Don McPhee, who has died aged 61, was a former EDP photographer who went on to take pictures of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and cover a US presidential election from a candidate's plane.

Don McPhee, who has died aged 61, was a former EDP photographer who went on to take pictures of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and cover a US presidential election from a candidate's plane.

Mr McPhee worked for the EDP from 1964 to 1966, at the beginning of a long and distinguished career, shortly after gaining professional qualifications.

From there he went on to a picture agency in York before joining The Guardian's Manchester office in 1971, where he became one of Britain's best-known newspaper photographers.

He took one of the most iconic images of the 1984 miners' strike, a shot of a protester in a policeman's toy helmet eyeballing a line of police at the Orgreave coking plant.

Other famous shots from his period roaming the north include two farmers standing gut-to-gut and a picture of a woman putting her face against a horse's mouth.

Mr McPhee loved the eccentricities of everyday life and was a great support to the reporters he worked with and an inspiration to many photographers who admired the man and his work.

Eamonn McCabe, The Guardian's former picture editor, said: "Don produced outstanding photographs, full of wit and style, in the great tradition of the paper.

"He was the type of photographer who could illustrate a whole newspaper by himself - except maybe for football."

Many of his greatest photographs were featured in a display at the Manchester Art Gallery in 2005.

In 2000, Mr McPhee was given an honorary MA by Manchester Metropolitan University.

He died on Monday after a short battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife Lillian, daughters Lizzie and Ailsa, son Nicholas and three grandchildren.