Jason Bye, Photojournalist

'Vere' Are Your Papers'...

2009-06-16T08:49:00.005+01:00

In the midst of a thunderstorm, Tory leader, David Cameron appeared for a question and answer session in Norwich. His handlers, not wanting a picture of their man getting his hair wet told photographers and tv crews there would be no arrival picture..... A bit of grumbling and the placing of cameras by feet turned this decision around, although he did them get dropped off at another entrance and appeared through a corridor. Quite why the PR machine thinks a possible future Prime Minister is unable to cope with a little rain is beyond me. All it does is annoy journalists and creates an early line for a story, which at seven o'clock with deadlines looming is all important.

As with most of these meetings, nothing of any real revelation is ever said. Every answer is carefully crafted, never quite pinning down a yes or no. However, on the subject of ID cards, Cameron pledged that they would not come to pass under a Conservative administration. In a cod-German accent he said "Where are your papers?" An off the cuff, unscripted response that perhaps most of the population would make, particularly those who are fans of Fawlty Towers. One woman questioned the wisdom of the remark, and that was it; a gaffe, a story, references to Basil Fawlty and talk of a diplomatic row.

Telegraph story here.
Sun story here.
Licence David Cameron photographs here.

Eccees... The Story That Just Keeps on Giving...

2009-05-22T08:12:00.006+01:00

The sorry tale of MP's expenses rolls ever onwards on what seems like day 238! Today it's the turn of Norwich North MP, Dr Ian Gibson to be caught with his finger in the pie.... the one member I didn't expect to be selling photographs of for involvement in this sorry tale, but there you are, I was wrong. However I've got a front page on the Times and will no doubt be spending the day chasing him around.

Times article here.
License Dr. Gibson photographs here.

Crime Doesn't Pay...

2009-05-19T11:16:00.005+01:00

An old aircraft hangar on a disused World War II aerodrome in the East Midlands is piled high with property confiscated from Britain’s criminals under Poca. Outside the hangar is a row of about 100 cars: a two-year-old Mazda 5 sits next to a bashed-up BMW 3 Series; an ancient Rover saloon is parked alongside a £90,000 low-mileage midnight-blue BMW M6 cabriolet, the former pride and joy of an East Midlands crack dealer.

They’ve all been recovered during criminal investigations and will be stored here until a court orders that they be returned to their owners. More often they are sold off to pay for what a judge deems to be monies gained through criminal activities.

But it is what lies inside the warehouse that is of most interest. This is an Aladdin’s cave, giving an insight into Britain’s criminal tastes.

Mail on Sunday Live Magazine article here.
Licence images here.

The Prime Minister We Never Had?

2009-02-05T08:44:00.008Z

Former Home, and Education Secretary, Charles Clarke MP has claimed the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair wanted to position him to become a leadership rival to Gordon Brown. Astonishingly the MP for Norwich South, in an interview with the New Statesman, says that Blair wanted to offer him the post of Foreign Secretary to make him a more rounded candidate. According to Clarke, the then Prime Minister made this revelation the day after sacking him from the Home Office in 2006 when it emerged that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released without being considered for deportation. Blair, it is claimed, then invited Clarke and his wife to a private dinner at Chequers.

"He had a great plan, apparently, that he wanted me to be foreign secretary because he thought that if I had been foreign secretary and home secretary I would be a credible opponent to Gordon, as the leader of the party. And this had been his long-standing strategy, and that was what he had been intending to do, and that's what he hoped to do. Which ran against, of course, what I had said to him about feeling I needed to do home secretary for three or four years. I knew nothing about this until after the event, and I said to him if he was nice enough to think I ought to be leader of the party, then he might as well have been courteous enough to tell me this was his plan" said the former Home Secretary.

Following his dismissal from Government, Clarke has be a constant thorn in the side of Gordon Brown, criticising his appointment as Prime Minister; setting up a website with Alan Milburn to put out their vision for the Labour Party, and questioning his mental state, claiming he has phycological issues and is a control freak.

Clarke is currently seen as attempting to eye up the position of Transport Secretary but concedes that he'll never run for leader.

Read the New Statesman interview here.
Licence Charles Clarke photographs here.

