Biography

After gaining my photography qualification at Salisbury College I went to the small local newspaper the Bath Chronicle on work experience and stayed there until they gave me a job. The 'Chronic' was a daily morning paid for paper with many failings, not least desperate under-investment, but one which had a special place in the lives of its readers. In light of falling circulation the paper recently went weekly.

Like most local newspapers the challenge for a photographer is to make an interesting picture out of a not-so-interesting assignment. And in a small city like Bath I would often be photographing the same people several times in the same week. Covering all the jobs in the picture diary was a constant headache and the twelve minute wait for films to process at the end of the day was normally the only chance to catch a breath. But working as a photographer from a trusted local paper gets you priviledged acces to ordinary people.

My most memorable assignment was to photograph an incredible lad called Russell Newman who is in the first photograph of the gallery above. Crippled with MS from birth Russell needed a fulltime personal assistant and a wheelchair to enable him to attend a mainstream school. After an inspiring visit from disabled explorer Jon Amos young Russell set himself his own test, to walk the length of his school, further than he had walked in his life. It was only 100 meters but every step required great determination and courage. The whole school had come out to watch and cheer and in front of them all, his legs shaking under the strain, he made it to the end to huge applause. Being witness to moments like this is what being a press photographer is all about and makes all the long hours worth it.

The photographic quality of my photos from the Bath Chron is quite shocking by the standards of today. We were mostly shooting with Nikon F4 bodies on very cheap Fuji C41 film which was developed in an automatic processor that had definitely seen better days. The chemisty in the machine was un-reliable at best and dust and scratches were par for the course. We even had one batch of film which had the blue and red emulsion layers missing. Seeing an entire days work come out completely green was not a happy surprise. My time at the Chron was long enough to earn some fond memories but after five year I left for a new job as picture editor on the Western Daily Press.

Moving from a local paper to regional morning daily meant learning many new skills, the WDP was the first in the Northcliffe stable to operate a fully digital picture desk. The seven full time 'togs were using the Nikon/Kodak DCS620 and one of the truely extraordinarily awful Nikon NC2000e 's . Althougth it was a groundbreaking camera parts of the design fell short of your expectations from a camera with a £15,000 price tag. It had no image preview, no anti-aliasing screen, took huge PCMCIA cards and had a built in battery so when it ran out you needed a new camera and was a minute 1.5 megapixels despite being as heavy as a brick.

I joined the WDP under editor Ian Beales but soon after he was replaced by the larger than life Terry Manners. A big guy in every sense Terry brought a energy and drive to the paper which made working there exhausting and exciting in equal measure. In 2003 all his efforts paid off and the WDP gained four top prizes including Newspaper of the Year at the Press Gazette awards happily one of these was Photographer of the Year won by myself.

At the WDP I was involved in several major projects, we raised over £150,000 to buy a rescue hovercraft after little Lelaina Hall died on the mud flats near Western Super Mare. We raised a similar amount to rescue Moon Bears in China and sent a team to cover the rescue. We reunited the last British survivor of the battle of the River Plate with the last surviving German veteran of the conflict who we had tracked down to Montevideo and we had the law changed after highlighting the lack of legislation governing the safety of nuclear power plants and aircraft. Newspapers can and often are a massive force for good for which they get little credit. Thanks to the generosity of readers of the WDP in 2004 we raised tens of thousands of pounds for an AIDs victim and mother of three in South Africa when we wrote about how she would not get the lifesaving drugs she so desperately needed.

In 2006 I was offered an unmissable opportunity to go the South West News Service. Based in Bristol SWNS is the largest supplier of news to the National Newspapers in the area and has an unrivalled reputation. I joined as chief photographer with a role based partly on the desk and partly on the road taking pictures.

Jon Mills photography.

the website for press

photographer Jon Mills