It was one of Richard Mills’s great strengths as a photographer that he combined his talent with the camera with the instincts of a reporter. The whole story interested him, not just the images he could extract from it.

This was particularly evident in the early work he did for The Times in Northern Ireland, where his coverage of the 12-week dispute between Nationalists and Protestants over access to the Holy Cross Primary School, Belfast, in the autumn of 2001 covered the conflict on the streets from both sides of the sectarian divide.

At the same time he could encapsulate the agonising heart of a nation’s travails in a single photograph, as he did in the harrowing picture he took for The Times in March this year of a disease-ridden Zimbabwean seven-year-old girl, Sarudzai Gumbo, suffering from Aids and the cancers that were soon afterwards to end her life.

Mills had taken a personal interest in her case since he had first come across her the previous year, and had helped to get her into a proper hospital with the aid of donations from Times readers.

He was also an adept at catching moments of grace under pressure, as he did when, in Somalia, he captured a rather tall reporter colleague dwarfing the two Islamic Courts Council policemen by whom he has just been arrested — he is on his way to a Sharia jail, a look of quizzical resignation on his face.

Mills was to ply his craft for The Times in some of the most dangerous parts of the world. Besides Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland he had worked in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even his home assignments never seemed to lack incident. On one occasion while he was covering terrorism-related events in Crawley, a teenager grabbed one of his cameras from the open boot of his car and made off with it. In spite of his bulk, Mills, a good all-round sportsman in his youth, gave chase and soon ran down the culprit, much to the delight of an assembled crowd.

Richard Patrick Alexander Mills was born the son of Richard and Patricia Mills in Enniskillen in 1966. The family moved to Belfast in 1967 and he had his early education at Belvoir Park Primary from where he went to Newtownbreda High School.

Excelling in all sports, he particularly loved hockey, playing both for his school and the YMCA. In 1987 he joined the RAF, where he trained as a photographer — and played hockey. It was while serving with the RAF that he met his wife Zoe at a hockey tournament in Amsterdam, where they were playing for opposing RAF hockey teams. His RAF service took him to many parts of the world, including an attachment to Kuwait, and included a formative spell as photographer with the Red Arrows display team, which developed his remarkable reflexes. For 18 months he was in charge of all still and video footage of the Red Arrows’ displays,

On leaving the RAF with the rank of corporal in 2000 he worked for a short time at The Irish News in Belfast before quickly establishing himself as a freelance press photographer for The Times. His first foreign assignment was to cover the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. For several days the city was under clouds of smoke and teargas as protesters, one of whom was killed, were involved in running battles with police. Mills demonstrated the coolness that was to become characteristic of him, shooting his pictures from just feet away from the rioting, as bricks and bottles flew and police launched wave after wave of baton charges.

His next assignment, in Northern Ireland in November, only confirmed his reputation for fearlessness. His photo-reportage, carried out at considerable risk to himself across the Catholic-Protestant divide in a highly tense atmosphere, penetrated beyond the rioting itself to the heart of the lives of ordinary people in North Belfast.

He brought the same qualities to his coverage of events in Afghanistan and Iraq. In such places, in the middle of ceaseless violent conflict, he saw published in The Times such tranquil images as an Afghan man making tea on a wild hillside, which appeared in March 2006, and the good cheer on the face of a young US army lieutenant as she prepares to lead her platoon off on the first stage of its dangerous progress on the road from Kuwait to Baghdad.

His portraits, especially of children and young people from such violence-torn areas, reflected in their simplicity his own compassion for humanity. Reporters who worked with him noticed that he always focused on his subjects’ eyes. He had a gift for friendship — the pidgin Arabic with which he befriended taxi drivers in Arab countries was legendary among his colleagues — and a renowned sense of humour.

His work as a photographer was greatly admired for his use of natural light and texture, as well as for seemingly effortless compositional skills.

Mills was an associate of the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) and won many awards for his prowess in his chosen field, including News Photographer of the Year in 2003 from the BBC programme What the Papers Say.

The citation for this award appropriately referred to the “consistent imagination displayed by his portfolio”. It was characteristic of his innate modesty that he could not, for some days, actually believe that he had won the award.

Richard Mills is survived by his wife Zoe, who is a squadron leader in the RAF, and their five-year-old son, Finn.

Richard Mills, press photographer, was born on August 25, 1966. He was found dead on July 14, 2008, aged 41