The Tin Tabernacle

2009-01-27T15:31:00.002Z

The tiny corrugated iron chapel began life as a £350 flat-pack in kit form, taking only weeks to build as a temporary place of worship for the swelling population of a Victorian village.
More than 120 years later as other, more sturdy, churches have long since closed their doors, the “tin tabernacle” at Saxlingham Nethergate, Norfolk, is bursting at the seams… and has just appointed its first pastor.
Former policeman Ian Masson believes his congregation at the Evangelical Chapel has been boosted by the credit crunch.
‘With the fall in house prices and the recession, a lot of people have become disillusioned with material gain and they are increasingly turning back to the church and God,’ said the 53-year-old known as “Pastor Ian” to his flock.
Until fairly recently the timber-framed, metal-clad chapel was on the verge of being demolished, after 120 years of East Coast winds had taken their toll. But as the worshippers flocked back, so did the money for refurbishment, and a £90,000 makeover left the building with an extension to house an inside lavatory, kitchen and meeting room.
Air-conditioning, however was not on the list. ‘It’s like an ice box in winter until the heating fires up, and like sitting in a Hovis tin in the Summer,’ said Mr Masson, with the deafening noise of rain thundering in the background on the roof.
At one time, there were thousands of the corrugated iron churches around Britain, with manufacturers sending them out in kit form to the provinces and colonies alike.

Licence Tin Tabernacle photographs here.

Cold Blooded Evil

2009-01-15T08:48:00.005Z

The murders of six women in Ipswich in 2006 and subsequent 2008 trial of Steve Wright resulted in an enormous amount of media attention on the Suffolk town. Alongside the reporters, photographers and tv crews were a few that didn't quite fit in. They were the crime writers and even a playwright.

The first of these, Cold Blooded Evil, has appeared and uses a number of my images from both the investigation and Crown Court trial.

Buy Cold Blooded Evil here.
Licence Ipswich Prostitute Murders photographs here.

New Website...

2008-12-29T14:18:00.003Z

My main site is having a rebuild. It will now function both as a window on my work, and an archive and image delivery system. It also allows for automatic on-line licensing of images. Currently their is an automatic redirect page, which will disappear when I sort out the CName. Comments about usability and any problems encountered with different systems and browsers are most welcome.

To go to site, click here.
The old site is here.

The Loss of a Friend...

2008-12-13T22:52:00.012Z

A little while ago I photographed author, Stephen Foster, with his dogs for a Daily Mail feature on his life with these faithful companions. The session was a little hurried due to Ollie (on the right in the above photograph) having just returned from the vets and obviously being in need of rest.

A few days after the article ran Stephen called me to ask for some prints of Ollie as sadly he had been diagnosed with cancer and only had a few days left.

I dropped some prints at Stephen's and came across the melancholy sight of Ollie seemingly awaiting his fate, looking at me in the way that dogs always manage to when something is out of the ordinary.

There is something about the passing of a dog that affects people in a profound way. Cat owners don't seem to suffer the same fate. Maybe it's a cat's independence as opposed to a dog being totally dependent on it's owner. As a boy I too, like Stephen held my dog as the vet performed the final act to end it's suffering and it is something you never forget.

Stephen has since written a piece for the Times about the passing of Ollie. He writes that everybody has a story about the passing of a pet dog. It's true; they do.

Daily Mail article here.
Times article here.
Licence Stephen Foster photographs here.
Buy Walking Ollie here.
Buy Along Came Dylan here.

Holding Back the Years....

2008-10-27T11:15:00.011Z

Sarah Burge, the self-styled Human Barbie has spent over £1/2millon on cosmetic treatments and surgery according to the Daily Express. The mother of three has racked up over 100 treatments in an effort to halt the aging process and now has the rather dubious honour of being a world record holder for cosmetic surgery.

She has admitted that she find going under the knife addictive and claims that she is not unhappy with her looks.

Over the years I have photographed a number of women who have had cosmetic surgery, and have to say that I find the whole thing very odd. Quite why anybody does it is beyond me. I've never seen anybody that looks natural or is entirely happy with the end result. (Stylists that I work with will agree; they have to hide the scars.) Usually there is an underlying unhappiness that they are trying to compensate for with the aid of surgery.

