>Re: PHOTO

The march led by Vivienne Westwood with her ‘Climate Revolution’ met up with other anti-fracking protesters at Knightsbridge for the Fracked Future Carnival, an event intended to let the government and the energy companies trying to develop fracking in the UK of the growing opposition to their plans. The depth of that opposition has been made clear at Balcombe and now at Barton Moss, and there were a number who had been at both places at the protest.

The protest carnival had been planned to take place outside the hotel where the ‘Shale Gas Forum’ of government and industry was to take place, but shortly before the event, the forum had been moved to a ‘secret location’ to avoid the protest. Of course it wasn’t possible to keep that location secret, as among those attending the forum were some who realise the power of the arguments against fracking and were sympathetic to the protesters.

Increasingly informed opinion is that to avoid disastrous global warming we need to move away from using coal, oil and gas as fuels, either leaving them in the ground or using them only for chemical feedstock or some increasingly niche energy uses. Highly carbon intensive hydrocarbon sources such as tar sands and shale might result in profits for the companies who exploit them (and even governments who tax them) but only lead to catastrophe for the planet.

As the organisers of the Fracked Future Carnival say, “We know fracking won’t lower our bills and it won’t bring significant jobs. It has the potential to ruin our land, our water, our soil and will keep us dependent on fossil fuels.”

What we need is a determined shift towards renewable energy, as well as an increased investment in reducing energy use. Both will provide jobs. Energy saving will start to reduce bills immediately, and renewable energy will also do so in the longer term. Solar panels have already reduced dramatically in cost and increased in efficiency, although on-shore wind still currently has the greatest potential in the UK. But the coalition government seem keen to support opposition to it.

Photographically, the largest problem outside the hotel where protesters held a rally as previously planned before moving on to the new location was simply the crowd of people with cameras around the speakers and Vivienne Westwood in particular. Away from this fairly small area it was relatively easy to work, although there were still too many photographers for us to keep out of each other’s way.

But while I was occasionally frustrated by photographers moving into my frame, there were also occasional gains. It was a photographer standing next to me who asked two girls with the message ‘Frack Off’ on their cheeks to kiss, but I was able to take advantage of the moment – and I think was at a slightly better angle than him. I didn’t set it up, but it happened and I photographed it – and I think my caption made clear that the two girls were posing for a photograph.

It was a neat solution to the problem of trying to see the message clearly when photographing a single person with a message across both cheeks – the curvature of the face generally makes it hard to read in its entirety. There was a great deal of posing going on, with many of those taking part in the event taking ‘selfies’ while waiting until it was time to move off.

I’d hoped to take some pictures of people travelling across London to the military location where the event had been rescheduled, but the protesters got very dispersed and when I did get on the underground with a small group it was too crowded – the train was fuller than normal with a large school party of young children spread across several carriages. The lighting in the carriages isn’t too kind for photographers or to their subjects, with a fairly discontinuous spectrum and also with the actual light sources in the picture. Although I managed one or two pictures they were just a little disappointing and have a slightly odd colour, though perhaps that improves them.

I lost touch with that group when we had to change trains at Kings Cross, and although I’d hung around for quite a while waiting to take pictures in Knightsbridge station, I still managed to be one of the first to arrive at Old Street. The underground can still be rather confusing for those who aren’t familiar with it.

There was a lot of building work on the corner of Old Street, making the space for meeting there very restricted, and photography rather difficult. Things were much easier once the protesters marched off and rallied outside the two gates to the Territorial Army centre where the forum was taking place. As intended, the protest was peaceful though at times very noisy, with the Rhythms of Resistance samba band making their presence felt, and the event did have something of a carnival nature, as well as some very serious speeches by people concerned with the future of our country and the planet. The frackers inside will certainly have been aware of the opposition.

I rather liked this image of Tina Louise from Residents Action on Fylde Fracking facing a line of police, as much as anything as a little homage towards a far stronger and deservedly famous image, where Marc Riboud photographed a young woman holding up a flower to a row of soldiers with bayonets fixed outside the Pentagon in 1967.  Riboud’s Flower Child image had a power which this lacks, and it flashed into my mind as I made this image – and was a reminder of how powerful still images shape the way we see the world.

Fracked Future Carnival at Shale Gas Forum
Fracked Future Carnival in Knightsbridge

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Landseer’s Lions were joined by a couple of hundred protesters, some dressed as lions or with lion images on their t-shirts with the message ‘Save Our Lions’.

