My Life behind the Camera Lens

I attended St. Michaels and All Angels Comprehensive and the London School of Printing and Graphics Arts.

On leaving school I followed my older brother (Tony Prime) into photography, starting in a commercial photographic printing house to learn darkroom skills.  In the sixties although I enjoyed the darkroom side,  I wanted to get behind the camera and joined Fleetway Publications as a junior photographer working on Honey and Petticoat magazines.

As my career moved on I worked alongside people like Len Fulford, Morgan Rank and Vic Savage.

But I still enjoyed working in the darkroom, so worked with Gerry Dickens and I personally printed for photographers like David Bailey, Helmit Newton, David Hamilton, Clive Arrowsmith and Richard Averdon (the man that took that famous shot of Marilyn Monroe with the dress flying up) when he was in London.

My other love was music and not playing or singing a note I tried my hand as a Disc Jockey.  It was while I was hanging around the clubs I came across a group just starting out called Pink Floyd for which I took the first photo shoot with the band.  Syd Barrett used one of my photos as the design  for the back cover of their first album "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and one of these photos from that session has just been published in Nick Mason's new book "Inside Out" (see page 64 in the book).