My advice..... don't do it.

Daily Mail article here.
Previous Daily Mail article here.
Licence Sarah Burge photographs here.

Last of the Family Silver...

2008-09-24T12:49:00.009+01:00

Today, it has been announced that French state owned power company, EDF has bought British Energy PLC. EDF are planning to build another four power stations over the next decade. Not many years ago the selling off of Britain's nuclear industry to a foreign power would have been unthinkable, but considering every other utility and national industry has some element of foreign ownership, we should perhaps not be surprised.

One thing you can be sure of is that energy prices will not fall; currently EDF's UK customers pay £100 per year more for their energy than the French.

You may think it is odd that neither of the main political parties have raised questions over the bid. Perhaps this is due to EDF and related nuclear lobbying firms making donations to both Labour and the Conservative parties.

Interestingly it has also been noted that Andrew Brown, younger broth of Prime Minister, Gordon Brown is Director of Communications for EDF in the UK. One of Brown's key advisors is Ed Balls, whose father in law Tony Cooper, is a long standing nuclear lobbyist.

License British Energy photographs here

Wine, Women and Song...

2008-06-06T08:19:00.005+01:00

Europe's oldest man, Henry Allingham is 112 today. He has jokingly said that the secret to his longevity is "cigarettes, whisky and wild women". His life has spanned six monarchs and has taken in 21 prime ministers.

Now partially deaf and almost blind, Mr Allingham, who was born in Clapham, London, now lives at St Dunstan's home for blind ex-servicemen, in Ovingdean.

Mr Allingham is the oldest surviving World War I British veteran, a founding member of the Royal Air Force and the last known survivor of the Battle of Jutland. In August 2005 he led the nation in the Lord's Prayer at the Cenotaph in London to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1. In 2003 he was awarded the French Legion d'Honneur.

Licence Henry Allingham portraits here.

The Cat Man....

2008-06-05T17:24:00.011+01:00

As a rule men and dogs go together; women and cats go together. You may find the odd single chap who lives with a cat or two but it is generally not the case. And we've all come across the mad old dear who is surrounded by the things!

However, author, Tom Cox lives with six felines, and I should add, one woman. His latest book is titled, "Under the Paw, Confessions of a Cat Man" and is the subject of a feature in the Times. Nothing unusual in this you may think. The tricky bit of this assignment was that the Times2 section of the paper has recently undergone a redesign and I was asked to photograph said cats with studio lights and Tom incidental within the frame.

Now, getting six cats together in one place is difficult enough, let alone freaking them out with high powered strobes. Luckily, Tom hadn't fed them that day, so a group feed was decided on. With food in the bowls the six were gathered together, remaining in place for long enough to get off half a dozen frames before deciding they'd had enough and disappeared back into the garden.

Getting it right was in all honesty, more by luck than judgement and enforced the old adage; never work with children or animals.

See Times article here.
Licence Tom Cox portraits here.

Salt and Vinegar with that...

2008-01-01T15:44:00.000Z

For most of her life, Faye Campbell has eaten nothing but chips. One bowl a day washed down with glasses of milk.

For years it was just assumed that she was an extremely faddy eater, but Barts Hospital in London discovered that Faye was suffering from gastrooesophageal reflux. Reflux problems are common, affecting 18 per cent of otherwise healthy babies. 90 per cent of those affected will grow out of it naturally within the first year.

For sufferers such as Faye the condition is more distressing - the stomach sends strong acids back up the gullet and into the mouth. Faye had learned as a baby that food caused pain, and decided to do without. The only food she found acceptable was chips, although no one is sure why.

Daily Mail article here.
License Faye Campbell photographs here.

2007, In Review...

2007-12-27T13:23:00.000Z

The year started with Steve Wright, charged with the murder of five prostitutes in Suffolk, pleading not guilty at Ipswich Crown Court. His trial will begin in January 2008.

February saw the first of the year's agricultural disasters to hit the Eastern Region with the deadly HN51 strain of Bird Flu being discovered at the giant Bernard Matthews' Turkey Farm. Over 160,000 birds were slaughtered.

