Award-winning photographer Charlotte's Graham's book of Yorkshire people

So how did she choose which of her hundreds of portraits to include?

"I didn’t,” she says frankly. “I couldn’t choose and so I sent the publisher 180 photographs and they chose which ones to use.”The result is beautiful book of mesmerising Yorkshire folk – most of them just ordinary people with the odd smattering of celebrity.

"The Jacob Rees-Mogg one was hilarious,” she says of a photograph of the now Secretary of State for Business taken on Yorkshire Day.

“He asked if I wanted him to hold a mace and I said ‘okay’. And then he said did I want him to look like he as hitting one of the knights with it. I have to say I was tempted but I declined.”

She says probably her favourite shot in the book is a black and white picture of a miner called Gary Ward. Entitled the Last Miner, Graham photographed him on the day Kellingley Colliery closed.

"I blagged my way in,” she recalls.

“Members of the press had been invited, but I wasn’t one of them, but I managed to get in and take that photograph of Gary Ward – it is definitely up there as one of my favourites.”

She says she particularly enjoyed photographing Malham blacksmith Annabelle Bradley who also features in the book.

"She was a really nice person and I like the photograph that resulted. There are other female blacksmiths but it is still a bit unusual.

“When I photograph people, I try to capture the spirit of the subject; a little of the spark that makes the person who they are.”

Another photograph in the book that has grown in resonance in recent weeks is the shot of Master stonemason Richard Bossons working on a plaster maquette of the Queen.

“I have photographed his work a few times but that one has become really poignant since the passing of the Queen,” says Graham.

Graham says the key to being a good press photographer is about giving editors what they want and she says she knows when she has caught the right image.

"It comes from years of experience, I just know when I have the shot I want but thanks to digital cameras you can keen on shooting – we all tend to over shoot. You need to be quick and capture the moment, get ask people to pose differently two or three times and you’ve lost it.”

And she must be doing something right as she has won a host of awards over the years, including Commercial Photographer of the Year and shortlisting for Photographer of the Year, and her work regularly appears in national publications such as The Telegraph, The Times and The Observer, as well The Yorkshire Post.

Graham’s mother was a keen photographer in the sixties and seventies working in theatre and film and she grew up in a theatrical household. Initially she followed a career in film and television production and management.

“I was interested in photography but I never thought of it as a career. People kept telling me you couldn’t make any real money. But then when I got to 50 I decided I needed a change of direction. "

She worked for a photographer agency and then five years ago decided to go freelance.

"I worked so hard at it – doing three or four shoots a day and finding out exactly what a newspaper editor might want. Being a successful press photographer is about giving the editors what they want – not just what you think might make a good picture. I shoot pictures for them not for me.

"I ran around filming stuff. If something happens you have to go and film it.” She admits that photographing people wasn’t necessarily her favourite thing at the beginning.

"You can tell quickly whether someone wants their photograph taken or not. You have to talk to them to get that connection which shows in a photograph. Sometimes they just don’t want to. I am a bit of a character and I can be a bit blunt. Not many people want to argue with a 6ft1in blonde built like a brick ****house.”

But running around the country at break neck speed, (Graham does 50,000 miles a year) has taken its toll on the 58-year-old Graham.

Earlier this year she suffered not one, but four heart attacks in one day which left her hospitalised for more than a week.

She had ignored pains in her arm and chest including “a couple of big thumps” which lasted for a minute and half and then went away.

"I failed to listen to my own body,” she admits. “Doing the job I do I don’t eat that healthily, often we just grab things on the road – eating the wrong things at the wrong times. I am changing all that now.

"It was a bit of a leveler. I spent eight days in hospital and that doctor said that I didn’t realise how ill I really was. That’s the problem we don’t believe it.”

Doctors had planned to fit Graham with a stent, but the damage to her arteries is more extensive than they first thought and so they are looking at alternatives, which could include a heart bypass.

"I am still working, but I am having to take things steadier and I am not running around the country. The idea is to try to relieve some of the stress and strains of driving.

“I have had to cut work down which is not a good thing but people have been so understanding, and I have had so many incredible message – some from some A-listers saying how sorry they were to hear I was ill and wishing me a speedy recovery.

"You really find out who your friends are when something like this happens.”

Graham says in some ways the enforced rest is good as it gives her time to think and take stock of things. She moved to near Malton with partner Alison and finds if very peaceful.

“I need to be able to chill out and that’s what I’m trying to do.

"I worked flat out during the pandemic, as we were still working. Now I have gone back to baking and cooking. It’s about trying to work out a happy medium. I am very lucky that I am in a position to be able to pick and choose the jobs I do.”

One of those pictures which she says was indicative of those taken during lockdown was the VE celebrations.

"There is something about that picture that is just so of that time. People aren’t wearing masks but they are clearly socially distanced.”

Graham says it is timely the Yorkshire People book is being published now and she has another book out next year, when her ability to work as she did has been somewhat curtailed.

It will also give her time to work through and catalogue the thousands of images she has.

The forward to Yorkshire People is by former Blue Peter and Countryfile presenter Matt Baker, and there is one of her photographs with Matt and his dog to accompany it.

“I’m sure you will enjoy being transported into the many different worlds Charlotte has so brilliantly captured in the pages of this book. As a dyslexic myself I’ve always been drawn to the world of pictures and Charlotte has that great skill of capturing and telling stories through the viewfinder.”

Yorkshire People by Charlotte Graham is available from www.amberley-books.com at a discounted price of ten per cent off the rrp of £18.99 and bookshops.