A lifelong obsession with photography began by chance for Tipperary photographer

As a young person, the award-winning photographer never held any deep-rooted ambition to become a photographer, nor did he ever envisage a life of making a living out of photography.
The first time he had a camera in his hand was when his wife-to-be, Breda, gave him a present of a Fujica STX-IN for his birthday.
“Up to that time I had never taken a picture,” said John.
A few days later, John, in possession of his new camera, was out walking in Clonmel with Breda.

CLONMEL TOWN
“It was a Sunday and we were going up the Cashel Road. Breda’s two brothers, Jimmy and Paddy, were playing for Clonmel Town and we went in to have a look. I went behind the goal and took two pictures, printed them off, and brought them down to The Nationalist. They printed the pictures in that week’s paper and I went back to another match the next weekend. That is how it all started,” said John.
John recalls being in Lansdowne Road as a football fan but his attention was drawn to where the photographers were rather than the action on the field.
“I remember looking at how the photographers behaved and what they were doing. That is where I wanted to be,” said John.
John remembers walking into The Nationalist newsroom at the time, fascinated by the atmosphere and the people he met which included Editor Brendan Long, Peggy Hickey, Mick Strappe and Ted Dillon, all of whom have since passed away, and two young reporters Eamon Wynne and Eamon Lacey.
“I can remember stacks of papers, a big pile of cigarette butts on one desk, and smoke that filled the room. If my first pictures had gone in the bin that would have been the end of it but they used them,” said John.

FIRST PICTURE
His first published picture showed Breda’s brother Jimmy scoring a tap-in for Clonmel Town.
John can remember the thrill he felt when the two pictures were published in The Nationalist.
“Because they used the pictures I ended up doing it for 40 years. I had never planned it or even thought about a career in photography. At that point, it was just like a light had been switched on. I kept going back with my two pictures every week. Eventually, The Nationalist started to ring me to take pictures and over time it became my full-time job,” said John.

ENTHUSIASM
“I devoured it. It was raw enthusiasm. I was fascinated by the equipment, the process of developing, being out there in the middle of the action, observing people, and experiencing some great times,” said John.
When John started out taking photographs the process of attending an event and getting your pictures to a newspaper for publication was a much more slower process than it is now.

BLACK AND WHITE
For newspaper work the world for a photographer was limited to black and white film.
The camera John used in those early years while covering junior soccer had manual focus, all modern cameras have auto focus, so for any fast-moving subjects like sport it was really difficult to get any kind of a picture at all which showed the action in focus.
In the eighties a photographer only had 36 pictures in a roll of film and when they were gone the photographer had to stop what they were doing, take out the film, and put in a new one.

The negatives had to be developed, they had to be dried and printed using chemicals in the darkroom.
Printing was a slower, a more tactile process which brought a lot of satisfaction because of that.
But all of that is now lost with digital. Once the pictures had dried they could be delivered by hand to The Nationalist office across the road from the Anne Street darkroom.