In March a total lunar eclipse turned the Moon blood red. Lunar eclipses occur when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in a near-perfect line in space. The Moon travels through the long cone-shaped shadow the Earth casts in space. The only light that can reach the Moon's surface at this point has been refracted through our planet's atmosphere. This light takes on a red tinge - depending on the amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere. The next visible eclipse is due on February 21st 2008.

The James Paget Hospital in Gorelston was caught up in a row that it had tried to cover up an outbreak of Clostridium difficile (CDiff) which had contributed to the deaths of 17 people. The deaths came to light when a member of the public contacted a national newspaper.

April saw Conservative Party leader, David Cameron arriving in Diss to great fanfare to rid the town of graffiti. The assembled media gather to record this momentous deed only to find Cameron and his entourage painting a wall that was, er.... devoid of any graffiti!

Lady Leicester held a grand car boot sale at Holkham Hall in May. Lord and Lady Leicester were downsizing due to leaving the magnificent 18th century hall for a farmhouse on the estate after handing over the day to day running to their son the Viscount Coke.

After 40 years of service, Eric Edwards retired from cutting reed and sedge on the Norfolk Broads. He will be sorley missed by newspaper photographers of whom he has provided endless features for. Eric kept the Broads traditions alive with his trademark smock, hat and neckerchief, and is one of only two reed-cutters in the Broads to still use a scythe. He famously told Magaret Thatcher she was 'doing it wrong' whilst giving her a lesson in stacking and dressing reed.

Gordon Brown moved next door in June finally ousting Tony Blair for the job of Prime Minister. The honeymoon of public opinion has been short lived after dithering over an election and various disasters with personal information, and the spectre of sleaze rearing its head. By the end of the year opinion polls were putting the Conservative Party firmly in the lead.

In July members of the Household Cavalry took their mounts out of the stifling heat of London for a little play on the Norfolk coast. The annual summer camp includes two days of exercises on the beach where cavalry charges in the surf mean most of the riders end up airborne.

Britain's Prison Officers locked down cells and walked out of work in August. The illegal strike action took the government by surprise and forced the Justice Ministry to seek a High Court Injunction to force the warders back to work.

Apocalyptic visions of the East of England under water last seen in 1953 as a storm surge in the North Sea failed to cause the predicted mayhem and destruction during November. In Gt Yarmouth where some of the worst flooding was expected surfers took to the sea taking advantage of the swell.

Dropping off this mortal coil was literary legend, Norman Mailer. His debut work, The Naked and the Dead, set in Japan during World War Two made his reputation as one of America's tough guys. He twice won a Pulitzer Prize for non fiction, married six times as well as keeping various mistresses and sired eight children.

Bird Flu reared its head once more with a free range flock on the Norfolk/Suffolk border being hit by the virus. 6,500 free range turkeys destined for Waitrose were culled. Poultry on surrounding farms were also slaughtered bringing a total cull of 22,000 birds.

Boss of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs Paul Gray resigned from office in December when the news broke that HMRC had lost two computer disks containing the personal details of 25 million child benefits claimants. Many commended him at the time for doing what so many officials in recent government have refused to do; taking responsibility for the failings of his department under leadership.

It was however a short lived spell in the wilderness. 13 days later he was back in full time employment in the civil service working for Sir Gus O'Donnell at the Cabinet Office, the very man he had tendered his resignation to.

Licence Ipswich prostitute murders photographs here.
Licence bird flu outbreak photographs here.
License C.Diff outbreak photographs here.
License David Cameron photographs here.
License Gordon Brown photographs here.
License Household Cavalry photographs here.
License Prison Officers strike photographs here.
License storm surge surfing photographs here.
License Norman Mailer portrait here.
License Paul Gray photograph here.

Coming to a Suburban Street Near You...

2007-11-17T19:31:00.000Z

The production of cannabis used to be associated with far off places such as Morocco and Afghanistan. In the UK it is more likely to be grown here. Know as Skunk, and sporting a far greater hit then the resin varieties of yesteryear, (Analysis of recent homegrown hauls detected THC levels as high as 20%, nearly seven times higher than samples of imported resin, which used to be the predominant form of the drug on the streets, and typically contain around 3% THC,) it's big business and mainly run by Vietnamese gangs, and more often than not, run from a rented suburban home.

