People often ask me what is so special about the books I produce and I normally tell them that, with one exception, they are all on display somewhere. They sit on tables and bookshelves in homes, castles, palaces and gunrooms around the world, occasionally being taken down and opened when someone wants to remember a particular day, a season, a place or perhaps someone who was there. The one exception is a book that will never sit on a shelf again because it was buried with its owner, in his coffin, along with his favourite shooting suit and a selection of salmon flies.

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It is probably the greatest compliment anyone has ever paid to my photography, although at the time I made the book I had absolutely no idea that was where it would eventually end up.

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In the middle of 2025 I received a telephone call from a gentleman in London who wanted to commission me to photograph a couple of shooting days for him later that year. He explained that it was a rather special occasion and that before we went any further he would like to talk properly about what he had in mind. We arranged a Zoom call and, a few days later, he began to explain the brief. In reality, what he gave me wasn't really a photographic brief at all. He told me about his father.

His father had been a countryman for his entire life. He hunted, fished and shot and, ever since his son could remember, the approach of autumn would bring with it an increasing excitement about the season ahead. He was a particularly keen fisherman and would always try to squeeze in a day on one of the great northern rivers immediately before his first grouse day. Apparently he rarely bothered much with the Glorious Twelfth itself, preferring to wait until the birds had seen the line a few times and become rather more educated. By then they knew exactly how to use the wind to their advantage, which made things considerably more interesting.

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He was retired Army and, as our conversation continued, it transpired that he had enjoyed a long and rather distinguished military career that had taken him all over the world. Wherever he went, however, he somehow seemed to manage to take a fly rod with him and would winkle out a fish from a river or stream whenever the opportunity presented itself. He had also been married for fifty years to his long-suffering wife who, by the sound of things, had done a very good job of keeping him in check after his military career while also understanding that the pull of the river and the shooting field was simply part of the man she had married.

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One of the details his son told me has always stuck in my mind. When he was a boy, his father had taught him to fly fish in the back garden, using the metronome from the family piano to teach him the importance of rhythm and tempo. I could immediately picture this rather military approach to teaching a small boy to cast, with the rod moving backwards and forwards to the steady tick of the metronome. Over the years that early lesson had developed into something they shared. They had shot and fished together in different parts of the world and it became their time together, somewhere they could talk, think, laugh or simply say nothing at all. They were father and son, but they were also friends.

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There was, however, a reason why these particular two days mattered so much. His father had terminal liver cancer and was very ill. He knew his time was limited and, in his own wonderfully pragmatic words, he needed to “use up his cartridges” as soon as possible. They had arranged two days in Devon, back to back, staying at a favourite pub, and the plan was essentially to increase his pain medication sufficiently to allow him to make the most of them. They both understood that these would almost certainly be his last days in the field.

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He asked whether I would like to photograph them. There really wasn't very much thinking required on my part. Of course I would.

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The original plan was for me to meet them at the shoot on the first morning, photograph the two days and leave them after the second. It would have been perfectly straightforward and, I am sure, would have resulted in some lovely photographs. The more I thought about it, though, the more it seemed that if these really were to be his final shooting days, the story didn't begin with everyone standing around in a farmyard drawing pegs. It began at home. I suggested a slightly more cunning plan, they agreed, and on the appointed morning I drove to London to meet father and son at his father's house in Kensington.

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I remember walking into a beautiful hallway with a black and white chequered tiled floor, wooden panels on the walls, a winding staircase and a huge old wooden dresser against one side. There were family photographs in silver frames amongst the various personal effects and large old mirrors on the walls, their edges carrying the slight staining and imperfections of age. It was a proper family home rather than something designed to look like one and, hanging from the dresser ready to leave, was his shooting suit.

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Everything had been prepared with extraordinary care. The shirts were ironed with military precision, with creases sharp enough to cut fresh bread, the shooting clothes were clean and pressed and his boots sat polished below. Alongside them were his cartridge bag and gun slip, both made from old English leather which had long since lost the appearance of anything new and instead carried the wonderful colour, scars and patina of many seasons' use. Before a bag had been packed into the car, I picked up the camera. It was the first photograph I made.

