Grassroots – Hartlepool – Photography by Ian Forsyth

I was on assignment yesterday for Getty Images covering the UK Independence Party North east conference held at the Borough Hall in Hartlepool. The event brought together members of the party to listen to a series of speakers from the party leadership including their party leader Nigel Farage, the Deputy Leader Paul Nuttall and the MEP for the north east region Jonathan Arnott.

The aim of the conference was to discuss a number of issues relating to the party and to help motivate delegates and UKIP members on the build up to the elections in May.

As with any political event like this it’s always a hectic day trying to get the pictures of the personalities and trying to catch some expressions and a bit of emotion – hopefully with eyeline to the camera – along with some pictures to show a bit of the background ‘colour’ as well as getting pictures of those delegates attending the event. Mixed in with all this you have to find the time to edit, caption and file pictures back to the desk several times through the day. But despite the chaotic nature of it all they’re still quite good fun to cover and in time you can learn to tune out to a degree much of what the various speakers might be going on about which sometimes helps!

Here’s just a small selection of pictures from the day…