On the TownPress photographers recalled the heady days of working with their colleague, Colman Doyle, at the Irish Press from the early 1950s onwards, at the launch of All Changed: Fifty Years of Photographing Ireland, which was launched in Dublin this week. The book features many dramatic images taken by Doyle, and has an accompanying text by writer and broadcaster John Quinn.
"He was completely dedicated to photography," said John Rowley, who worked for the newspaper from 1954 to 1990. "He had an eye for a picture. He could spot it before anybody else."
Pat Keegan, a former photographer with the Irish Press, said Doyle "always looked for the different angle on things".
"He was a cut above the rest of us and we knew it," said Sheamus Smith, another fellow photographer at the Irish Press and former Film Censor of Ireland. "He was probably the best photographer working in these islands. He had talent and technique. He did everything from hard news to sport to fashion. He was a legend at that stage. He had his own dark room . . . His fashion pictures had a style and a technique that didn't exist then. They were up to and maybe surpassing a London standard. He had a method to it. He was totally dedicated."
Tim Pat Coogan, former editor of the Irish Press, who wrote the book's foreword, said: "It was a remarkable newspaper of talent . . . The best that they would have said was Colman. Right up to the time he retired he was taking excellent pictures. This is an important book." Doyle had "a delicacy of touch photographing models" and he was out "photographing horses by lying under them", added Coogan.
Colman Doyle was aged 15 when he first took the camera down off the dresser at home. It was a box Brownie, he recalled at the National Photographic Archive in Dublin, where the book was launched. Speaking about taking a picture, his eyes lit up.
"There's the joy of getting a great sports picture, that will give the whole essence of the game . . . You can't wait to get back to the darkroom to find out that it's OK," he said.
All Changed: Fifty Years of Photographing Ireland is published by O'Brien Press