Unusually I’ve cropped and image image well away from 3:2 format to remove a camera
The Conservative Party is determined to privatise the NHS, while at the same time telling us that it is safe in their hands, and the Labour Party in office made a good start on their project through the private finance initiative, which loaded the NHS with huge amounts of debt to private developers. PFI solved some short-term problems but it predictably turned out to be as good a long-term strategy as taking money from loan sharks. Never sensible, the problems of PFI were exacerbated by the financial crisis, which has turned it into total disaster.
There are many in parliament who stand to gain personally from the privatisation of the NHS, while others have a doctrinal opposition to the welfare state. Many of those of us who grew up with it still know how important it was in our lives, in many cases literally live-saving, and still bless Nye Bevan for his vision and determination.
Of course the NHS is not perfect, and there are many aspects which need reform, to cut down on inefficiencies as well as to meet growing demands and medical advances. But although some of the huge changes being made can be dressed up as doing this, most are a back-door privatisation of the NHS, shifting money to suppliers of goods and services.
When Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt lost a court challenge for exceeding his powers in closing down the A&E and other departments at a much needed and clinically and financially successful hospital in Lewisham (to pay PFI debts elsewhere), he appealed and lost again. But instead of obeying the law, he decided to change it, tacking on Clause 119 to the Care Bill going through parliament, a clause which gives him as health minister more or less the power to do anything he likes.
Careful framing helps (see below)
As often happens in legislation going through parliament, the actual number of the clause often changes as other items are withdrawn, amalgamated or inserted. The framing of the banner in the image above helps to eliminate a little confusion as the banner had an earlier number for the clause. Though really it was more about putting the exclamation mark at the edge of frame. I’ve framed tightly to the banner at the right edge, and just managed to get the ‘Cost lives!’ visible on the shirt of the central figure. The top edge of the frame was determined by wanting a just a little space above her head, and I’ve made use of a placard behind her to get her head to stand out a little from the background. With 3 sides of the frame determined there wasn’t a great deal of choice about the fourth, but it works OK. Ideally I would have liked to be just a few millimetres higher, I’m not sure whether this would have been possible. Sometimes it would be nice to be just a little taller.
Framing is vital in photography, but so many photographers (and myself at time) seem to be rather sloppy about it. I try to get things right in camera, taking a particularly careful look at the edges of the image when I’ve time to do so.
Occasionally there are things that just won’t work in the normal 3:2 frame for various reasons, and I’ll take these with another framing in mind. The image at the top of this post was an example, with an intrusive video camera at the right of the scene. I couldn’t move the camera or find a way to frame without it, and framed for a cropped image.
Andrew Gwynne MP, a member of the Shadow health team
The embroidered placard ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ must be one of the most photographed placards around, and I’ve photographed it at various protests over several years. The woman who made it and carried it was a colleague of my wife in the early 1970s. It’s effective because it stands out, and the message is large and clear. Often the ideas that people think up for protests end up with being hard to photograph, and there were two examples at this protest.
The van was hard to incorporate into the picture
One was the large digital image of Cameron the side of a van with the message ‘David Cameron is wrecking our NHS – Stop him.’, which the protesters formed up in front of. I didn’t really manage to find a good way to integrate the image with the rather more colourful protesters in front of it – and it largely obscured the Houses of Parliament – you can see the clock-face of Big Ben peeking over it. I imagine it was being driven around and used elsewhere, but here it seemed to be something of a nuisance. Another photographer was responsible for directing the scene and including the van, and it rather killed the event at that point, though it recovered later. As ever, posing produced cliché, and took some working round.
The Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament, shadow health minister Andy Burnham & Jeremy the Vulture
Jeremy the Vulture (named after Jeremy Hunt) destroying the NHS was a nice touch, but fiendishly difficult to photograph. As you can see he was rather dark, and against the sky was a virtual silhouette. Which might have been effective, but I couldn’t make it so. To get the result above, I’ve angled a flash in the hot shoe up and to the right, avoiding excessive exposure on the speaker who is closer to me. A few test exposures enabled me to get the lighting about right (quite a lot of local control – darkening some areas and lightening others was needed back on the computer.) But although this image is reasonably clear, it was hard to get the bloodstained and holed body of the NHS to really be clear. Obviously I wanted to get the Houses of Parliament in the background too, but Jeremy was a moving target, and there are only some angles from which a vulture really looks like a vulture. You can see a couple more of my various attempts to photograph him in Stop Hospital Killer Clause 119, along of course with other pictures of the event.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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