The River Wear looking East towards Roker and West towards Sunderland city centre yesterday. Some drone GV’s I shot for an editorial story on the wipeout of the Labour Party by Reform in the city. The result was pretty horrific. Labour down to 5 councillors, 12 Liberal Democrats and 58 Reform. How Starmer believes he can survive after this, the Mandelson scandal and the freebies is beyond me? South Tyneside and Gateshead also fell to Reform, and that wasn’t even on an ‘all out’ election. The result in Newcastle was also very interesting with the Greens and Reform getting 24 seats, and the Lib Dem’s 25 giving a near equal 3 way split. Labour was utterly wiped out retaining only two seats in the city. North Tyneside (where I live) stayed Labour, but only because just a third of the seats were up for grabs. My own ward of North Shields was one of the two wards in the borough to elect a Green councillor. Any other party leader would be long gone by now. He’s toast, with absolutely no authority running a zombie government. His legacy will be Farage in no 10 in 3 years. #sunderland #localelections2026 #dronephotography #riverwear
Some more drone photos I shot a few weeks ago. The site of the former Swan Hunter shipyard and the views from Willington Gut looking across the Tyne towards Hebburn and east up the river towards Howdon. #dronephotography #documentaryphotography #tyneside
I don’t do much frontline politics anymore, which is a shame because I always enjoyed it. I still get editorial ‘colour’ stories to do at election times and I recently spent two days shooting a feature on Sunderland and the NE “red wall” for the Times. The first photos are from the launch of the Labour North Campaign with the Redcar MP Anna Turley in Newcastle, and the next from a busy day of meeting Labour councillors and council leaders and vox pops and GV’s. As much as I have come to loathe the Labour Party and Starmer, I genuinely feel sorry about what is probably about to happen. They deserve a good kicking at the polls, but these people don’t. They’ve served their communities, and actually done very good things for Sunderland, and the NE has generally been well run at a provincial level. God knows what horrors Reform will try to impose, but for my own part, (like many others) I still can’t bring myself to lend spurious support to the Starmer project. The Harris excuse employed by the democrats to blame the left for their defeat won’t wash either. Starmer knew where the red lines of many people lay and chose to grossly violate them regardless. Whether it’s enabling genocide, the flag shagging or Mandelson. He’s every bit as corrupt as Johnson, it just manifests differently, and he is throwing the rest of us under the bus when any other politician would have gone months ago. It’s just a shame the LP couldn’t have shown its famous tribalism for its last leader. #politics #britishpolitics #editorialphotography
Something else I’ve done recently but not posted. The annual Good Friday crossing to Lindisfarne by the @northerncrosspilgrimage This is the second time I’ve covered this. #lindisfarne #pilgrimage #goodfriday
Another set if photos I’ve shot recently but not posted. The annual Shrove Tuesday football match held on the meadow behind Alnwick Castle. It’s first team to two goals wins, so potentially 3 rounds maximum with the teams drawn from two local parishes, changing ends after each goal. After the match and presentations, the ball is kicked into the River Aln and the players jump in to see who gets to keep it as a trophy. #shrovetuesday #football #alnwickcastle #northumberland #folktraditions
For some reason, I’ve been working around racehorses a lot recently? I have actually been described as a “horse whisperer” to the Telegraph sports picture editer by a former Grand National winner turned racing correspondent. 😎 That’s going in my CV even if it’s only really knowing how to soothingly talk your way out of getting trampled to death 🙄. Last month the Guardian sent me to shoot a feature on the racehorse trainer Adam Nicol and his horse Minella Study up at his yard in North Northumberland. Got some lovely pictures, but you’d have to be pretty useless not to given the setting of Bamburgh Beach on a beautiful Spring morning. #racehorses #horses #racing bamburgh #bamburghcastle
If you saw my last post you’d have surmised that I might have bought a drone? I have, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but a job came in where they wanted some drone pics, so I bought one, and then the weather was too bad to use 😖. No matter, I have one and this is the camera’s first light up at North Blyth a couple of weeks back. The whole thing was actually quite anxiety inducing, regarding all the regulations and caveats and things, but the rule of thumb seems not to fly in restricted areas and just use common sense. The technology is quite incredible, but for some reason, starter level drone colour science seems to be horrible. Jpeg’s are just an unusable mush of weird colour casts that look like a digital point n shoot from 20 years ago and the RAW’s can be really difficult to work with if the white balance hasn’t been set up properly when shooting. I’m getting better at fixes though. Interestingly, very few documentary photographers appear to be using drones as part of their practice? There’s plenty of commercial drone photography of sunsets and castles and things out there, but very few who seem to be using drones as social documentary tools? One exception I know of is @_matt_james_smith who has been using them as tools in his exploration of the topography of the Durham coalfields, but I can’t find many others incorporating them into their practice? Any suggestions of who’s interesting would be welcome, as apart from my caveats, I’m quite enjoying the creative possibilities even if I am limited to well below eight miles high. #dronestagram #newtopographics #dronephotography #northblyth #dronedocumentation
I bought a new toy for a job. See if you can work out what it is? Since when have we only been allowed 5 tags on IG btw? #bridgesofinstagram #northblyth #bluesky #sunderland #groundcontroltomajortom
I should have posted this ages ago, but other than silly fun with Alexa, I just haven’t been much up for IG recently. It’s the last two days to see the wonderful Weight of Being show at @twotempleplace curated by @ange.thomas.77 It’s a very well curated show using the paintings of the artist John Wilson McCracken (1936–1982) as a starting point, it explores ideas of mental health and our relationships to politics, class and society through a wide range of artistic practice. This was a triptych originally embedded within my Macromancy show talking about the rise of the far right and the nature of denial, (plausible or otherwise). My piece stands in very stark contrast next to Raksha Patel’s @rakshabattersea painting ‘Red Flag’ which explores issues of her experience of racism and racist violence growing up in the 1980’s. If you’re in London and looking for something to do, get your yourself down there to see the show before it finishes tomorrow and the wonderful venue. #londonart #groupshow
You can’t do this anymore unfortunately. You no longer get a HAL 9000 response anymore, just a passive aggressive silence. I’ll take her non commitment (and not exactly falling over herself to disagree) as a yes. She might need to get lawyered up or join the union after this? I got the idea from South Park in all its glorious puerility 😁 #funwithalexa #amazonalexa
