D Kilpatrick

Hi Stuart! Came across this by chance, hope you are well, and also that Philip ended up owning half the Pyrenees. I'm sure I started doing the product photography and catalogues, and some packaging related product design, for Steadfast when Philip and you were working together. The photo here is a small, A5, catalogue cover and I can't date it now, probably 1986. The whole catalogue was produced a way we had never attempted before, using a 1m square plate glass sheet suspended over a white field and the technical camera mounted on a roofbeam looking down - every page with the tools arranged precisely for a single shot. The same glass table was used with some then-unusual holographic foil for the cover. http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/166862768/large.jpg After we moved to Scotland in 1988, I continued to produce leaflets and marketing photographs until Steadfast changed hands. We had a range of the tools, to be able to produce whatever photographs were needed and needless to say they remain in good service 30 years. I think the concreter's end cutters were stolen by an enforcer for the Scottish mafia... apart from the hacksaw blades, not a single one has ever broken and the through-tang huge screwdrivers have demolished buildings and lifted manhole covers. I never found any kind of replacement business in this line in Scotland - we had already become publishers with a worldwide readership, and that grew. But I still miss the work with manufacturers and engineers, and Sheffield!

As a Sheffielder back in the 1960s to 80s I loved so many of the tree-lined streets - they made photogenic views when I was starting in photography. I have been horrified by this story, especially as I spent five years in the 1970s producing photographs on the environment and planning for S Yorks County Council and remember how much they differed from Sheffield City Council, but I would never have though this possible. I'm in Scotland now and in 2009, with co-ordinated help from a neighbour, I halted the cutting down of old yew trees in our town churchyard. I just started photographing the council workers and when challenged said the pictures were going to the press, on line and to the council within the hour - and did exactly that. An hour or two later they packed up and went leaving just three old yews surviving. All those they had 'pruned' except a couple died, and those will take 100 years to recover. The reason was, we believe, a collusion between council staff to cull these trees on a strange excuse that 'druggies were hiding drugs in them' - the objective, a stash of excellent hardwood firewood.

Shares, managed funds, and property. Even with some quite spectacular losses I've done well enough managing shares on-line, certainly much better than the 4 to 6% returns offered by residential property or annuity/drawdown. Currently around 12% net on commercial property (income) and a similar level of annual growth on collective investment funds. But those have achieved 15% quite recently, and I'd be happy with anything better than 8% on property. Ultimately the best return is always from using funds in the course of business - buying and selling. And I was quite happy to accept 4% drawdown advised on my private pension fund on becoming an OAP last year, as this should leave the fund growing, not being depleted.

I met Geoff Dilley in 1978 (I think). His firm was called Dilley Security, and I photographed, wrote and designed a four-page colour brochure for them along with some PR work. He had 'found' me because he bought my parents' house in Wickersley, which they in turn had purchased from British Steel when the former United Steels managers' houses were sold to their (renting, peppercorn) executive incumbents. It was a very high value house - when my father arrived there in 1960 it had a disused open swimming pool, derelict tennis court, empty garden ponds, abandoned chicken shed, overgrown orchard etc in 3 acres on Sledgate Lane. Although he was only renting it, he worked every minute of his free time (when not restoring old cars or building harpsichords!) bringing it back to life, repairing the old pool and covering it with a (no doubt lethal) commercial greenhouse which stopped you getting out except at the ends... Geoff Dilley had done well enough to buy that. I guess today it would be a £1.5-2m house. He had put thick fitted carpets all over the austere 1920s black and white diamond pattern lino tiled hall floor and created a bar which looked surprisingly like a hotel or pub. He was delighted to show it off to me. He was actually a very good client to work for; he was open to ideas, including shooting the pictures of his guards at night because it looked more authentic than daytime. He paid promptly too, unlike all too many of my 1970s clients who left me (and other Sheffield businesses) with an annual round of bad debts. Don't know about Bulldog Security at that time, but I think Geoff referred me to an alarm system supplier called Arrow which he may have been connected with, I did brochure and PR work for them. I remember Dilley and Arrow were both pioneers of direct phone-line connected alarms. He had a superb control centre with a map of Sheffield and every location with a light. From the status of the lights, the operator could see whether staff were on duty, alarms active, alarm triggered - every location was phone linked. David