Retired Haxby GP and keen amateur photographer Allan Harris is to get his first ever solo exhibition. He spoke to STEPHEN LEWIS.

FOR more than 30 years, Allan Harris was a Haxby GP.

Throughout that time, however, he nursed another passion in addition to medicine: photography.

Wherever he goes, his camera goes with him, the 68-year-old admits. It has been that way since he was a teenager growing up in Wales.

"There are photos of me when I was 16 or 17, and I always have a camera in my hand!"

When he retired as a GP in 2007, he naturally joined a local camera club: and for the last couple of years he's been president of the York Photographic Society.

His photographs have been shown at competitions and exhibitions, and have featured in the pages of this newspaper.

Later this week, however, he will be getting his very first solo exhibition.

'Around Yorkshire', which runs at the Oaken Grove Community Centre in Haxby from this Friday until May 6th, features a selection of his favourite photos of his adopted county taken over the last few years.

The Yorkshire landscapes may not be quite as breathtaking as those of New Zealand, where he worked as a young locum GP for 18 months or so soon after completing his medical training in Leeds. But they still take some beating, as his landscapes reveal.

One particularly beautiful image, taken from the top of Sutton Bank, shows the early morning light slanting across Hood Hill, with Gormire in the middle ground.

Mist still lingers in the shadows at the feet of Hood Hill, but elsewhere has burned away, allowing the autumn trees clustered around the lake to glow a rich red-gold. In the distance, the fields of the Vale of York stretch away into the haze.

It was an early morning in November, he recalls. "I love going to Sutton Bank. You get a bit of height, which you can't get in York!"

Other photos include the River Foss at Huntington in deep winter. The river itself is almost frozen over, with just a narrow channel running down the centre: and the blades of grass in the surrounding fields are stiff with frost. The cold, the stillness and the hush of deep winter seem to radiate from the photo.

There are several photographs of York, too, of course; including a classic shot of King's Staith when flooded, and an unusual view of the Minster.

"It was taken from Clifford's Tower," Allan says. "I was testing a new telephoto lens."

And was he pleased with the result?

"I was! It's absolutely crystal clear!"

* Around Yorkshire: a photographic exhibition by Allan Harris, runs at the Oaken Grove Community Centre from April 10 - May 6. The centre is open from 10am-3pm Monday to Thursday and from 10am-1pm on Fridays.