A PHOTOGRAPHER with strong Tenby connections has just had one of his photographs selected for this year’s RA Summer Show.

The exhibition is open to all artists and this year attracted 12,000 submissions. After two rounds of judging, the number was eventually whittled down to a final 1,000 for the show and Alun Crockford was delighted to hear that his was amongst them.

Now based in London, Alun’s career in photography began over 30 years ago when, after leaving Tenby’s Greenhill School, he bought a camera from Mr. Graham Hughes at Squibbs Studios.

“Even now I’m not entirely sure why I bought it,” said Alun, “but Mr. Hughes looked me up and down, told me what I needed and gave me a few lessons to get me started.

“I then signed up for evening classes held by Alan Hare, who pointed me in the direction of general competence, then it was off to Mr. Arthur Ormond, then editor at the Tenby Observer, to try and earn some money. To my eternal amazement and extreme gratitude, he took me on as a cub photographer, and that started me off in a life as a professional photographer.

“With the encouragement of local photographer Roger Paice, I applied and got into Swansea Collage of Art and three years later left and moved to London, where, thanks to an incredible piece of good fortune, I met an established advertising photographer who came from Amroth. Ian Harrison took me under his wing and pointed me in the right direction to eventually open my own studio in central London, working for advertising agencies, and this is what I have been doing for the last 30 years.”

During that time, Alun has been on the board of the AOP and has won many international awards, including being named as one of the top 100 commercial photographers in the world. He also went back to university part-time in 2012 and obtained an MA with merit, while his personal work has been exhibited at the RWA open exhibition for the last two years to go with this year’s successful selection for the RA Summer Show.

At the moment, meanwhile, Alun is working on a more local project - an exhibition of photographs to be shown in Tenby Museum next Autumn 2017, taken in and around the harbour from 1978-79.

“I am going through the negatives now, and it looks like there will be a full cast list of characters from that golden era,” remarked Alun, who added: “All in all, it has been an eventful last 35 years, and it all started with the encouragement of a few incredibly kind and considerate people.”

• The RA Summer Show is being held at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. It opens to the public on Monday, June 13, and runs until August 21.