The photographic difficulty in putting the two together was largely that the sun was low and more or less exactly in the direction I wanted to point my camera, just outside the frame above. I was using the Nikon 18-105mm on the D8o0E, and it is a DX lens, so at 50mm was 75mm equivalent. The 28-105 has a reasonably effective lens hood, but  I needed to use my hand as well – and being able to see in the viewfinder the image area outline as a rectangle over a larger view makes this a little easier.

Trafalgar Square was in a little of a mess, with tall fences around the plinths of the lions, so it wasn’t possible to use them well in closer images. A wider image (18 mm on that 18-105) taken from the same position a few seconds earlier gives a clearer view of the situation as well as showing the main banner for the event. As you can see in Save Our Lions – Ban Canned Hunting I took quite a few different images from that same spot.

AAfter quite a lot of the march had passed me, I ran up around the side of the march (it had been joined by another group of marchers that the people carrying the banner  had been pointing towards) and got to the top of the steps going up to the North Terrace to photograph people coming up. Again I made a series of images.

At the top on the North Terrace things were very crowded, particularly as preparations were being made there for the St Patrick’s Day celebrations the following day and the space for the protest was rather restricted. It wasn’t always possible to get enough clear space between camera and subject for some pictures and I think I could have done a little better on pictures like the above.

I hadn’t really realised what was happening with the lions and ‘canned hunting’ and it’s significance, so this was a protest where I learnt something. It’s a practice which degrades both the ‘King of the Beasts’ and the miserable rich who take part in it.

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It’s hard to believe it was three years ago that the Fukushima disaster occurred, though recent reports suggest that the situation there is still no entirely under control, with several leaks of radioactive water. It’s also hard to be entirely sure that reassuring reports such as that recently published by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation which suggests the health impacts of the radiation leaks are likely to be fairly minimal except possibly for the 160 site workers accurately reflect the total risks, and I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be previously unsuspected pathways and dangers – as has happened previously with other forms of environmental pollution.

What I can be sure of, is that photographing a rather random moving group of people in costumes representing barrels of nuclear waste is harder than it looks!   It would have been fun to have followed their progress around London from Hyde Park to Parliament, but there were so many other things happening too, and I only met them at the start of the march and close to Downing Street later in the day.

Photographing them would have perhaps been easier if there had been fewer distractions – sometimes positive and sometimes rather getting in my way, including an improbable nuclear waste fairy, whose magic wand somehow failed to work.

Of course I’ve nothing against fairies, but they really need to keep their wands in better order! The march started at Hyde Park Corner, and I rather liked the sight of them coming along in front of the arches there, though it was hard to get exactly the image I wanted.

It might have been nice to have been a little further out to the right, but I would then have got mowed down by the almost incessant heavy traffic. That road at the left may look empty, but just out of frame the ranks of cars were speeding towards me. After I’d taken this picture I did ask the leading barrel if he would turn his placard so I could see it, and took some more pictures as they came along the pavement, but this remained my favourite.

Sensibly, to cross Park Lane, the waste barrels took the pedestrian subway, and it might have been a good image as they emerged (I’d run across the two carriageways in the gaps between traffic to get there before them) but they didn’t really emerge in a suitable formation. This was life and not a movie set.

I caught up with the nuclear waste barrels later in the day, having waved goodbye as they went towards the Japanese embassy on Piccadilly (and I think they were also going on to the Berkeley Square offices of the Tokyo Electric Power Company) as they were approaching Downing St with the rest of the anti-nuclear protest.

I think that many voters might think have an answer for their question ‘How About A Nuclear Waste Dump Here‘ and feel it might be a rather better use for the site than its current occupants. Or that perhaps it is already one, and Cameron and Osborne are the result of some terrible mutation caused by the radiation.  (No, that’s just a joke.)

But I’d certainly not feel happy about living near a nuclear power station, and have often felt a certain tension and dryness in the air around those I’ve visited, though I’m sure that it is purely psychological. I’d certainly not feel safe eating the crops from my garden if I lived close.

Not that I’m against nuclear power. There is a perfect location for a nuclear power plant, and we already have one there. It’s called the sun.

More pictures of those barrels and the rest of the event at Fukushima Nuclear Melt-down Remembered.

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I wasn’t entirely happy with my coverage of the march organised by the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces on the third anniversary of the start of their fight for freedom, mainly because it was hard for me to give the event the attention it deserved with so many other things going on. So rather unusually, the pictures I took came from three separate visits to the march, two while it was gathering and the last when it was approaching its end and during the final rally.

