Don Morley
There can be few photographers who can match the talents of motorsport’s most revered professional ‘snapper’ who has covered not only motorcycle events but also a whole array of sporting and international incidents world-wide. The professional photographer to whom I refer is Don Morley from Reigate in Surrey, a self-confessed motorcycle racing enthusiast who, as a young man, simply didn’t have the funds at his
disposal to go racing so took up riding in trials as a consolation.
Don Morley, originally
from Derbyshire, was born in late January, 1937. He attended “a rather expensive private school called Derby Diocesan”. Don takes up the story: “I was about thirteen but not a good pupil, and it was very old-fashioned and strict, so I got disciplined every day. I was running a business at school, buying tuck from Woolworths and then selling it on at school for a small profit. They sent for my father and suggested he took me away, so after a good hiding I was sent to a brand new school called Littleover Secondary Modern! Still a building site, it would become the first secondary modern in Derbyshire and it was massive. I wasn’t much into school and as yet it only had one classroom. I soon realised I could go in the morning, call out my name for the register then clear off and play truant for the rest of the day. I did this for the following two years — apart from for the art and sport classes”.
ART PRIZE
Young Morley won the art prize each year until he left school and represented Derbyshire schools at national level as a high jumper, winning the championship in his final year, and as a middle distance runner. Morley left school at fifteen without any qualifications. Morley: “I think this rather broke my parent’s hearts, as both were university educated.”
The attraction to photography came first, then came motorcycling. “At a friend’s suggestion we cycled to a road-race meeting at Osmaston Manor, up-hill all the bloody way for about eighteen miles — and I hated cycling, I still do, but the race meeting with the aroma of the Castrol R and dope just blew me away. In short I was hooked and would eventually race there myself; whereas the friend who wanted to go was completely unimpressed and never went again!”
Still a youth, Don bought his first motorcycle with a friend: a 1928 BSA 500cc ‘Sloper’ but kept it at the friend’s house, knowing his father would disapprove, with thoughts of converting it into a racer. When testing it out on the road young Morley was caught and charged with: riding under age; no insurance; no tax; no horn — you name it! Because he was under age it was his father rather than Don who was summonsed to go to court. The BSA was subsequently dispatched to the scrap yard!
Don Morley’s first job was not what his parents had in mind. He had caught the photography bug by the age of eleven and aspired to become a Fleet Street press photographer. This horrified his father, who was managing director of a Derby electrical engineering firm. Morley Senior pulled strings to enrol Don into an electrical engineering apprenticeship with London, Midland and Scottish railways just when it was all becoming the British Railways Board at the Derby Locomotive Works. Morley — “I must say I loved it at LMS, but I was supposed to go to night school three nights per week and one full day as part of the apprenticeship; instead, and unknown to father, I signed on for three nights a week studying photography at Derby College of Art, now the University of Derby. By then I was already freelancing on a regular basis for The Motorcycle, Motorcycling, plus local and national newspapers!”
PHOTOGRAPHY FIRST
Morley was by now earning much more at photography than as an apprentice engineer, having had his first commissioned feature for Sports Illustrated in America published before he was seventeen.
At twenty-one, and at the end of his apprenticeship, he thought himself a free agent. Morley — “I said ‘right, Dad, I have done it your way; now I am going to do it mine! I’m chucking the engineering job in so I can be a full-time photographer’. This did not quite work out how I expected though because he said, ‘okay son, but get out of my house’.”
Displaced, Morley took up residence in a shared dormitory in a lorry-driver’s hostel, which was rough, but he was offered a student grant to do a two-year, full-time, degree-level course on photography, again at Derby College of Art. Morley — “I joined The Pathfinders & Derby MCC and the Derby Phoenix as a youth, and even though I was without a machine I helped out at trials, scrambles and road-races. I finally did get myself another motorcycle legally in 1953, and subsequently acquired a 500T trials Norton on which I went to work, trialled, scrambled and even road-raced; and did my courting. I became close friends with world racing champion Bill Lomas, John ‘moon-eyes’ Cooper, David and Jon Tye, Norman Storrar and Barrie Rodgers — my wife and I became godparents to Barrie’s eldest daughter”.
