The many stories behind Rob’s pics
When my brother Rob Tucker started taking his first pictures it was with a shoebox. How is that possible, I hear some of you ask? And I am sympathetic. I don’t recall being taught that trick. But at school, he (and his wife, Bonnie, as it happened; and my wife, Lin) all learned a wonderful thing called ‘‘pinhole photography’’.
He moved on. Now his digital cameras cost many thousands and take pictures in the dark. They will capture sharp images of fastbeating tūı¯ wings at his fence-top bird box or nearly a thousand scenes at a sports match.
That last is not what he does any more because he has retired from active photography of the kind he spent much more than a half century doing all round New Zealand and the world.
What he is up to now is extraordinary in terms of New Zealand’s history – preserving pictures from a great era of press photography.
You will have noticed a series of historic photos appearing in the
over past weeks, each with a story about its origins, beautifully captured by incomparable local writer Virginia Winder.
They are on sale at an auction Rob has organised at the Plymouth Hotel next Saturday, with all the money going to support people Rob and Bonnie are very grateful to – the staff at Hospice Taranaki.
Rob is being looked after at home with prostate cancer.
People come at all hours to relieve his pain. Angels in the night, he calls them.
But he won’t want me dwelling on that. He has got stories to tell, as I know from his lectures at journalism schools.
He did a bit of recalling for this column. For example, you won’t know about his part in nearly securing us the America’s Cup.
One of his biggest jobs was working for Sir Michael Fay when New Zealand went after the Cup in 1987 and 1988. It involved espionage. Sort of.
The Ozzies were reputed to have a radical new keel design for their boat, so Rob was dispatched to Sydney to find out.
The Australians were wary, stopping their boat when Rob hired a chopper and dived out of the sky with the sun behind him hoping to capture the keel underwater as the boat heeled. We are just tourists, they radioed back to the chase boat.
As it happened, Rob’s brotherin-law was a member of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron and
What he is up to now is extraordinary in terms of New Zealand’s history.
suggested they go down for a beer to see if anyone from the Oz boat was about. They were. A tableful.
Playing the hick Kiwi who knew nothing about boats, Rob met one of the Australian crew at the bar, heard who he was, shouted his table some beers, welcomed them to join them. It became a matter of who could outdrink whom, never an easy prospect when you are dealing with the descendants of convicts. Rob and rellie managed it. By evening’s end, the radical new keel had been drawn on a bar mat and deposited surreptitiously into Rob’s pocket.
He does not know for sure but he thinks Fay – who recently resigned after 46 years with the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron over the decision to defend the Cup in Barcelona – may still have the mat framed on his wall at home.
There is room for a couple more anecdotes here. How timely to mention one that involved British royalty. He was hired by Her Majesty a couple of times, occasions that tickled our dad, Jack Tucker the baker, who was hired by the royal household back in 1953 to bake bread when she and the duke visited New Plymouth.
In 1990, they needed someone to take the traditional ‘‘awful shirts’’ Commonwealth heads of government team photo, so Rob was lined up.
He organised the group, then waited for the Duke of Edinburgh to arrive.
He came in without warning and slid across the floor, to stop lying on one side, his head propped beneath one arm. Rob froze. The duke was up just as quickly, advising Rob he had missed the shot of the century.
There was the time back in the early 1970s when he won the annual Balm Award for best sports photo, with a shot of a crashed cyclist, his face drenched in blood. Only Wellington’s Evening Post – its editor once a picture editor – would publish it – on page 14. That was enough.
If you come to the auction, Rob might tell you more stories.