Budgetary Restrictions

Benjamin Franklin once said “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”, well in the world of newspaper photography you can add the budget photocall. Every year for at least 7 decades the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been photographed walking out of number 11 Downing Street with a red box on his way to deliver the budget speech. The man has changed 23 times the box has changed only 3 times and the door apart from the odd lick of paint never does. These are the problems that face the cream of Britain’s press photographers as they descend on Downing Street how do you get a shot that is different not only from the past but from the other 50 photographers there with you.

The answer is with difficulty, technology helps but in the end you can only rely on your imagination and creativity to put a new twist on what is in essence a series of old clichés. So this is the challenge to which sent on Wednesday morning by the FT, I was one of 2 photographers there for the FT their staffer Charlie Bibby being the other. He was there from 6 in the morning with all the other photographers to pick his best spot but with another job to do I could only get there for 10.30 (three quarters of an hour before he was due to come out) by this time it was take any spot you could but I found one just off centre. I decided to get something different by lighting him harshly from the side so that as he walked out of the door he was lit and the background fell in to darkness. The face of man about to deliver yet another budget into an austere financial climate, or that kind of thing. I set my light up in front and below another set of photographers covering from the side angle and waited. The door opened and I timed my shot to perfection as I would only get one chance due to the strength of the light. Not knowing whether I had what I wanted I preceded to shoot all the other angles I could, safe pictures so I knew I had at least something.

I had got my shot and was happy with it, but I had broken a cardinal rule. Many others had dispensed with the door, still others had got rid of George Osbourne all together opting for just the red box and a hand, only I had cropped out the box. It didn’t quite work, my moody picture of George did not scream budget and thus did not tell the story well enough.

Many things in truth have changed from those first budgets, photographers are able to put remote cameras where they themselves can’t be, long poles allow shots to taken from above and 360 technology developed by photographers allow one moment to be captured from all angles. Every new breakthrough in the mind of a photographer and the technical leap needed to facilitate it will create a new cliché in this most set of photocalls. The rigid structure and unmoving nate of the Budget picture will always drive the creativity of photographers and if you go a bit too far there is always next year.

I have included two links the first is Lewis Whyld’s 360 view of this year’s budget http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/html/Years/2014/March/lewiswhyldBudget360/index.html which shows well all the things I have just spoken about and if I have manged to bore you tits off talking about restriction V creativity you can play a great game of spot the photographer you know.

The second is a shot from each of the photocalls down the years http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/business-news/economic/from-osborne-to-churchill-photos-of-chancellors-on-budget-day/7698.article. There is no better inlustration of how this picture has pushed photographers than comparing 1945’s picture to Lewis Whyld’s 2014 one.