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They loaded their luggage and shooting kit into the car, which I photographed as well, and we set off for Devon in convoy along the A303. They wanted to stop for lunch at a favourite pub on the way and by then I had decided that I was going to photograph the whole journey rather than simply the obvious bits at either end. If this was going to be a record of their last trip together, then the bags, the cars, the lunch stop and all the other apparently insignificant details were part of it. In my experience, they are often the things that become significant later.

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We eventually arrived at the shoot pub and hotel, they checked in and later returned to the bar for dinner. The evening was spent beside an open fire in a pair of wonderfully tired old Chesterfield chairs which seemed perfectly designed for balancing a glass of very good malt on the arm. I stayed around for a while, photographed a little and then quietly disappeared, leaving the two of them to enjoy the rest of the evening together.

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I returned the following morning for breakfast before we headed to the shoot and, in many respects, the day began like hundreds of other shooting days I have photographed over the years. The beaters arrived in an assortment of vehicles accompanied by an assortment of dogs and an even wider assortment of hats, all chosen with one eye on the weather that was clearly heading our way. Introductions were made, the safety talk was given, pegs were drawn and, as chance would have it, father and son found themselves standing next to one another in the line.

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There was some wonderful shooting, excellent company and fantastic food, but I very quickly realised that none of those things was really what I was there to photograph. The most compelling subject was the relationship between the two men. There were little comments between them during drives, sometimes encouraging and sometimes wonderfully insulting, and the sort of humour that only really exists between people who have known each other for an entire lifetime. I didn't need to direct anything or ask them to stand together. In fact, doing so would probably have ruined it. I simply kept out of the way with a long lens and watched.

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Then the heavens opened and we were treated to what can only really be described as proper Devon rain. It soaked everything, found its way into places that waterproof manufacturers promise it cannot possibly reach and slowly turned the tracks into mud. None of it seemed to matter. If anything, the worse the weather became, the more father and son seemed to laugh. It was genuine and spontaneous and, most importantly from my point of view, completely unperformed. Most of the time they had forgotten I was there, which is exactly how I like it.

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That evening we returned to the pub for dinner and a slightly earlier night, both of them tired from the day and the battle with the weather. The second morning dawned with conditions that somehow managed to be even worse. The rain remained, but this time it had brought high winds with it. Second and eventually third waterproof coats were enlisted, the mud became deeper and everyone became progressively wetter, but still the laughter continued. It wasn't a case of making the best of a bad situation. They were genuinely enjoying themselves and I just carried on photographing it.

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All too soon the second day was over and we returned to the pub once again. As if somebody had deliberately arranged it, the same two old Chesterfield chairs were waiting beside the fire. A bottle of very good red wine started proceedings and the evening drifted along at its own pace until his father began to drift towards sleep. They were both exhausted and eventually decided it was time for bed.

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The following morning could hardly have been more different. The wind and rain of the previous two days had disappeared and we woke to a clear, bright autumn morning, almost as if the weather had simply been sent to test their resolve and, having passed with flying colours, they were being rewarded for the journey home. We packed the cars and headed back to London in convoy, retracing the route we had travelled only a few days earlier.

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When we arrived back in Kensington, the same bags I had photographed leaving were carried back through the same front door, although everything looked rather different now. The winter sun was shining through a stained glass window halfway up the staircase and throwing coloured light across the black and white tiled floor. Damp coats and hats were simply hung from the dresser, muddy wet boots stood underneath with their laces hanging loose and leaving little brown marks on the floor, and the immaculate order I had photographed before our departure had been replaced by the evidence of two very wet days in Devon.

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His father's old cartridge bag was lying on its side on the floor, open and empty. I remember noticing it immediately because only a few days earlier I had photographed that same bag packed and ready to go. His last cartridge had now been fired in Devon and, given what he had said to his son about needing to use them up, there seemed something wonderfully appropriate about seeing it lying there empty. I photographed it, although I don't think any of us really appreciated at that moment quite how significant that image would eventually become.