It was fairly clear to me from the start that the flag would dominate my pictures, although I’m not sure how widely the differences between the the ‘Independence flag’ used by the Syrian National Coalition and the flag used by the Asad regime  (red, white and black stripes with two green stars) are recognised by the general public. Certainly some major media outlets have occasionally confused the two. The Independence flag is that adopted when Syria gained limited independence from the French colonial empire in 1932 (Syria continued under French mandate and the French didn’t actually leave and Syria only gained full independence under this same flag in 1946).

Perhaps more surprising was the presence of another flag, the Saltire, or as we used to know it, the Saint Andrew’s Cross. So far as I’m aware this has no particular connection with Syria, but there is a strong Free Syrian community in Scotland in groups including Scotland 4 Syria, Together for Syria and Free Syrians Glasgow, many of whom had come down for the London march. Many of them I think see the independence movement in Scotland as being a similar struggle to that in  Syria, though so far the ‘No’ campaign has stuck to lies, slurs and threats and has not yet resorted to chemical weapons.

Quite a few people on the protest were literally showing their colours on their faces, and I and other photographers rather swarmed around them taking pictures. It perhaps rather misrepresents the event as a whole.

As always there is a tension between recording the photogenic and the much harder task of producing an accurate representation of the event as a whole. Here I perhaps went too much for the photogenic – though perhaps it was just a more visually attractive event than most.

Despite this, I think the spirit and the message of the protest comes through in the set of pictures you can see in Syrians March for International Action.  It was an event that left me feeling a little ashamed at how little we in this country have done for Syria, as well as wondering exactly how we could have done more. I can’t swallow the line of some on the left who support Assad despite his brutal attacks on the Syrian people. But perhaps it’s my own political indecision and lack of effective action that makes me unhappy rather than my pictures.

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It would be hard to think of a cause more lost than Tibetan Freedom. Though perhaps in the fullness of time China will change and evolve and gain the self-confidence to allow some re-establishment of Tibetan culture in the Tibetan homeland, unlikely though it seems at the present moment. Certainly the continuing annual Freedom March demonstrates the great resilience of the TIbetan people – as does also the continuing protests in Tibet despite the Chinese oppression. Tibet is often quoted as having a climate that makes it one of the harshest places for human existence, which has doubtless formed the character of the Tibetan people.

The main attraction of the event for me is in the faces of the Tibetan men and women at the event, and the bright red,blue and yellow of the Tibetan freedom flag I find can be something of a distraction. You can definitely have too much colour in a photograph.

So although there are plenty of those flags in my pictures, I try not to let them dominate, and find ways to put them in the background. Text is always something that grabs attention, and it’s important that it works with the image and not against it. Obviously the ‘SAVE TIBET’ headband is central to the image above, but also I moved slightly and carefully framed the deliberately out of focus word ‘FREEDOM’ in the background.   This is a picture of a man thinking, with the deliberate choice of the eyes looking down. I don’t know what he was actually thinking about, but I think the picture leaves little doubt in most viewers minds about what I intended to convey he was thinking of. Though perhaps I don’t usually like to direct the audience quite so clearly.

So my favourite image from the event was quite different, and made at 16mm on the 16-35mm with the D700. It is cropped a bit, as I had to hold my left hand slightly into the frame at top right to block the sun (that’s also a tiny triangle of my sleeve remaining at top left.) Apart from the crop, quite considerable burning down highlights and bringing up of some shadow areas was needed to produce the image here.

I think the larger ‘animal’ is a man dressed as a Tibetan yak (our name for the animal comes from the Tibetan for a bull yak) and this bull is pretending to bully the rather smaller and real Scottie dog in the foreground, while around it people are watching, including one holding a banner ‘China Stop Bullying Innocent People’.  I and other photographers took quite a few pictures of this confrontation, though I’m quite not sure what to make of it politically!

There are four of my other pictures of the incident in London March for Freedom for Tibet, but I think this is perhaps the best, though it wasn’t the one I chose on first seeing the series.  Partly I prefer it becuase of the attitudes of the two ‘animals’, but also because I’ve managed to exclude most of another photographer on the left (you can see her elbow and knees but not her camera) and the way the bull’s horns point into the poster. And there is something about the man at the right with his arms across his chest.

I had to leave the march shortly after it started, and had hoped I might meet up with them again later as the reached the Chinese Embassy, but other things interfered. The light was very difficult as the marchers went north up Whitehall with a low sun directly behind them, but as so often difficulties can make images more interesting.

