The king of horse and hound photographers, incomparable in number of hunts photographed, nations covered, mileage on foot with camera in hand, and career longevity, died just a month shy of his ninety-fourth birthday.

Jim Meads earned his sobriquet, the Running Photographer, early in his career as a professional photographer in the hunting field. Frustrated with the static set shots of horses and hounds posing at the meet and loving the woods and fields where the action was, he realized he would have to rely on his legs and feet. He had hunted as a pony clubber and knew the rules of the field.

His presence in the hunting fields of England, Ireland, across the U.S., and Canada was unmistakable. My mental image? A tall, long-legged fellow in a loose, forest green slicker, long wool sox up to the knees, a woolen hat pulled down to his ears, holding a camera. Yes, he’d be snapping away before the meet until the huntsman moved off with hounds to draw the first covert, the field bouncing along in the huntsman’s wake. Jim might be seen somewhere near the first draw, standing quietly and ready.

But you’re there to hunt. And hounds would find. And you’d be galloping after the music, this way and that for maybe thirty or forty minutes, and hounds would check. And you’d stop with the rest of the field while the huntsman let hounds cast themselves to recover the scent. And, son-of-a-gun, there’s Jim on one knee, camera to his eye, capturing the action. And hounds would recover the line, and you’d be galloping along after the music again for perhaps another forty minutes, really covering some ground. And you’d finally ride up, horse in a sweat, hearing the huntsman blowing “Gone to Ground” and making much of his hounds. And, son-of-a-gun, there’s Jim snapping away as hounds paw and scratch at the earth.

Action is fleeting when one is holding a camera, with little time for the photographer to consider artistic composition and a background that will enhance rather than interfere with the subject. But looking at his split-second action photos, it seemed like Jim always had that part of the process solved before he ever positioned himself for whatever action might develop. There’s a bit of genius to that, and Jim had it.

Some Career Highlights

Frank Meads, Jim’s father, was a photographer and undoubtedly a mentor to him.  At age sixteen, in 1946, Jim quit school and went to work as a trainee photographer at DeHavilland Aircraft Company. The work was exciting. World War II had just ended, and he found himself flying with many famous wartime pilots, photographing one plane from another, often in close formation. In the late 1940s, he did an eighteen-month stint in the Royal Air Force. He shot foxhunting meets and hound shows and began seeing his images regularly published in Horse & Hound. By 1950, Jim began his career as a self-employed sports photographer.

A freak career milestone occurred in 1962. On a Friday afternoon, while caring for his two young sons, Jim drove to the Hatfield aerodrome where he had worked during his flying days a decade earlier. He thought his sons would enjoy seeing the airplanes taking off and landing.

Jim writes, “For some inexplicable reason I took a camera along with me, something I never do unless I’m working. As we watched a Lightning jet fighter coming in to land something went wrong and the plane went into a vertical dive, at very low altitude, while the pilot left his cockpit in the ejection seat. The ensuing photo was voted Picture of the Year 1962, [published worldwide,] and I was famous for a few days….”[See this article for more information about the photo above: Fear of Landing – The Story Behind an Unbelievable Photograph.]

In 1968 Jim started a partnership with Sir Andrew Horsbrugh-Porter, a hunting correspondent for The Field magazine, as Sir Andrew’s photographer. It was a happy partnership that lasted for thirteen seasons.

When Michael Clayton was about to become editor of Horse & Hound magazine in 1973 and was publish his famous series of hunt reporting articles under the pen name, Foxford, he called Jim Meads. Clayton wanted Meads as the cameraman.

Jim also worked for The Field and Shooting Times in the U.K. He was a regular contributor to In & Around Horse Country and graced the pages of Covertside and Foxhunting Life with his images here in the U.S. He has published five books of his photographs, starting with Full Cry, My Hunting World, They Will Always Meet at Eleven, They Still Meet at Eleven, and Going Home, his last book, published in 2008 by the Quiller Press, UK.

Achievements, Awards and Recognition

Jim achieved a personal goal he’d earlier set for himself. He wanted to photograph five hundred distinct and separate hunts over his career. He achieved that goal at the Loudoun Hunt West (VA) while on his 186^th visit to the U.S. The date was December 5, 2010, and he was eighty years old. The achievement was memorialized in Foxhunting Life two days later with photos of the Running Photographer taken by America’s own Eclipse Award and Bryce Wing Trophy winning photographer, Douglas Lees.

At age eighty-six, Jim Meads was honored for his seventy years of photographing the Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show in the UK. It is a stunning achievement, considering that Jim first photographed the show in 1946, the year it was resumed after the conclusion of World War II. For the 1948, 49, and 50 Peterborough shows, a period when Jim was serving in the RAF, he had to secure special twenty-four-hour passes from the Service.

Leading the ceremony at Peterborough in 2016, as the crowd seated around the show ring applauded, Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland, MFH and chairman of the show committee, presented Jim with a bronze fox sculpture in recognition of his faithful commitment to the show. Lord Annaly, ex-MFH and ring steward for many years at Peterborough, announced the proceedings.

In a follow up interview with Horse & Hound, Jim admitted to missing one show at Peterborough when, in 1969, he captained the Queen Mother’s Cricket Team on a tour of the Isle of Wight. He was substituting for National Hunt jockey David Nicholson, who had fallen and broken his leg the day before the Peterborough Show.

Jim, we celebrate your extraordinary life and thank you for an era of memorable imagery left behind in your enormous body of work.

Published June 24, 2024.