Richard was commissioned by the Royal Mail to take an aerial shot for their special Millennium Collection issue of postage stamps. He is one of only half a dozen photographers to have their names printed on the face of a postage stamp, and joins other distinguished photographers such as Tessa Traegar, Lord Snowdon, and Don Mcullen in this notable event.

He has kindly allowed us to reproduce some of his amazing aerial photographs together with a recent interview with Paul Mellor.     

"I had no particular ambitions of ever becoming a photographer and, following a job at Cogent Elliot working in art buying and traffic, David Puttnam asked me to work with him as a photographer’s agent. I did that for a couple of years – representing people like Richard Avedon and David Montgomery – and eventually I moved down to London and represented Ed Pritchard and a couple of other photographers. But in the end I really didn’t like it – it just wasn’t satisfying enough.

"One day I looked in the mirror and said, ‘Richard, why are you doing something you don’t like, for money you don’t need?’. I wasn’t married then, I had been successful and had enough money not to have to work for a few years, so I stopped that and became a full time inventor. I had always invented things – I’ve got drawers full but never had the time to actually develop the ideas. I had some success at that but not a lot, but then I was perfectly happy waiting for the big break to come along".

And the big break did come, but quite in the form that Richard expected. The picture editor of a magazine – a girl friend – asked him if he could recommend a photographer for a job, as all her usual contacts were unavailable.Unable at that time to think of anyone suitable he suggested, "Lend me your camera and I’ll go and do it", which he did. And as a result "Two amazing things happened. One, I discovered I liked it, despite never having taken pictures as an amateur or even for fun, and at college I hadn’t done anything but painting, and the second amazing thing was that THEY liked it."

Inevitably the magazine asked him to shoot another job, and then another and another, but he still didn’t consider himself to be a photographer until, "I was on a plane going to new York with four jobs to do and I thought – ‘oh, I guess I’m a photographer!"

Richard admits that a lot of his successes at that point had been achieved without a lot of determination or effort, which to me indicates a person who has the ability to be good at almost anything they turn their hand to. One thing led to another, and through his editorial contacts he started to get military assignments, one of which was on the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. This appears to be the turning point in his career as he recounts, "I have always had a tendency to get really close to things, a bit like the Eagle Comic front cover where everything goes whoosh, real in-your-face stuff. Anyway, they gave me the wrong type of ear defenders and I was on deck when the blast from a Phantom taking off lifted the ear defenders from my head – just the one time when you really need them." With typical understatement he recalls "I was fairly impressed by that". So much so that he mentioned to his MOD escort that he would quite like a ride in one. Two weeks later the chap phoned Richard to say he couldn’t get him a trip in a Phantom but could Richard sell a piece on a Jaguar Squadron. "Too right" came the reply, and the result was he went fast jet flying for the first time in a Jaguar. He also discovered he was one of those lucky people who have a cast iron stomach and never gets ill whilst flying "no matter how much G they are pulling or whatever manoeuvre they get up to".

A close up picture through the canopy of another Jaguar was printed as a double page spread in the magazine and so impressed the picture editor of another publication – The Sunday Times Magazine – that he wrote to Richard saying "what a nice picture … send me your book." This led to commissions for that magazine, followed by The Telegraph, Times, Mail on Sunday etc. etc.

I was impressed, this boy had cracked it – and without trying too hard. Richard’s ability to get on with people paid dividends and, whilst on a decompression course which he had to undertake before his Jaguar flight, he met a senior engineer with the Red Arrows who was impressed by the enthusiasm that oozed from this remarkable photographer. The engineer’s offer of "help should he ever need it" was called in when the Telegraph Magazine asked Richard to do a piece on the Red Arrows.

"I came up with what was really quite a good idea" he modestly explains. "Having flown with them for a few times, the idea was to fit a camera to the outside of my aeroplane looking backwards and then to stay in very close formation, which is precisely what the Red Arrows can do."

The result of this was the first ‘wide angle, close-formation, head on’ picture of jets in flight and he admits that the shot "caused such a stir that I was then commissioned to do a lot of advertising work for the Royal Air Force".

Pioneering the technique of outboard camera mounting brought a number of technical difficulties to solve and this is where Richard’s days as an inventor paid off. Vibration, temperature control and making housings were right up his street, and with the help of the engineers, the motor drive Nikon was ‘hot-wired’ into the bomb release circuit so that when the ‘button’ was pressed, instead of an unpleasant payload being delivered, a frame was exposed.

