2007, In Review...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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?

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...

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...

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

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

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...