"A decade ago 11% of cannabis sold on the street was grown in the UK. "Now more than 60% is produced in Britain and we are currently finding two to three factories in London a day. This is a growing crime problem across the country." said a Police Inspector involved in raids in Hertfordshire. Due to Police in London cracking down on the farms, production has spread to counties around the UK.

Typically a house is rented from an Asian landlord in a perfectly ordinary suburban street, the windows blacked out, and nobody ever seen coming, or going. Inside is a very different story. The gangs tap into the electricity supply before the meter and rewire the house with heavy duty cable powering sodium lamps which provide sunlight to the crop. Looking after the needs of the plants is a 'gardener', often a young illegal immigrant, working from a recipe of daily feeding requirements with only cigarettes, porn movies and a buddhist shrine for company.

The raid I went on with Cambridgeshire police netted a crop worth £70,000. With a 12 week turn around for the 200 plants, this house had the potential to produce £750,000 per year. Lucrative indeed, and with very little risk for the gangs controlling the operation.

In Canada there was a similar explosion of Vietnamese controlled farms. The experience there suggests that methamphetamine is never far behind.

One organisation benefits from the Police raids; the local council receive the sodium lamps, to use in street lights.

Mail on Sunday article here.

Licence raid and cannabis plants photographs here.

From the Archives....

2007-10-21T16:26:00.000+01:00

A chance telephone call from the Australian newspaper alerted me to an old set of pictures. One of my pictures from the Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture, written by Burmese dissident leader, Aung San Suu Kyi and delivered by her husband, Dr Michael Aris in 1997 had been used in a feature by the Daily Mirror. I had placed the pictures in the library of the Independent, where I was working at the time, and forgot about them.

Sadly, Dr Aris died from prostate cancer in 1999, having been unable to visit his wife during his illness. The Burmese junta would not grant him a visa to visit Burma, saying that they did not have the facilities to care for him, and instead urged Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time temporarily free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused re-entry if she left, as she did not trust the junta's assurance that she could return. They last saw each other at Christmas in 1995.

Surprisingly very few photographs on Dr Aris are in circulation and it would appear that the set I shot and forgot about may have been the last time he was photographed in public.

Daily Mirror feature here.
Pope Paul VI lecture here.
Licence Dr Aris photographs here.

The Two Minute Portrait Session...

2007-10-10T11:12:00.000+01:00

Why is it whenever there is somebody interesting to photograph there is never enough time? I had been commissioned to photograph 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine winner, Sir Martin Evans, somebody whom it would be ideal to spend a little time with getting a good set of portraits together. Unfortunately, I had a couple of minutes as he jumped out of a taxi between television stations.

Sir Martin, himself famous for genetically modifying mice during his pioneering stem cell research said the award was "astonishing" and a "boyhood dream come true."

Even with the limited time, my pictures have published widely, including the front page of the Daily Telegraph.

Daily Telegraph article here
Washington Post article here

Another Blow to Farming...

2007-10-02T22:03:00.000+01:00

Agriculture in the UK suffered another blow this month with the arrival of Bluetongue at a small farm in Suffolk. Within days it had been confirmed at a number of other farms up to 50 miles away. Currently there is no vaccine, and as the disease is carried by midges, no way of controlling it's spread.

After initially killing infected animals, the government department responsible, DEFRA, who were desperate not to declare an outbreak, finally came to the conclusion that is was indeed an outbreak, and there was no point in a cull. Instead, they are praying for a cold winter.

The odd thing is, there have been over 8,000 cases in Germany this summer, along with large infections in Belgium, Holland and France. The virus has been making its way from the Mediterranean over a succession of warm winters so it was hardly a surprise when it appeared here, yet the government seemed to have no contingency plan at all.

For me it meant a week chasing around trying to find farms late in the day against newspapers deadlines, with no firm grasp of exactly where the latest infection had appeared. My pictures were used throughout the week in the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent and The Times.

Licence photographs here.

£90k.....For a Wooden Shed?