He continues, "The only thing that is impossible to overcome with an outside camera is that you can’t change film mid-flight. You have just ONE roll of film and ALL the decisions have to be made before take-off". Planning and accuracy are absolutely paramount as Richard qualifies: " I did a costing on one shot for the RAF and found that we used £45,000 worth of fuel – that was just the gas bill – and for that I got one roll of film!".

The Smirnoff shoot is another example of detailed organisation and precision planning. The shot was taken using a 20mm lens on a rear mounted Nikon, and with the aircraft rattling along at nearly 5 miles a minute and on occasions only 5 feet from the rear of the camera ship, there was no room for error. A Mustang was used in preference to a Spitfire as these aircraft have a history of having teeth painted onto the fuselage, and the first task was to locate a rare silver version of this "ballsy looking" plane. Fortunately Dave Gilmore of Pink Floyd fame had one in his collection and was able to oblige.

      Richard decided to base the shoot at North Weald in Essex and I wondered why he made this choice considering our unreliable weather pattern. "When you have a problem like this, the logistics are the major part of the battle. I looked at doing it in Florida or the South of France but silver Mustangs are extremely rare. Dave Gilmore’s was the only suitable one in this country and the other one had to come from Norway. As there were none in France, it gave us little choice. My aircraft is a mere £2,000 per hour, but these guys are running at about £8,000 per hour each, and with the set up and positioning time there was an awful lot of money involved, so the UK was the best option." The aircraft, a modified Corvette (similar to a Lear jet), which Richard was going to be in, was brought up from Toulouse and carefully kitted out for the shot. The Mustang had the decals and teeth fitted and the pilot was briefed in detail. The Norwegian guy had just flown in from Lapland after completing a midnight air display "just because you CAN do that sort of thing in the land of midnight sun", justified Richard.

Fortunately the weather held out on the day, but only just! " On the first sortie in the morning, the sky was too clear and you could still see the ground through the clouds, which we didn’t want, but as the day went on the cloud tops were rising higher and higher. When we went for the second run we had to go to 8,000 feet which isn’t an ideal height for the Corvette, it also needs to be flown at a comfortable speed for positioning and manoeuvring – the Mustangs are extremely powerful machines and normally fly much faster so there had to be a compromise". He says, "We only just made it, I couldn’t follow the cloud tops any higher." His relief in accomplishing the shot is obvious, a second day shooting would be no guarantee of success as the weather pattern could have been entirely different. He concluded, "I only just got it that day, there were two sorties – two rolls of film." I remarked that he didn’t exactly sting the agencies for high film and processing costs on his shoots. This seemed to create a degree of amusement, almost as though the thought hadn’t previously crossed his mind, however he was quick to point out that despite the first roll being unsuitable, "there were an awful lot of good shots to choose from in the end – out of one roll there were at least a dozen that you couldn’t really decide between." A result like that says so much about the skill and organisation of this guy that I could only nod enthusiastically in admiration.

With tea cups replenished and time rapidly passing, I am interested to know a little more about what drives this man, and given the radical situations that he finds himself in, how much of a risk taker he is. "I think things out, although a lot of this stuff looks a bit macho and close, none of it is cowboy stuff, none of it is messing about with your mates down the flying club and trying it on; it’s working with the ultimate in professionals and calculating every risk, knowing where you’re going to go if something does go wrong and what you’re going to do."

What about the future? Having achieved so much and raised himself to the top of his profession, where does he go from here?

At that point, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the reply, but his answer was not quite what I was expecting. "I’ve been very tightly associated with aeroplanes which has been a mixed blessing in a way", he explained. "Because the results are very spectacular, people categorise you for it and they don’t offer you things you would love to do, so I would like to do more motor bikes, cars and powerboats – employing the same attitude that I do to planes to other action subjects, but those opportunities seem to be very rare. I’m not an aeroplane buff, I like aeroplanes because of the shapes they make – I’m not a frustrated pilot."

He summed it all up by saying, "Planes themselves are too tight a pigeonhole for me and it leaves me slightly frustrated: 90% of my reputation is based on aeroplanes. I would like to move forward and try other things. I also have a reportage style that I’ve enjoyed working at in the past and it would be so nice to be just considered for other smaller projects, as well as the mega jobs."

All too soon we are hurtling down the country lanes en route for the station. I am excited and exhilarated. No, it wasn’t the driving this time, but the infectious enthusiasm generated by this extraordinary, talented photographer.