David Hurn: The 90-year-old photographer on capturing The Beatles and Taylor Swift fans

One of Britain’s most influential photographers has been looking back at his long and successful career and reveals how he takes the perfect photo.

David Hurn, 90, has photographed legends like The Beatles, and has captured moments in history, such as Churchill’s funeral and the Aberfan Disaster.

Speaking to ITV Wales’ arts and culture programme, Backstage, David Hurn said: “Photography is very simple - you start in the right place, press the button at the right time, and you’ve got a picture.

“It, in theory, is as simple as that. But you've got to be in the right place.

“Then you've got to be observing as to what is happening… and after a time you just instinctively pick it up.”

David told Backstage that his interest in photography was first ignited when he was in the Army.

“I saw a picture in a magazine called Picture Post, which was a Russian army officer buying his wife a hat in a department store in Moscow,” he said.

“It made me cry, because my father had been away during the Second World War, and the first thing he did when he returned to the UK was take my mother to Howells [department store] in Cardiff, and bought her a hat.

“I suddenly saw that a photograph could create enormous emotion, but could also counteract propaganda.”

In 1964, he took some of his most iconic photos with The Beatles.

He was asked to photograph the band while they filmed A Hard Day’s Night, to which he told the director: “On the condition that I don’t ever have to ask them [the band] to do anything.

“There was no point in doing that set-up picture, because there’d be 400 other photographers all the time shooting the same picture.”

At the time, it was important for David to “try to find, visually, that connection between the fans and The Beatles”.

“I found them, obviously, unbelievably talented,” he said.

“I was surprised how very determined they were to do what they wanted to do - which was good because I enjoyed that.”

But this was not to become David’s last time reacting to superstars by grabbing his camera.

He also captured the buzz around Taylor Swift’s concert in Cardiff earlier this year.

“It came about because I’m at an age where I do silly things almost out of spite,” he said.

“I read that Taylor Swift had brought in £1billion to the economy… and I thought, ‘well, I don’t actually want to photograph her, and I certainly don’t want to go to the concert’.

“But I thought it’d be fun to photograph the fans.”

Despite thousands of Swifties flocking to the Principality Stadium in June this year, they were far from rowdy, according to David.

“You were there with 50,000 people, and it was the most peaceful place you could possibly be.

“It was like being at a religious pilgrimage, you know?”

After years of taking photos across the world, much of David’s work is now closer to home in Tintern, where he has lived for more than 50 years.

“I’ve become, more or less, the village photographer - which I love,” he said.

“So, if Johnny’s got a birthday party this weekend, I’m there like a shot, and I take it very seriously, as if I was working for Life Magazine…

“I just think it’s so free, so lovely. I love it when people get together and socialise.”

Watch Backstage on ITV Cymru Wales, Friday at 7pm and on ITV X.

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