video – it's about multiskilling students.

"I was asked to go in and teach a module and the amazing thing about that group, who actually graduated last year, is that I see them now. You go to a football match and you get a tap on the shoulder and it's one of the graduates from that course! At the WEUROs there were five or six of them at every match. That was a really rewarding experience."

Besides passing on her skills, Lynne impresses on young people targeting a career in photography that they'll need to be tough. Tenacity, she says, is key. "Don't give up, because it is a really hard industry. You're gonna get knockbacks. You're gonna feel terrible sometimes because you'll look at other people's pictures and you'll have missed the shot, or somebody's seen an image that you haven't seen, or whatever. And there aren't any jobs really in photography in terms of staff jobs, so there's that element of not having a secure career path – it is very much freelance."

• Leah Williamson and Lotte Wubben-Moy join in celebration

For the past four years Lynne has been Vice-Chair of the British Press Photographers' Association (BPPA), where work is under way to address the gender imbalance in the profession. Partly, she explains, the issues come down to "a lifestyle thing – you miss out on so many family things, so many evenings and weekends, and it's hard for people who don't work in that industry to understand why you're doing it."

She continues: "But I think there's still a lot to be done on redressing that balance, and it has traditionally been white, middle-class males that have that job. The old boys' network is very, very apparent. I would go to football matches and people would be like 'but you're a woman – you can't possibly be a sports photographer!' They would literally say that to my face and it's like 'OK, why not?'"

And Lynne is one of a select few who have been involved with Women in Football from the start. En route to Tel Aviv to cover a Rangers match, she got chatting to a fellow passenger on the flight "and it happened to be Jacqui Oatley". The two of them found time to visit Jerusalem and go for pizza, and readily struck up a friendship.

"We kept in touch after that and she invited me down to West Ham for that first ever Women in Football meeting, so I'm proud to say I was there. Through WIF I have made a lot of friends and a lot of people who have helped. It's just so nice to see the organisation grow from, I think, 35 of us – at the {Be Inspired] conference, there were just so many people there, it was incredible. Just knowing that there are other people who are on the same journey and work in the same industry is really supportive and refreshing."

• Lynne is a freelance photographer, so if you're looking for someone to capture those magical moments, click here to check out Lynne's portfolio and contact her.

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