2007-09-12T21:33:00.000+01:00

It seems Britain is a society more divided than ever. Whilst thousands of young families are struggling to get on the housing ladder with prices spiralling far beyond what their earnings can pay for, one wealthy individual has paid over £90,000 for an 8'x6' wooden shed in the genteel seaside town of Southwold in Suffolk.

Of course, they have bought more than just a shed, they have bought into the fashionable Gun Hill end of the sea front. One upmanship? Keeping up with the Jones? Or just plain daft? Who can say? One can only surmise that money is no problem for the proud owner of a piece of real estate with no mains electricity, running water or gas. Owners are not allowed to sleep in their huts either. Waking up floating in the middle of the North Sea after a freak tide is bound to ruin a weekend after all.

Chairman of Southwold's Beach Hut Owners' Association, Dr Slim Dinsdale, said: “It is a sad fact that many people are now being priced out of owning a beach hut, I think that for some people they are becoming a trophy symbol."

For those with a little less loose change the local estate agents are advertising huts towards the pier end of town for around £35,000. A veritable bargain if ever there was one!

Times article here
Licence photographs here.

Coastal Erosion...

2007-09-06T11:38:00.000+01:00

The East Anglian coastline has long been suffering from the constant battering of the North Sea, constantly shifting and redefining itself. It's saltmarshes and shingle spits the most obvious to us of this relentless change. Towns and villages have disapeared beneath the waves over hundreds of years, most famously at Dunwich and currently Happisburgh which becomes a little smaller every time there is a storm.

It is reported that the lighthouse on the shingle spit at Orford Ness, built in 1792 and the first on mainland Britain to be automated in 1965, may have to be pulled down and a new one erected further inland as the sea eats away at the beach.

A spokeswoman for Trinity House said: ''The lighthouse at Orford Ness was more than 100 metres away from the foreshore for much of the last century. ''However, with coastal erosion accelerating over the past decade, it is now only 45 metres from the shingle shore."

East Anglia is going to look very different over the next fifty years

as successive governments abandon large scale coastal defences of these shores. Quite what will happen, nobody knows.

What a Refreshing Change...

2007-09-03T18:09:00.000+01:00

Usually photographing a band involves nothing but hassle, unpleasant gorrilla types and the obligatory rights grab wanting you to sign over your life's work and a kidney for the pleasure of wanting to give them some exposure in the newspapers. Having dealt with this, you usually have the first three songs to get what you need before being unceremoniously slung out on the street. Some 'big' artists like you to foxtrot after one! They are normally the sort that keep a crowd, who have paid handsomely to stand in a cold open air stadium, waiting for an hour or so after the support act have finished before deciding they can be bothered to turn up.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at Holkham Hall in Norfolk to shoot a feature for the Daily Mail on old school rockers, Status Quo. I had been asked to photograph the two leading band members,Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi around the theme of touring on a bus and their attitude couldn't be more different.

Upon arriving I was given an 'Access all Areas' pass and told to wander where I liked. This I am not used to! After the writer had finished her stuff, I got to work.... trying to get something serious looking proved difficult.

These guys liked to give a photographer the run around!

Actually the feature pics where tied up in about 20 minutes. No prima-donna's here. Even with all the mucking around they were very easy to work with, after all, they must have done this a million times before.

The PR asked if was going to shoot the concert, and if I wanted to photograph the whole gig including from the stage. I soon got some more memory cards from the car!

I'd always quite fancied going to a Quo gig; they are a British Institution, much like Beefeaters and wet summers, so this proved to be one of my better commissions of late made all the easier by their hospitality.

Maybe this is why they have been around for so long. Some other so called stars should take note.

Licence photographs here.

Site Up

2007-08-31T15:02:00.000+01:00

Right, it's up....

Still a little rough and more work to do. Am hoping to add a couple more galleries, remove this waffle from the blog and get my statcounter sorted.

The old site is still available at http://www.jasonbye.com/old

New Site, Blogs and Grief

2007-08-31T11:15:00.000+01:00

Taking advantage of the August lull in work, I though I'd get my website renewed and start a blog. Really, I wish I'd just gone on holiday like everybody else. Oh well...