So how did it all start.....

So my early love for photography started with the family Kodak Instamatic back in my school days in the 1970's.

Christmas 1980 and my parents gave me my first proper single lens reflex camera, a £65  Fujica STX 1, this followed by becoming a member of the local camera club. By 1982 I had moved in to the world of video, compared to photography the out lay was expensive, a total cost of £1600 then! To pay for the equipment, I advertised myself as a wedding videographer - a niche market in those days. It was in Germany covering a friend's wedding that we sat around the table and had to decide on a name......  Candid Pictures.

Former newspaper days!

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It was almost to the day, 25 years of my life taking pictures for local newspapers in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

Starting with the family firm, the Bailey Newspaper Group in the small town of Dursley, I was employed as a darkroom assistant in April 1984. From then onwards I took photographs for the weekly papers, The Gloucestershire Gazette and the Stroud News and Journal. In the summer of 1986 I spent the next seven months working for the Marlborough Times.

Training for the National Council Training of Journalist certificate began in 1987 ‘up-norf’ in Sheffield. I came back to the Cotswolds to work on the Wilts & Gloucestershire Standard based in the wonderful market town of Cirencester. In September 1999 I was ‘head’ hunted and offered a post on the Western Daily Press based in Bristol, two months later covering the county of Wiltshire from home until 2009. And since then, I have freelanced under the brand of Candid Pictures.

Looping the loop in a bi plane, catching a 'ride' in a rickety Russian helicopter at an air show, flying supersonic on Concorde or 10,000 ft up in a hot air balloon I have been privileged to witness some great moments in my history of 25 years in news photography. Memorable moments include flying with the American Air Force and photographing a B52 Bomber being refuelled while on exercise here in the UK. To see the flight crew giving you the 'thumb's up' from the back window of another plane was quite something! Then there was the time I took 36 images on one frame (film cameras - remember them?) during my final newspaper exam – You couldn’t pay anybody to do that! Needless to say next time around I passed!

I have witnessed the after scenes of the Hungerford massacre with the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Travelled by business jet on a mercy dash to see locally raised, medical aid be given out to the sick children in the hospital of the Ukraine capital of Kiev as a long term result from the Chernobyl disaster. Working in the south west gave me many opportunities to photograph the Royals, with Prince Charles and The Princess Royal living in Gloucestershire. On the day Charles had his polo fall, I walked in to Cirencester Memorial Hospital to genuinely photograph an organised presentation, only to be told by a policeman in the hospital corridors, "Not today you're not, now out you go!' Little did I realise Prince Charles was in the next room waiting for surgery on his broken arm! And then there was the Antiques Roadshow where one of the hosts dropped and smashed a plate, none of us cameramen were prepared for that and we all missed the shot! There was the time I photographed Little Richard in Chippenham only to find months later the show had been bankrupt from the booking. I used to photograph James Dyson in the early days when he moved to Malmesbury, I asked one of his advisors how 'the world of hoovering is going' - Only to be told, " Paul, It's a Dyson, not a Hoover!'

So many memories, including with the army on Salisbury Plain or on exercise in Germany with the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars or many a time taking off from RAF Lyneham air base, riding in one of their 'Fat Alberts. Including standing on the ramp photographing the RAF Falcons parachute team as they leave the plane in mid air.



Some of my greatest photographic moments must be the recording the gun siege in the market town of Chippenham or the swan chasing a canoeist down the Kennet and Avon canal. Whether it is photographing famous faces or quite simply a cheque presentation – I’ve enjoyed my quarter of a century recording the local news.

Life through a lens.

By Tristan Cork: Reporter for the Wilts & Gloucestershire Standard and the Western Daily Press.   March 2009.
 

 For some reason, they say a picture tells a thousand words. But I beg to differ, because surely it depends on the picture. You’d be hard-pressed to find a thousand words worthy of a photo of a brick wall, some fog or, indeed, a piece of paper with ‘a thousand words’ written on it.
 
But at the same time, some pictures are worth a million words – a man with a pickaxe on top of the Berlin Wall, a vast crowd shivering to see the first black President.
 
