"I'm actually selfish and I'm helping myself as well," he said.
In 2019, the wheelchair user was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which has since metastasised.
"Two months ago I was walking, now I can't stand up.
"I've got no use of my legs at all and that's a pretty hard, emotional thing to get over.
"I think the emotional thing is getting your head right."
Tucker is not the only one that needs help, with Taranaki Hospice fighting for funds.
Hospice Chief Executive Officer Paul Lamb said it was helping organise the September auction, where there will be more than 100 one-off, signed and mounted prints from photojournalists' favourite images.
"It'll be different, and I think it'll be innovative, and I think the community will really support it," Lamb said.
"We're helping him in some way that he can help us in a hospice, being a charity in the health care sector and pulling on some pretty hard times financially at the moment with the ability to operate as services increase in costs."
This year would mark 55 years of photography for Tucker.
"You know, I don't look ill, but I am not too good, and it's given me focus to get through these days where it's getting harder."
Inspired by his filmmaking father Jack Tucker, he embraced photography while a student at New Plymouth Boys High School.
He spent 17 years as a photographer for the local newspaper, and climbed the ranks to picture editor for the New Zealand Herald in Auckland.
He has an impressive collection of pictures, including shots of the Queen, Princess Diana, sports teams, and indigenous people.
Tucker called himself lucky to catch Princess Diana on the Government House lawn playing with her son and the iconic Buzzy Bee toy.
He said there could be intense competition between photographers pretending to be nice to each other, "but in fact, we get to cut each other's throats to get the best picture".
"Each photographer has his own style, but we've always been a band of competitive people with an artistic streak," Tucker said.
"It's a nice competitive atmosphere. It's healthy to be there."
Photographer Ross Land is helping Tucker on his journey to the September auction of the favourite images taken by talented photographers.
"People are rightly putting value on photographs now, that didn't exist before historical pictures," Land said.
"In my opinion, [the value] has always been there, but other people are realising it."
