WATCH: Veteran E&S photographer Graham finds himself behind the lens

The former Express & Star man, now 80, talks about his life in pictures on a short film made by his former colleague on the newspaper Phil Riley.

Graham explains how he began his career in photography in 1954 at the age of 15, beginning as a trainee at the former Dudley Herald where his first VN plate camera captured the images on glass plates rather than film.

Watch Graham Gough interviewed here:

He later moved to the south-west, working first at Devonshire Press in Torquay, and then the Daily Mirror, before returning to the Midlands in 1974 to join the Express & Star.

Graham went on to become chief photographer at the Express & Star's Dudley office, where he remained until taking early retirement in 2001. Since then he has worked as a freelance photographer, specialising in landscapes.

In 2012 he published a book called The Black Country Album: 50 Years of Events, People and Places.

During the video interview he tells Phil, who worked with him at the Express & Star's Dudley office during the 1990s, about how in the early days it would be necessary to have three photographers for some jobs, as only one picture could be taken before the plate needed to be changed.

He also recalls how he and two other photographers captured a chimney being felled, each taking pictures seconds apart.

Graham, who lives in Kinver, also remembers how he found the switch to digital photography in the late 1990s difficult to begin with, but says he received a lot of help from Phil.

He says technology makes the life of the photographer much easier these days, but you still need to have raw talent.

"Anybody can take pictures, but you have got to have an eye for it," he says.

"An image is not a picture, not in my book."