A PROFESSIONAL photographer has scooped a top prize in a major national competition.

Ian Beesley, of Helmshore Road, Haslingden, is one of 10 winners of the Help the Aged Photographer of the Year competition and his entry of daughter Fay, five, with her grandad, Kenneth, will be part of a country-wide exhibition organised by the UK Secretariat for the International Year of Older Persons.

He won third prize in the professional category from a total of 250 entries.

A professional photographer for more than 20 years, Ian has always worked as a freelance, mainly for exhibitions and books.

His exhibition The Story of Work is currently on display at Blackburn Museum and he has been commissioned by the museum to produce a major millennium exhibition about football fans. Ian, who has lived in Rossendale for about 12 years, is artist in residence at the National Museum for Coal Mining at Wakefield.

Before deciding to earn his living as a photographer he worked at Esholt sewage works at Bradford first as a labourer and then as a road-runner on "Elizabeth", the last working steam engine in that area.

His work has also been exhibited in Leeds Industrial Museum.

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