On this web site reveals another picture worthy of at least tens of thousands of words. Each one tells a story, each one captures a moment – often never to be repeated – or a feeling, an occasion, a smile or an event that a thousand words can never match.
 
I should know – because most of the time, I have been the one trying to do justice to these pictures with words below, and almost always I’ve had only a few hundred words with which to do so.
 
I first met Paul Stallard when I was 14. I was on work experience, shy but keen, he had just started his career photographing everything of importance that happened in our little corner of the world. He was a whirlwind of lenses and chatter, coaxing his subjects into the shot with the banter of a market trader lining up his prize apples.
That was more than 30 years ago now, and over the years, we’ve experienced first-hand the serious, the silly, the days history was made, the bizarre, the famous, the tragic and the hilarious. We’ve gone home at the end of one day trying not to cry, and others trying to stop laughing.
 
But whatever is thrown at him, be it a grieving widow or a horserider plunging into the water at Badminton, his lens is always true and he always gets the best picture possible.
 
My career has been mapped out in his photos. I’ve plunged down a steep hill strapped inside a huge inflated ball, to find Stally at the bottom laughing and firing off pictures at the same time.
 
I’ve gone toe to toe with Prime Ministers, royals, inventors, knights of the realm, celebrities and criminals. While I might have struggled in dealing with the unco-operative and the reluctant or with the weight of the egos involved, they have all been putty in the hands of Mr Stallard. He’s the only photographer I know, for instance, who can get the Prince of Wales to smile without having to ask.
 
There was the time we were ‘kidnapped’ by Sir James Dyson, brought to London and asked to build a new model of his vacuum cleaner in an hour. As I continued to fumble with the purple plastic parts, a camera click told me not only had Paul finished his but was capturing my frustration on camera.
 
Then there was the occasion when Paul out-bantered David ‘Del Boy’ Jason as he sat in the cockpit of a Spitfire, with me perched on the wing trying to interview him. The subject of their mirth was the width of my feet, and Del Boy ended up asking me if Stally could help write his scripts.
 
Or the time followed a team of police officers dealing with the drunken Friday Night Fighters in a Wiltshire market town, which ended with the coppers asking if Stally could accompany them every weekend, so successful was he at dampening drunken rages.
 
Sometimes though, a photographer has to be quiet, and Stally knows better than I when this is needed. Maybe it’s lying in wait for a herd of deer, or patiently hanging on for a new-born piglet, or tenderly photographing a tearful family’s grief and anger after a tragedy, or capturing the sombre mood that engulfs Wootton Bassett every time a fallen soldier is returned home.
 
Some days are like living in a slapstick movie though. The day a third pig escaped in Malmesbury, a month after the Tamworth Two went on the run, lives long in the memory. The fearsome creature was holed up in a thicket with me and a vet with a tranquiliser gun on one side and Stally on the other. At least when the boar thundered towards him, he managed to fire off a few great shots before starting to run. It took five doses of tranquiliser to subdue the animal
He’s game for anything too: trying to abseil up a huge tree and then getting the ladder down, or strapping himself into everything from hot air balloons, Hercules planes and helicopters to tiny microlights, all for the best shot.
 
In fact, only once have I ever known Paul to miss out on the best photograph, and it wasn’t a criminal outside a court, a winning goal being scored, the second a protester turns angry or the moment the sun emerges from behind a cloud to turn a pretty scene into a dazzling one.
 
No, the moment was at Westonbirt House when the Antiques Roadshow rolled up. At the end of a queue was a man with an antique plate who’d bagged his place before dawn hours earlier.
 
After the interviews and pictures we stood back to let this first valuation commence and in a flash the expert let the plate slip from his hand, it landed on the table and a chunk was chipped off the edge. It was one of those moments where a ground that could swallow was wanted, and even those, like us, not connected with the calamity were embarrassed by proxy and open-mouthed.
 
I turned to Stally and he too looked like the squirming schoolboy sitting next to the pupil getting the lecture. At those times it’s best to have a human photographer, not an automaton paparazzi firing off shots to the upset of all.
 

Thank You for looking!