London March for Freedom for Tibet

You can also see some of my pictures from previous Tibetan Freedom Marches in London:

Free Tibet march, 10 March 2001

2000   2002   2003   2005   2006   2007   2008   2009   2010   2011   2012
(I missed the 2004 and 2013 marches and there is only the picture above from 2001 on line, and none of the colour I took in the first three years.)
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Unusually I’ve cropped and image image well away from 3:2 format to remove a camera

The Conservative Party is determined to privatise the NHS, while at the same time telling us that it is safe in their hands, and the Labour Party in office made a good start on their project through the private finance initiative, which loaded the NHS with huge amounts of debt to private developers. PFI solved some short-term problems  but it predictably turned out to be as good a long-term strategy as taking money from loan sharks.  Never sensible, the problems of PFI were exacerbated by the financial crisis, which has turned it into total disaster.

There are many in parliament who stand to gain personally from the privatisation of the NHS, while others have a doctrinal opposition to the welfare state. Many of those of us who grew up with it still know how important it was in our lives, in many cases literally live-saving, and still bless Nye Bevan for his vision and determination.

Of course the NHS is not perfect, and there are many aspects which need reform, to cut down on inefficiencies as well as to meet growing demands and medical advances. But although some of the huge changes being made can be dressed up as doing this, most are a back-door privatisation of the NHS, shifting money to suppliers of goods and services.

When Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt lost a court challenge for exceeding his powers in closing down the A&E and other departments at a much needed and clinically and financially successful hospital in Lewisham (to pay PFI debts elsewhere), he appealed and lost again. But instead of obeying the law, he decided to change it, tacking on Clause 119 to the Care Bill going through parliament, a clause which gives him as health minister more or less the power to do anything he likes.

Careful framing helps (see below)

As often happens in legislation going through parliament, the actual number of the clause often changes as other items are withdrawn, amalgamated or inserted. The framing of the banner in the image above helps to eliminate a little confusion as the banner had an earlier number for the clause. Though really it was more about putting the exclamation mark at the edge of frame. I’ve framed tightly to the banner at the right edge, and just managed to get the ‘Cost lives!’ visible on the shirt of the central figure. The top edge of the frame was determined by wanting a just a little space above her head, and I’ve made use of a placard behind her to get her head to stand out a little from the background.  With 3 sides of the frame determined there wasn’t a great deal of choice about the fourth, but it works OK. Ideally I would have liked to be just a few millimetres higher, I’m not sure whether this would have been possible. Sometimes it would be nice to be just a little taller.

Framing is vital in photography, but so many photographers (and myself at time) seem to be rather sloppy about it. I try to get things right in camera, taking a particularly careful look at the edges of the image when I’ve time to do so.

Occasionally there are things that just won’t work in the normal 3:2 frame for various reasons, and I’ll take these with another framing in mind. The image at the top of this post was an example, with an intrusive video camera at the right of the scene. I couldn’t move the camera or find a way to frame without it, and framed for a cropped image.

Andrew Gwynne MP, a member of the Shadow health team

The embroidered placard ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ must be one of the most photographed placards around, and I’ve photographed it at various protests over several years. The woman who made it and carried it was a colleague of my wife in the early 1970s. It’s effective because it stands out, and the message is large and clear. Often the ideas that people think up for protests end up with being hard to photograph, and there were two examples at this protest.

The van was hard to incorporate into the picture

One was the large digital image of Cameron the side of a van with the message ‘David Cameron is wrecking our NHS – Stop him.’, which the protesters formed up in front of. I didn’t really manage to find a good way to integrate the image with the rather more colourful protesters in front of it – and it largely obscured the Houses of Parliament – you can see the clock-face of Big Ben peeking over it.  I imagine it was being driven around and used elsewhere, but here it seemed to be something of a nuisance. Another photographer was responsible for directing the scene and including the van, and it rather killed the event at that point, though it recovered later. As ever, posing produced cliché, and took some working round.

The Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament, shadow health minister Andy Burnham & Jeremy the Vulture

Jeremy the Vulture (named after Jeremy Hunt) destroying the NHS was a nice touch, but fiendishly difficult to photograph. As you can see he was rather dark, and against the sky was a virtual silhouette. Which might have been effective, but I couldn’t make it so. To get the result above, I’ve angled a flash in the hot shoe up and to the right, avoiding excessive exposure on the speaker who is closer to me.  A few test exposures enabled me to get the lighting about right (quite a lot of local control – darkening some areas and lightening others was needed back on the computer.) But although this image is reasonably clear, it was hard to get the bloodstained and holed body of the NHS to really be clear. Obviously I wanted to get the Houses of Parliament in the background too, but Jeremy was a moving target, and there are only some angles from which a vulture really looks like a vulture.  You can see a couple more of my various attempts to photograph him in Stop Hospital Killer Clause 119, along of course with other pictures of the event.
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