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Photography is a craft that Neil has been plying for a long time, and for a living. Armed with his father’s old camera of Second World War vintage, he taught himself to capture and print images of the people and places of

his native Tyneside as a young boy. “I sent some of the photos I had taken to the newspapers on spec,” explains Neil. “And to my surprise actually sold one to the Daily Mirror. I was only 12 years old at the time. But in those days everything was done by letter and post so I’m sure they thought I was a lot older!”

Bitten by the photography bug and able to make some money out of his hobby led him to become a professional photographer. “If you look at the work of most photographers who have been doing it for a living you’ll find that their work is pretty diversified,” Neil admits, including himself in that number. Six Times Evening Chronicle Bride of the Year Photographer means a lot of weddings surprising perhaps when you find his real passion is landscape photography. He also does corporate work, lectures, conducts workshops, undertakes private portrait commissions, magazine features, writes and presents television programmes. Neil Atkinson, LRPS, LMPA, Master Photographer. Sums it all up really.

But, hold on, why at the ripe old age of 48 with all this behind him did he decide to go back to education three years ago, to university to get an Honours degree? “I was completely self-taught and there were gaps in my technical knowledge. I was also really interested in studying the techniques of the early days of photography in the 19th century,” Neil relates. “The big question was whether I could handle having my work judged and graded academically when I had made a living from it for so long!” A humble approach and three years later at the University of Sunderland, he has found a new lease of life professionally. “The whole experience has been inspirational. It has taken the blinkers off me to go in new directions that I had never thought of before.”

One very positive new direction has seen the completion of his own television series, A Moment in Time, recently aired on ITV

Tyne Tees. “I had this idea for a book, but a lecturer at university thought it would make a great television programme. He has a background in broadcasting and before I knew it I had a meeting with the head of Tyne Tees and they decided to go with it.”

The series tells the story of how he captures on film the ‘special places’ of several Northern personalities and uses them to, quite literally, frame their characters in a portrait.

Looking back in history, classical portrait painters, such as Joshua Reynolds or Edwin Landseer, often depicted their subjects surrounded by the familiar objects of their lives, in front of a house,

with children or animals, wearing the uniform of office or high rank. The early studio photographers also used props to enhance the people who posed for them, showing them how they thought they should be rather than how they actually were.Neil took this one step further by finding the special, sometimes secret, place that everyone has in their heart and using it to frame their personality. For television war reporter Kate Adie it was Prebends Bridge in Durham, while for former world champion boxer Glenn McCrory it was the old Annfield Plain Coop shop, now moved to Beamish.

Each programme in the six part series has prompted an immediate response. “We were inundated with emails, letters and phone calls,” says Neil. “The reaction to what was essentially a simple idea that was executed more by chance

than design, was really fantastic.”

With the success of A Moment in Time still fresh, plans call for a second series on Northern personalities, perhaps a national series to follow as well as a book next year. No surprise then that the University of Sunderland is featuring this ‘student’ in their current advertising campaign.

These are exciting times for Neil Atkinson. For this resident of Whitley Bay, with a business to run, a degree to study for and a family to spend some time with, life today has never been so high profile or as demanding.

A Moment in Time

Through the lens, but not darkly. Neil Atkinson is a photographer who likes to put people in their place. Not in the negative sense, but in the artistic sense of place and time that allows the inner soul of the subject to

shine through the captured image. Barry Roxburgh put himself in the right place to find out more.

Neil took this one step further by finding the

special, sometimes secret, place that everyone has in their heart and using it to frame their personality.

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John Harle’s name may not be a household word unless you are seriously into music. But for those who savour the world of the acoustic arts, he is probably one of the planet’s leading classical saxophonists. A rare breed indeed, and born and bred right here in Newcastle. Fortune now finds him based in London, but his Moment in Time is much closer to his spiritual home.

It is at Wallington Hall, Northumberland, one of the National Trust’s stable of stately homes. It was here that John Harle was brought as a small boy on Sunday afternoons for tea in the Clock Tower by his parents and to hear the Duke of Northumberland’s piper, Jack Armstrong, play his Northumbrian pipes. John Harle’s father was also brought here by his parents, and he has brought his own children, so there is a long generational tone to his choice of places.

“Wallington was then still run by the estate’s owners, the Trevelyan family. In the tea room there were a pair of cavalry officer’s boots hanging from a beam and the smell of the boot polish mingled with the sound of the music to produce a heady and potent brew,” says John. “I was mesmerised by it all.”

As a composer, conductor, musical director, performer and producer, John Harle regularly crosses musical genres from classical to folk, rock and jazz, mixing collaborations with names such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Andrew Davis and Sir Neville Marriner with the likes of Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello. He recently returned to Tyneside to perform his new opera, The Ballad of Jamie Allan at the Sage Gateshead, appropriately enough with premier Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell.

So the many uses Neil Atkinson puts his camera to are reflected in the versatile wanderlust of John Harle’s sax.

John Harle’s photo at Wallington is reminiscent of the grand tradition of classical portraiture. Grasping the instrument of his success flanked by gargoyles, on a sweeping lawn disappearing to the great house itself in the distance. A classic scene for a classical musician.

For further information, log on to www.neilatkinsonphotography.com

“The whole experience has been inspirational.

It has taken the blinkers off me to go in new

directions that I had never thought of before.”