Ambulance service 'whistleblower' turned photographer, Steve Jetley

A principled decision to resign from his job with the county ambulance service opened up a whole new career for a hobby photographer.

Google Steve Jetley and you’ll think there are three of him.

There’s the one who caused a stir in the banking system by creating the rude but hilarious telephone password “Lloyds is pants”; there’s the ambulance worker who blew the whistle on vital ambulance resources being out of the county; and finally there’s the one who rebuilt his life through photography and now lets his pictures do the talking.

But looking back, Steve, from Shrewsbury, admits he has always been a bit of a rebel.

“At the age of 15 I ran away from home for no real reason,” he says. “I was always something of a rebel but not with crime or with the police. It was the era of the rebel.”

“It meant that I left school without any qualifications and I made money by selling drawings and pictures.”

Two years ago the Ludlow ambulance worker’s rebellious streak made national headlines and Steve found himself on the other side of the camera lens when he turned whistleblower to lift the lid on controversial goings-on amid proposals to close down the control room in Shrewsbury.

At the time, Shropshire Ambulance Service was being taken over by West Midlands Ambulance Service, and, as Steve says: “Ambulances went to the West Midlands and there was no cover for Shropshire. I felt I had no choice but to give the BBC evidence that proved someone had to wait 16 minutes to even get an ambulance allocated, because they were all in the West Midlands.”

The evidence he provided indicated that in this particular instance it would take more than 30 minutes for the ambulance to actually arrive – when government response time targets were set at eight minutes.

Steve adds: “I loved my job and it was a very difficult choice for me to make, to tell the BBC, because I knew that as soon as I did it my career would be over. But I had to make a stand.

“If I had turned up to a scene and there was a dead child, how would I explain that?”

With huge support from colleagues, friends and family, in May 2007 he resigned his post. He says that he still hears of “big problems” within the restructured ambulance service because “the control centre is too big and there’s not enough local knowledge”.

After a part of his life that he describes as “hugely difficult”, the next chapter was about to begin – and Steve began to focus on his childhood passion, photography.

He describes his work as “capturing moments and telling stories” – something Steve had done since the age of six when he was given his first camera, a Kodak Instamatic.

“My father was a photographer and used to spend hours making slide shows to music as a hobby, and because I was always around photography I wanted to get into it as well. I used to draw and paint and take pictures all the time,” Steve says.

“I liked to take pictures of things that were happening and I would walk around the town, say, always with a camera, waiting for things to happen.”

In his late teens Steve was working as a photographer with an entertainments magazine, taking shots of famous people like the late jazz great, George Melly.

His camera opened doors. It closed a few, too.

Recalling a particular Reading Rock Festival from the 1970s, Steve recalls: “I was chatting to this gorgeous girl and asked her if she wanted to come backstage. Just then we walked passed Phil Lynott’s dressing room and he came out and said ‘Hey babe, do you want to come in here?’

“And that was the last I saw of her.”

Deciding to get some formal qualifications, he joined the RAF and between 1975 and 1981 worked in the Exhibition Production Flight at Hendon, creating pictures, paintings and models for air force exhibitions.

“There were eight of us and they left us to our own devices. We were all misfits, and they knew that, but they also knew that we were very creative.”

As the home computer boom exploded in the early 1980s, Steve was working as an insurance salesman but also writing computer programmes on a Commodore SX 64, creating graphics to help sell insurance products.

It caught on and for the next 20 years, until he joined the ambulance service, he ran a successful IT software design business, whilst at the same time taking photographs – a passion that has come full circle for Steve, who picked up his camera again in the wake of the ambulance saga.

Now in demand for his stunning ability to capture a natural moment, his candid, reportage-style wedding photography has taken him as far as Italy and Poland. Commercial pictures are also an increasing part of his portfolio.

“Photography has always been my first love, especially the fly-on-the-wall type,” says Steve.

“I believe that a photograph should be about capturing the moment. If I’m shooting a wedding or christening or some event then I’m an irrelevance.

“My job is solely to capture what is happening, not to engineer it.”

It means he’s not a fan of getting grooms and their best men to jump off a wall, if they are not already jumping off a wall, saying: “What on earth has that got to do with a wedding?”

Steve flicks through a compilation of great Life magazine photographs, images whose instants leap off the page and last forever as captured memories and says he’ll be a happy man if his work even gets close.

As it is, his work does get close, in the extraordinary capture of ordinary moments.

“It’s radically different from the ambulance service,” says Steve. “I miss being there but I believe 100 per cent that I did the right thing and I would not hesitate to do it again in the right circumstances.

“I believe in fighting for what is right. There always comes a time when being quiet and accepting what is happening is not enough.”

And then he adds: “And of course I’ve no respect for authority whatsoever!”

His face is a picture, and it paints a thousand words. If only I had a camera handy.