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I returned home to Devon and began editing the photographs. Liver cancer had given his father's complexion a very obvious orange colour and I didn't want that to become part of the visual memory of these days, so I made the decision to produce the entire collection in black and white. It immediately felt right. Without the distraction of colour the photographs became about expressions, gestures, weather, mud, dogs and, above everything else, the relationship between a father and his son.

I designed and produced two identical books, one for each of them. They were delighted, I was pleased that I had done justice to what they had entrusted me with and, for a while, I thought that was the end of the story.

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Then, in March this year, the son telephoned me to tell me that his father had died. He had been at home surrounded by his family and, as these things go, it had been as peaceful and dignified as anyone could have hoped. We talked for a while before he said, “Jeremy, the reason I'm calling is because I have a message for you from my father.” I remember sitting rather more upright in my chair because I certainly wasn't expecting that.

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His father had known for some time that he was dying and had therefore had plenty of opportunity to make plans for his funeral. Fortunately, he had retained exactly the same sense of humour that I had glimpsed during our few days together. His wife had apparently always told him that having a tailor-made shooting suit was complete madness when he only wore it for a few months of each year. His answer was that he intended to be buried in it because that way he would get to wear his tweeds every day from then on.

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There were two other instructions. The first was that a selection of his most successful salmon flies should be placed in the coffin with him, just in case there happened to be fishing wherever he was going. The second was that the book I had made of their final shooting trip should go with him as well. His son then gave me his father's explanation, word for word: “If I happen to make it to the Pearly Gates, and St Peter is a shooting man, your book will get me through the gate.” His son laughed as he told me and I have absolutely no embarrassment in admitting that I sat at the other end of the telephone and cried.

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I thought, once again, that this was the end of the story, but recently his son telephoned me again. We talked about his father and he told me how much he still loved the book and how often he looked through it, particularly at the end of a tough day. Then he mentioned that one particular page was being looked at so often that it was actually beginning to wear.

“I know exactly which page you're talking about,” I told him.

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He immediately said that wasn't possible, so I described it to him. It was a photograph of him and his father walking towards me along a muddy track. Both were absolutely drenched and covered in mud and, just before I took the photograph, his father had made some comment which had reduced them both to fits of laughter. They were walking towards me soaked, filthy and completely lost in the moment together. Of course I knew the photograph. I had been there and I remembered taking it.

It was exactly the page he meant.

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I told him to send the book back to me and we had it reprinted, free of charge, before sending the replacement back to him. I didn't really consider that there was anything else to do. Books like these are too important to be allowed to wear out on the page that matters most, and replacing it seemed a very small gesture in return for the honour of having been chosen to record those days in the first place.

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Perhaps the part of the story that means most to me, however, is what he subsequently told me about his children. They look through the book regularly and those photographs have become the way they remember their grandfather. They don't remember him lying in bed at the end of his life, unable to move and no longer able to do the things he had always loved. They remember the man they see in those black and white photographs, out in the field with their father, battling dreadful weather, making jokes, shooting, smiling and laughing in the rain. To them he remains larger than life, a countryman and a great English gentleman.

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After nearly four decades behind a camera I have photographed some extraordinary people in some extraordinary places, and I have been incredibly fortunate to have been invited into parts of people's lives that are normally very private. If someone asks me what the greatest moment of my career has been, however, I don't think about a famous person, an exotic location or even a particularly remarkable photograph. I think about a muddy track in Devon and two thoroughly wet men walking towards me laughing at something that only the two of them completely understood.

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At the time I thought I had been commissioned to photograph two final shooting days and make a book. It was only afterwards that I really understood what I had been asked to do. I had been trusted to preserve a small part of a relationship between a father and his son, and to make a record that would eventually allow his grandchildren to remember their grandfather not as a man dying from cancer, but exactly as his family would want him remembered.

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Laughing in the rain.