Kentish Express Ashford & District
Photographer Barry’s baptism of fire
We first met in 1971 in a dilapidated Victoria building which was home to the Sheerness Times Guardian, Sittingbourne News Extra* and Faversham News.
Barry Hollis was 17 and had just joined as a trainee press photographer. I had signed up as a cub reporter.
In those days, all three newspapers were produced from a former warehouse in Railway Road, Sheerness.
Reporters wrote stories on battered manual typewriters and photographers covered dinner dances late into the night and then returned to the office to develop their films.
Papers were printed on a rattling press which made the whole building shake.
Times have moved on. Everything is done by computers now. Pictures are captured instantly by digital cameras and downloaded electronically.
But some things don’t change. Photographers still have to take the pictures – well, most of them – and they need the gift of the gab to cajole members of the public into unnatural positions to create the perfect image.
It is often said a picture is worth a thousand words which is why top photographers are a rare, and often cantankerous, breed.
They need to be ready to press the button at exactly the right moment.
Barry, who lives in Minster with his wife Sheila, admitted: “When I joined the paper, photographers developed and printed their own films in the darkroom.
“We ended up with stained fingers from dipping them into dishes of developer and fixer and used enlargers to produce black and white prints which were scanned for the paper.
“Films were hung on string from the ceiling to dry.”
Barry joined the paper straight from school. He had already taken up photography as a hobby using a Russian-made Zenit 35mm camera and had learned to develop his own film and print his own photos in his mum and dad’s blacked-out bathroom.
“I still remember the thrill of seeing details of my first print appear before my eyes in a developing dish,” he said.
Barry had just left school and was helping at his dad’s scrap merchants in Rushenden during the school holidays while looking for a job when he spotted an advert in the Times Guardian for a junior photographer.
He said: “I was in the St John Ambulance Brigade so I took some photos of them at the weekend, printed them up and took them along for my interview on the Tuesday.
“I didn’t realise they were so desperate for someone as the chief photographer Bob Leitch was going on holiday on the Friday. I started work on the Thursday!”
The following Monday the young Hollis had a rude awakening when he was awoken from his slumber in the middle of the night by a frantic 4am call from editor Peter Coleman.
Barry said: “My mum took the call and woke me up. There was a massive blaze at the Canning Town Glass factory at Rushenden. I couldn’t drive in those days so I grabbed my camera and walked to the fire.
“It was huge. There were flames and smoke filling the sky, loads of fire engines and water hoses all over the road.
“I was thrown in at the deep end. It was literally a baptism by fire. But my photos made the front page of the next edition. It was a huge buzz.”
He added: “Nowadays photographers don’t have to worry about developing and printing. But they need a whole new raft of skills.
“All our photographers take video on jobs now and often have to email images straight back to the office to go online.
“With the rise of social media, members of the public can also send in photographs taken on mobile phones.
“It has opened up newspapers to everyone although there is still an important role for professional photographers.
“They have skill and training to turn an ordinary picture into a striking one.”
His first press camera was a Pentax. In 2000 he was responsible for introducing digital cameras to the KM. The first, a Nikon D1, cost £2,500. For the technical, he now uses a Nikon D7000 camera with a range of lenses from 35mm to 300mm and a Sony RX100 model 3 pocket camera with a Zeiss F2.8 lens.
Barry said: “People are still pleased to see a local newspaper photographer turn up at events. Unfortunately, we can’t cover as many as we could.
“When I was training I’d take the company van at weekends and visit all the village fetes and dinner dances around Sittingbourne, Faversham and Sheppey. I soon got to know everyone. I’d rush around the churches taking photos of weddings and if I missed any I’d turn up at the reception in the evening.”
He ended up marrying Sheila from the advertising department who stole his heart.
The couple now have three children and seven grandchildren.
After seven years at the Times Guardian, Barry went freelance, working at the KM-owned Kent Evening Post before joining the KM’s Kentish Express in Ashford in 1979. He stayed with the KM until he retired on Thursday, aged 62.
Colleagues gathered at the Phoenix Tavern in Faversham to send him on his way.
He estimates he covered an incredible 30,000 jobs in his career.
For the last 23 years he was confined to “the desk” as picture services editor, first at Larkfield and then at Wraik Hill, Whit- stable, running the diaries and maintaining quality for all of the KM’s newspapers and KentOnline website.
But he added: “I always enjoyed my job on the road meeting people.
“I loved taking photos of carnivals, the Sheppey Zulus, the Round Table’s Donkey Derby and enjoyed the satisfaction of getting the best picture from a job.
“There was always a great feeling of pride when people praised my work and seeing the finished article in print.” *Back in 1971, the Sittingbourne News Extra was a paper delivered free. It was brought back to life in December 2011 as the town’s new, quality paidfor title.