IT was back in 1992 that John Gibb, then an idealistic but nave photographer, had his first taste of human misery. He had seen media coverage of the conflict in Eastern bloc countries, been sickened by the images of children dying in orphanages, and decided that he had to act. He'd put it off for years but felt that now was the time to pursue his vocation. "I was one of the first Westerners to go into Albania," John, 57, recalls.

"It was just another world. There were horses and carts and very few cars. I had the opportunity to just drive around, totally free."

It was while travelling through Albania, wide-eyed and shell-shocked, that John came across a mental institution with the most appalling conditions. There he met a man who, despite being wrongfully detained by the former government as an alleged spy, remained out of choice now that the country was free because, as he told John, "Where else would I go?" It's a story he still finds amazing, and one which introduced him to the sheer senselessness of war and oppression.

Although his interest in photography developed as a youngster, when he owned a Browney 44A box camera, John's route into photojournalism was far from direct. Harbouring ambitions of taking documentary-style pictures, he took his camera to "one of those big love-in things" at Crystal Palace in 1966. He got some photographs published, which fired his ambition, but soon found advertising to be more lucrative.

In 1975, he joined the kitchen company Magnet to vamp up its brochures with glossy images and stayed there until 1983. During his time with the firm he completed a course at the London Film School and began producing television adverts. He ended up working for the Newcastle-based advertising giant Robson Brown, for which his commercials included a popular British Gas Northern series featuring Susie Blake (recently seen in Coronation Street as man-eater Bev).

John left Robson Brown to try his hand at local media work but again, found he couldn't make it pay, so returned to advertising, landing a job with Procter and Gamble. He was dealing with some of Britain's top advertising gurus, making adverts for products like Fairy Liquid and Sunny Delight, but still he wasn't entirely satisfied. Then the television pictures from orphanages across the world struck a chord with him. "I started to take stock and think, 'This is not the real world'," he says. "I wanted to be a documentary photographer in the beginning and something in the back of my mind was saying, 'You really want to be a journalist.'"

Despite the culture shock, John, from Bedale, relished his time in Albania. It was there that he first came across the charity Feed the Children and began a ten-year association with it - basically, where the charity went, he followed, knowing it was guaranteed to be a troublespot. This time, he found a ready market for his harrowing pictures of the human cost of conflict, travelling to Croatia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire and most recently, Sierra Leone.

While many wives may have resented this, particularly when left to juggle a job and three children, John's wife Julia was supportive. He admits that his work took its toll on family life. "I'm sure it affected my kids because I was away so much and when I came back it was euphoria for a few days then I had a real low," says John.

While his desire to put himself literally in the firing line may seem perverse, John says he got a buzz from it. "You are on a high of energy from the fact that you are running around in dangerous places. That was me for a number of years. It was month on, month off, two months on, two months off."

But inevitably, the atrocities he saw took an emotional toll. He remembers his time in Rwanda in April 1995, when the Tutsis were taking revenge against the Hutus, as being particularly harrowing. "They were basically going into refugee camps and killing and evicting people," he says. John was there when 1,500 Hutus were liberated from a teacher training college after being imprisoned without food for three days and witnessed scenes he will never forget. "The first thing I did was literally have to walk over a body. It was full of dysentery. I have got a picture with a few bodies in it and I thought it was just a load of rags. I took a picture of a young kid who had had his head macheted and his mother was just tidying it up," he says incredulously.

"We were finding babies at the side of the road. I went round with the Red Cross picking babies up."

It was only when he arrived home that he was hit by the full force of what he had seen. "I got absolutely ratted. I couldn't stand up then I was sick and sweating for two days. That was my way of getting over it," says John.

Putting himself in conflict zones has also compromised his personal safety, most seriously when he was in Sierra Leone in 2000.

"I was a bit sloppy. I didn't take as much care as I should have and this got me into a situation," he says dismissively. In fact, he had clothes and equipment stolen from his Land Rover before being run over, and ending up with a severe leg injury. "I don't want to go into it," says John cagily then, when pressed, "This was a place where I was taking photographs of children with their hands cut off. A little accident in Sierra Leone was a bit insignificant."

John has given a lot of thought to the moral and ethical implications of his photography and says that sometimes "you just put your camera down". But on balance, he feels that the often distressing images are justified. "When you get the photos back you think, 'Maybe that will make the difference'. That's what you like to think - that people will look at a photograph and say, 'I want to do something about that' or 'I can't let that happen again.' You have to carry with you your own personal ethics card. You say to yourself, 'This person's bleeding, this person's crying, am I going to take their photograph? And you do because at the end of it, someone's going to see it and think, 'This could be my child, that could be my wife'," says John.

Prompted by his experiences, he set up a charity, Trauma International Children's Trust, in 1998. While it is now defunct, it did valuable work counselling child victims of conflict.

With encouragement from his wife, John gave up photojournalism to go into teaching. After qualifying, he took over as leader of the media and moving image course at Darlington College of Technology last September. But from this September, he is returning to the subject closest to his heart, photojournalism. Combining photograpy with journalism training, it is the first course using digital technology to be accredited by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). It costs £1,400 for 30 weeks, although it's free for under 19s, and students will spend time with an agency or newspaper.

But does John want them to follow in his footsteps? "If they choose to do it, I think it's a worthwhile occupation," he says, diplomatically. "I think it's a privilege to be able to go anywhere and do anything as a journalist. The camera, in a way, is just a vehicle."

l For more information on the course, phone (01325) 503050.