Dr Danny Beath

If My Tonight from Shrewsbury is to be a reflection of the life of a town, then it’s sometimes going to be a reflection of its deaths too.  One of the people I'd have hoped to talk into an interview  over the coming year was the photographer, Danny Beath, whose death was announced today in the Shropshire Star. 

Until moving house last weekend, Danny was a sort of semi-near neighbour, living only round the corner from me, though I'm sorry to say I didn’t know him.  I knew who he was of course – just about everybody in Shrewsbury knew who Danny was, but our paths had never crossed and I'd certainly no idea, until I read the Shropshire Star, that he was Dr Danny Beath, with a PhD in Tropical Ecology.

I did know, though, that Danny was an outstanding photographer with a great love for the natural world, especially here in Shrewsbury and across Shropshire and the Marches. Only last November he became the Sunday Times Magazine's Choice Award Winner in their 'Take a View' competition, and experienced the thrill of seeing his image up in lights, projected over the rooftops of London. 'Amazing.  It feels like winning the Olympics,' he said.  But his winning shot had taken ten years in the planning.  In a recent Photography Monthly interview, he said of the misty view across the Welsh Marches, 'It was a case of getting the right time at the right place - something that came together after a long period of waiting.'

If you want to read the whole article HERE’S the link.  If you want to take a look at some of Danny Beath's photographs HERE’S the link for them too. As well as all his other awards, he was a nine-time Shropshire Photographic Society's Photographer of the Year.  The county - and his home town of Shrewsbury - is rightly proud of Dr Danny Beath. 

 

[Photograph by Danny Beath]