Don’s professional sports photography career began back in 1953, prior to being employed to take photographs for the newly established Motor Cycle News in 1957. He got the job almost by accident, as their photographer covering the Isle of Man TT races had taken ill and Don took his place.
This was the era of the glass-plate photographic format. They were supplied with six double dark slides, which meant only twelve images could be taken by staff photographers. These had to be returned for developing to the newspaper. It was a rule that, of the number allocated, one plate was to be kept in reserve just in case the photographer came across an incident when travelling back from the race meeting or event being covered. The penalty for non-compliance was dismissal!
Nowadays digital camera systems allow the photographer to take a series of shots and simply delete the ones not required in an instant. Not so in the early days of Don Morley’s career; he developed all his own work, coping with glass negatives and then thirty-five millimetre roll film with manual aperture settings. It must be a bit like riding an old four-stroke with manual advance retard and choke levers compared to a modern fuel injected twostroke, except more complicated!
ALL SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHIC
Morley’s work remains highly sought after, covering so many big events in a career that spanned almost sixty years. Joining forces in October 1975 with Tony Duffy, they founded the ‘All Sport Photographic Agency’ which was the ‘go-to’ company for sports images and advertising images from the early 1970s until the mid 1990s. All Sport was formed out of the demise of Sports World magazine, Don being their chief photographer. Sports World had folded and rather than take redundancy the astute Morley bought their photo archive, which dated back to the 1930s. All Sport is now Getty Images, and has retained some All Sport staff.
Pick up a back copy of any major sports magazine or periodical and no doubt the accreditation ‘All Sport/Don Morley’ will be seen in small letters at the foot, or up the side in some cases, of stunning images.
Over the years photographers such as Barry Robinson, Brian Holder, Alan Vines, Brian ‘Nick’ Nicholls, Gordon Francis, Len Thorpe and of course Eric Kitchen have taken some absolutely wonderful photos of racing, trials and scrambles riders in action. Morley was just that notch different; he covered more than trials and scrambles. Don covered just about everything else on two and four wheels, as well as athletics and armed conflicts. Morley was a true all-round professional photographer.
Morley — “I wasn’t a sports photographer until later in life. I was actually a news photographer covering wars and such-like. I covered the Irish troubles in Belfast for The Guardian, and even had the inconvenience of having my hotel blown up”.
Don was never backwards at coming forwards, he was more than capable at pushing himself forward to get to the heart of the action and ultimately to get that single breath-taking image. Morley was an out-and-out rule bender. Sometimes he even broke the rules to reach his goal to get that perfect shot; an Isle of Man winner, a pole-vaulter, a sprinter, it didn’t really matter. Don had an uncanny ability, nay gift, to press the button and capture a moment in time that lesser mortals could only dream of. The anecdotes involving Don Morley are what folk-lore is made of!
A BROKEN LEG
There was the incident when Morley had broken his leg while testing Graham Noyce’s factory Honda motocrosser. This sparked a chain reaction of incidents. Because his leg failed to heal properly, Don jettisoned his crutches and took a chance to board an aircraft after the Spanish GP, hoping that no-one would notice.
Morley — “I covered the whole Spanish GP with help from Kenny Roberts who carried my camera kit around when he wasn’t racing. When I got on the aircraft I discovered that all the emergency seats had been taken, and I couldn’t get myself into the seat I had been allocated.”
The stewardesses saw this, cottoned on and approached Morley, asking him to leave the aircraft. Don refused as he wanted to go home as quickly as possible.
It was a well-known fact among racing circles that Morley and Barry Sheene didn’t always hit it off as individuals. Despite this, Sheene had seen what was unfolding, stood up into the aisle and announced that if Don wasn’t allowed to stay on board then all the other passengers, most of them factory riders homeward bound, would leave the aircraft in support. That action by Barry Sheene and the others on the aircraft showed the respect that Morley had earned amongst the hard-nosed racing community, even from Sheene himself.
Morley — “Barry took something I wrote once to heart; that didn’t help things, but he was a great rider and I actually had a great deal of respect for him. Not long before he died, he came to see me to get an old photo I had taken of him for something and I think that was to draw a line under the whole thing”. Part two of this look at the legend Don Morley will appear in the next issue of Trial Magazine, along with some more superb images from his personal archive.