{"id":2081,"date":"2015-09-18T08:27:03","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T08:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2015-09-18T08:27:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T08:27:03","slug":"shades-of-red","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/?p=2081","title":{"rendered":"Shades of Red"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you hadn\u2019t heard there has been a pretty monumental shift in British politics over the past couple of weeks. The Labour Party\u2019s<\/a> new or old (depending on how you look at it) left wing crusader Jeremy Corbyn<\/a> swept aside all rivals and will lead the party into the next election in 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t actually get the opportunity to photograph Jeremy myself but there was enough news surrounding him in the red corner to keep me busy. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/p>\n

\n

My first subject was Corbyns main rival in the leadership contest former Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham<\/a>. A charismatic guy, who came across as genuine and managed to maintain a grasp of how Everton<\/a> were doing in the league despite being in the midst of battle. Expecting not to get long to shoot a portrait I set up in his office and rigged a flamboyant lighting setup – testing it on one of his staff. Unfortunately for me this test ended with a bang – smoke pouring out the top of one of my power packs. It had gone to the great kit cloud in the sky and I quickly rejigged the lights for a slightly less intricate but still striking setup.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"Tom<\/p>\n

Next up was the imposing frame of the man that has now become Deputy Leader of the party, Tom Watson<\/a>. Very popular and again incredibly affable I was due to shoot him at Portcullis House, a drab parliamentary building on the river\u2026 I\u2019ve been here before, theres nowhere to go and the security guards don\u2019t like you moving out of a specific MP\u2019s office, it\u2019s terrible. My solution to this\u2026 refuse to go in. If you can get them outside everything becomes much easier, they are away from their email accounts and phone calls – they are outside in my office on the street! Football is a universal language and our conversation took a similar vein to that of the Burnham shoot, Watson also follows his local team, West Bromwich Albion<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recce\u2019d the area and found a stone wall that was drying after a downpour. It looked great so I set up my kit and waited, anxious that the rain didn\u2019t foil my plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the lead up to major news stories that don\u2019t necessarily move on very quickly editors usually rely on comment from people who have been there and done it. In this case, Ken Livingston<\/a>, seasoned campaigner and former Major of London mused over the leadership battle from his North London home. \u201cRed Ken\u201d is now a house husband and as I struggled in with the kit he had his hands full unpacking the shopping and pacifying and excitable Labrador.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Ken<\/p>\n

I settled on shooting in his front room, which I\u2019d imagine would normally have sufficient light to look interesting – but in this case I was faced with another rainy day. I reached for the flashes again and built a moody scene; whilst his dog Cocoa licked the lenses in my camera bag, which is what he\u2019s looking at in this picture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly Ken backed Corbyn as did the majority of Labour supporters and he is now installed as Shadow Leader. As the dust settles and parliament returns to something closer to the norm, I wonder what I\u2019d do with the new firebrand if I ever get to shoot him, and if I do where the location might be \u2026 Number 10 perhaps.<\/span><\/p>\n

NB: The images in this post were commissioned by The Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you hadn\u2019t heard there has been a pretty monumental shift in British politics over the past couple of weeks. The Labour Party\u2019s new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2085,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}