A photographic business owner has come a long way from Butlin’s and cruise-ship photography to the streets of Tavistock.

Keith Hall has retired from thriving Dartmoor Photographic, the business he inherited from his mum Kathie, and is selling it to a local entrepreneur after 39 happy years in Tavistock town centre.

The secret to his success has been the way he and his staff have adroitly ridden the technological rollercoaster that is photography.

From his early days in photography taking photos of cruise passengers at the Egyptian pyramids, Keith has lived through the photographic revolution– from ‘real’ cameras to digital through mobile phones, social media and back again to retro-wet film photography.

Keith took on the shop after his mum Kathie passed away in 1997 and after jobs at Butlin’s holiday camps and as a cruise ship photographer.

He said: “I had the best time on cruise ships visiting Israel, Egypt, the Amazon and the Caribbean. I stood next to the pyramids and hoped passengers would like their photos I took for them. Luckily lots did.”

Keith was seriously ill in November 2021. In the past years the shop has been looked after by Michael Stott and Keith is grateful to his most recent team Mark Ashley, Ash Marment and Emily Boylin for allowing him to be in the shop on reduced hours.

The business first responded to customer demand by bringing in one-hour processing, providing faster prints, instead of waiting for posted film to be returned from processing.

Keith said: “One-hour processing proved very popular. We were dealing with 300 films a day, working long hours.

“Through the years I have seen many children in the area grow to adults from their passport photos and parents printing memories.

“Then came digital which took over everything, backed up by everyone having mobile phones cameras.”

Keith’s legacy is high online sales, boosted by demand for analogue/wet film photography, a national phenomenon.

He said: “It’s incredible that analogue photography is so popular. This is down to new younger customers who see influencers on social media being creative.

“Youngsters are inspired by seeing the results of something they created and can hold.

“They like it that that images are not perfect, they are seen as authentic and have an old-fashioned feel.”

His big seller is the US ‘campsnap’ an old-fashioned camera look-alike design without a screen.

Keith said: “We were lucky to have seized the moment with the campsnap.”

One of Keith’s own treasured photographs is of Ian Botham on his John O’Groats to Land’s End leukaemia charity walk in Okehampton.

Keith snapped general pictures of Botham’s welcoming crowd. To his delight he had, purely by chance, captured the cricketer and his supporter Elton John. But did not know he had pictures of the celebrities until he developed the film at his parents’ Okehampton photo shop.

Life came full circle for Keith in another sense when his former cruise-ship boss ordered albums from him and only realised who Keith was later on.

Keith is retiring with his wife Sheila and dog Humphrey and plans to add to his 100-ashtray and 60-water jug collections for his home bar.