Tributes have been paid to former local newspaper photographer Rab MacKenzie, left, who has died after a long illness aged 73.

During more than 30 years as a press and wedding photographer, Rab snapped thousands of local people for the Driffield Times and Driffield Post and was well known throughout the north-east town.

His family said photography was his passion and was still a hobby even when he was not at work.

Rab was born Robert MacKenzie, in Dundee, and brought up in Montrose where he worked as a compositor on the Montrose Review before moving to Perth to join the Perth Advertiser.

He later took up a job as a foreman with an Edinburgh magazine company before he moved to Driffield with his wife in 1965 to work at East Yorkshire Printers.

Rab was meant to be taking a foreman’s post but a director noticed his interest in photography and Rab became the photographer for the Driffield Times.

Along with his passion for taking picture, Rab was a great lover of his native Scotland.

As well as taking many holidays there, Rab was a member of the Edinburgh Photographic Society, exhibiting his slides all over the world.

In addition to his press camera work, Rab was also well known throughout the Driffield area as a wedding photographer.

His wife Hazel said: “He absolutely loved it and did not really regard it as a job.”

Rab’s funeral took place yesterday.

Comments

elizabeth eyre (16/12/2008 09:55:33)
I started my journalism career as a junior reporter on the Bridlington Free Press – a sister paper of the Driffield Times – back in the late 80s and remember Rab well. He was a great photographer and a great local newspaperman – he knew everyone, everyone knew him and he was able to get a picture out of the most banal and mundane story. He’ll be sadly missed.