From behind the lens to in front:

A Tucker bag full of stories and photographs

Rob Tucker has a story for every picture, and then some. Helen Harvey meets the son of a Taranaki baker who became one of New Zealand’s most celebrated photographers.

Rob Tucker has terminal cancer. He has just bought a top of the range Canon digital camera. And a couple of expensive lenses.

Everyone who knows him agrees he’s a positive person. But in the last year the renowned photographer had to make a conscious decision to be positive.

Physically he went into a wheelchair. Mentally he went into a dark hole. So, he sold all his photography gear and kind of gave up.

‘‘I’ve got metastasis throughout my lower half my body. But I’ve been lucky that they (tumours) haven’t touched any vital organs. But I have got bone cancer, which is really painful,’’ he says at his New Plymouth home.

‘‘Suddenly you lose the use of your legs. I mean, I started falling over,’’ Tucker, 74, says. ‘‘I had a crash 10 days ago, that was horrifying, because I can’t get up.’’

He reckons the ‘‘mental thing’’ is the hardest to get over. But get over it he did, and he went out and bought the new camera.

‘‘I realised too, that there’s a lot of people a lot worse off than I am.’’

And he decided he could still take photos from his wheelchair. He’d just have to get a bit closer to the subject.

Like the owl at the Brooklands Zoo whose photo now hangs in Tucker’s office.

Tucker was bored. So, he went to the zoo down the road from his home and ended up in a cage with an owl.

‘‘The owl sat with his back to me. And he just suddenly turned to look at me. Yeah, that was the shot. The thing I like about that is it’s so sharp.’’

Like the shot, Tucker remains sharp as a tack and, even through the pain, irrepressibly enthusiastic. If he believes in something, he makes it happen.

His latest project was to gather 122 photos from New Zealand’s top photojournalists and auction them off for Hospice Taranaki whose nurses Tucker refers to as angels. The auction raised close to $200,000. It was a testament to Tucker, one of the most respected photojournalists in the country, that when he asked for contributions they flooded in.

It’s his legacy, he says, to be able to give back. Not just to the hospice that is caring for him, but to the photojournalists to give them a chance to shine.

When people ask him if he is a photographer, he’d say ‘‘I’m a photojournalist. They say ‘Oh, what’s that?’.’’

The son of a baker, his career began in 1966 when he left New Plymouth Boys’ High School and began a short stint at Charters & Guthrie taking wedding photos.

But after seeing his big brother, journalist Jim Tucker, having ‘‘fun chasing fire engines’’ he joined the Taranaki Herald in December that year on a threeyear cadetship.

‘‘It was just lovely being out in the community photographing what was happening, knowing you’re on the front line, and I just really enjoyed it.

‘‘And I don’t think I’ve ever worked a day in my life in that respect. I enjoyed my job for 52 years. And it’s always been fun.’’

Tucker has been on the front line for many historical moments such as the 1981 Springbok tour, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, and he met Queen Elizabeth, cheekily swigging on

her gin. He was covering the infamous All Black tour to the UK in 1972 when prop Keith Murdoch was sent home, so he ‘‘hightailed’’ it from Cardiff to Heathrow and got the last pictures of Murdoch getting on the plane before he disappeared.

That was followed by a stint in London before he returned home to freelance. He ended up contracted to the Christchurch Press for the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch and captured Dick Taylor winning the 10,000 metres.

That picture took up the whole front page, he says.

‘‘It was the first time the Press had ever done that. And yeah, it was a great buzz.’’

He had the opportunity to fly in a helicopter to cover the Sydney to Hobart yacht race back in the day. But it would mean flying out on Christmas Day.

‘‘My wife just looked at me and she said, ‘What does Christmas mean to you?’.’’

He turned the job down, he says, laughing.

Tucker has a son, two daughters and eight grandchildren.

‘‘My youngest daughter died at my eldest daughter’s wedding. It was tough giving your daughter away at a wedding and then six, seven hours later turning the life support machine off at the hospital of your other daughter. Pretty tough.’’

It’s the one story the talkative Tucker doesn’t elaborate on. The one time his story is short and to the point.

Because he’s a natural storyteller. His eyes light up and his face breaks into a cheeky grin as he cracks into another yarn, effortlessly painting pictures with his words just as he does with the light through his camera.

And every photo has a story attached to it. Whether it’s a stallion on its hind legs rearing up behind a Ferrari on his office wall, or how, while he was a pictures’ editor, he spotted the now famous photo of Dame Whina Cooper walking away holding a child’s hand.

It was at the end of a roll of film taken by one of his photographers. One look and he knew that was the shot.

‘‘I’ve always said on a roll of film, and it’s different now on digital, but on a roll of film you’d start at about frame 10, which is a really good shot. By frame 25 you’re trying a new angle. And by about frame 30 you’ve got an even better shot.’’

A good photographer has to have that passion for being competitive and getting the shot, he says.

‘‘And there’s only a certain type of person that could qualify for that. I’ve always been incredibly competitive. You can’t be shy.’’

A photojournalist doesn’t have to be artistic at all – if they are it’s a bonus, but they have to be inquisitive.

‘‘You want to be there first and find out what’s going on. And you don’t rest on your laurels.

‘‘Like, you might have a great front page picture one day, but do it again the next day. You’re only as good as your last photograph.’’

In one case he didn’t even get to see his photos. It was the mid 1970s and Tucker went to cover pirate radio station Radio Hauraki’s last broadcast at sea.

Tragically, a DJ, Rick Grant, fell overboard right next to Tucker. He drowned, Tucker says.

‘‘He was standing there having a leak, not hanging on and the boat lurched. And he went overboard right in front of me. I threw a life ring over and rushed up to the wheelhouse. I can hear the guy yelling ‘help, help me I’m drowning’.’’

About three weeks ago Grant’s son contacted Tucker out of the blue to ask about his father.

Tucker doesn’t have any photos to show the son, they were taken by the police. Jim Tucker says his brother has some of the most wonderful stories.

‘‘He just seemed to be in situations where interesting things happened. Funny things. And he’s always remembered them.

‘‘The word gregarious, you know, was absolutely invented for him.’’

And he was always able to connect with absolutely anyone – from a 95-year-old woman who was celebrating a birthday, to school children.

‘‘His personality was formed around that. The need to develop ways to relax people.’’

His brother has developed so many techniques now that he’s passed on his generosity in teaching young people to do what he has learned to do, Jim says.

And that generosity extended to organising the auction for Hospice Taranaki. ‘‘When he has an idea he has this extraordinary ability to fire everyone else up. It caught on because Rob’s enthusiasm is so infectious. I think Rob’s pictures alone raised $40,000 to $50,000. That’s worth mentioning.’’

‘‘You might have a great front page picture one day, but do it again the next day. You’re only as good as your last photograph.’’

Rob Tucker