All’s well that lens well for our Martin

MARTIN Oates was a floppy-haired teenager when he first started work at the Yorkshire Evening Press.

It was, in fact, that luxuriant head of hair that condemned him to a life as a press photographer rather than as a respectable banker.

Fresh out of Archbishop Holgate's School with three good A-levels, he'd gone for an interview with a Coney Street bank.

They offered him a job straight away. But it came with a condition. "They told me I had to cut my hair," Martin says.

He was clearly rather vain about his long, dark locks because he turned the job down.

Banking's loss was journalism's gain. Because another of the jobs the teenage Martin applied for was as a trainee photographer at the Yorkshire Evening Press.

He was, he admits, just a raw teenager who, A-levels apart, didn't know much about anything – and certainly not about photography.

"I had only ever once picked up a camera, on a school trip to Paris when I was about 15," he says. "I don't think I had ever had the prints developed. So I came into the job as a complete novice."

His first day at the Evening Press was September 28, 1970. He didn't have a clue what to expect, but his colleagues quickly took him in hand.

He learned, as the photographic department junior, to be a dab hand at filing. And he was given a far more important job too – getting chief photographer Fred Spencer's lunch every day.

Fortunately he also, along the way, picked up some of the basics: how to take photographs, and how to develop them in a dark room.

The Evening Press was to reap a handsome reward from that investment in training a bright but inexperienced teenager.

Because Martin was to remain with the newspaper where he got his first job for the whole of his working life: first as a trainee, then as a staff photographer, and ultimately as the newspaper's widely-respected picture editor.

All good things must come to an end, however. Martin leaves for a well-earned retirement at the end of this month after 44 years at the newspaper.

He has no regrets about the career he chose or about staying in York.

He had opportunities to leave, he says. "But York has been a great place to live, a great place to bring up a family, and I've had a fantastic career at The Press."

In the earlier years of his career, the excitement of the job came from getting out there to capture that unforgettable photograph.

His first published picture was of a bull which had escaped from the cattle market where the Barbican Centre now is. It headed for the river, then swam up towards the city centre, before being recaptured.

Martin, ever his own biggest critic, admits it was a bit grainy. "It wasn't 100 per cent pin sharp. But I've taken hundreds of thousands of photos. Many of them I can't remember, but I can still remember that."

There are many he can remember, however. He was there in May 1982 when Pope John Paul II visited the Knavesmire in his Popemobile; and he was there, a month or so later, when police mounted a huge search for killer Barry Prudom, who had calmly walked into the centre of Old Malton and shot dead Sgt David Winter.

Martin, then The Press's Ryedale photographer, had just got back to York with that day's photographs when news of the shooting came through.

He jumped in car and drove straight back to Malton, getting there just before police closed the town.

For a week, the market town he knew so well resembled a frontier town, with armed police everywhere.

Eventually, police cornered Prudom behind a squash and tennis club. Martin, naturally, was there.

"We couldn't see exactly what happened, but we heard the shot and it was all over," he says. Prudom had killed himself.

Other major events from his career in newspapers that stick out include the Queen's visit in 1970 for York's 1900th celebrations; the Minster fire in 1984; the great floods of 2000; and the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Martin was picture editor by then.

"I got called at about 1.30 in the morning, and we came in straight away and started putting a newspaper together." It was a Sunday, but a special edition of The Evening Press hit the streets early that morning.

One of his more memorable photographs was a snatch off a TV screen. It was September 11, 2001. Martin had just come out of morning conference, and there was a story about an aeroplane flying into the World Trade Centre.

Then, live on television, as he was photographing the images, it happened again.

"People were saying it was a replay. And I said, it's a second one'." The quality of the photographs taken off that TV screen wasn't great – but the pictures in the newspaper told the story of one of the seminal moments of recent history.

In more recent years, since he took over the picture editor's role, he's been more desk-bound.

That doesn't mean he hasn't been out and about when the occasion demands. He was there to phonograph the first Yorkshire Marathon; and he was on top of Clifford's Tower when the Tour de France came to York.

But latterly, his job has been more about telling other snappers what pictures to take, rather than taking them himself.

Fortunately, he managed to assemble a hugely talented team – photographers who have between them picked up countless regional and national awards – to ensure the quality of the pictures appearing in The Press has remained second to none.

They are photographers, he says, who can hold their own with the very best on any of our national newspapers.

"They have been magnificent," he says. "A lot of people have complemented me on the boys."

There have been many changes in the newspaper industry during his years at The Press: colour printing; digital technology which allows photographs from anywhere in the world to be sent back in seconds; online 24-hour rolling news.

But the essence of the photographer's job remains the same, he says: getting the picture which tells the story of the day.

A great photograph really can say as much as a thousands words: and that's true whether it is on the front page of The Press or the first image you see when you log onto the newspaper's website.

As for Martin himself... "I've got new challenges to look forward to," he says. "I've got lots of things to do. I want to do a lot more travelling, for a start."

But the urge to pic up a camera will still be there, he admits.

So don't be surprised if you see his byline in The Press a few more times yet...