Category: My Own Work

City of Culture – Hull (Part 1)

Regular readers may have noticed that I’ve been missing for a few days. I’ve been away on a trip that took me to – among other places – Hull in east Yorkshire, which next year, will be UK City of Culture 2017.


Holy Trinity, Hull

At the moment, the centre of Hull is almost entirely covered by orange plastic barriers as they retile most of the city centre for the event. I only hope that, unlike East London for the 2012 Olympics, they don’t end up destroying the most interesting aspects of the area.


Joseph Rank’s building beside the River Hull, 1984 and, below, 2016

Not architecturally great, but an important Hull landmark now lost

My interest in Hull dates back to 1965, when I was taken to visit the family home of the woman who was later to become my wife. It was a powerful experience that left me feeling I had travelled back in time, both so far as the city and her family were concerned. Last week I read one of my wife’s uncles description of that home, and how though we were all smokers then (and I was too) it was a brave man who would light up there.


A wide area around the university is now student housing

The city was an interesting place, and perhaps surprisingly struck me as very much a city of culture, or rather of diverse cultures. Some fine architecture that had survived the wartime raids that flattened much of the city – but never made the wartime news. A freight port, though the large fishing industry, already curtailed following the first ‘cod war’ was about to disappear in a few years following the second in 1972-3.


Sharp St War memorial

As well as a vibrant working-class culture, there was also a surprising level of ‘high culture’, with a fine art gallery, a good theatre, classical music, with a level of participation in events and amateur circles that was impressive. Both my future wife’s parents had been violinists, and her mother still played piano as well as participating in a women’s literary group. There was also a strong poetry tradition in the city, though whether Larkin was an inspiration or a drag on this I’m not sure.


Gate to Pearson Park

Part of the reason for this was doubtless the isolation of Hull, out on a limb with no other cities of any size within reasonable travelling distance. Rather than travel, most of the time people did things in Hull, both those who lived inside the city boundary and those in its hinterland.


Bull Inn, Beverley Rd

Hull was the city where I had both the time and opportunity to carry out my first large-scale photographic project, starting in the mid-70s. This was shown at the civic Ferens Art Gallery in 1983, with around 140 prints.


The River Hull

Most of the images from that 1983 show, together with a number of others, were in my 2011 book with the same title, ‘Still Occupied: A View of Hull‘, still available on Blurb (or more cheaply for UK customers direct from me). It contains all or almost all of the black and white images from the original show, along with over 150 more in its 120 pages, (some are reproduced rather small,) but I decided against including any colour images.


Hepworth’s Arcade

Sales of the volume have been small and it must be one of the rarest books on Hull. One of the first few books I made, it was never made available as a digital version, and is thus rather expensive.


A passageway leads to one of Hull’s best-kept secrets – see Part 2

All colour images on this page taken in the past week using a Fuji X-T1 and 18mm lens.
Feature continues tomorrow.

Continue reading City of Culture – Hull (Part 1)

Protest at Court


Signs at the front of the court prohibit photography

I always feel a little uneasy at photographing around courts. In the UK you are not allowed to photograph inside courtrooms during trials, and photography is not generally permitted on the court property. The Supreme Court, perhaps because it has been set up more recently in the former Middlesex Guildhall is an exception, though not one I’ve yet taken advantage of, allowing photography generally throughout the building except in courtrooms that are sitting on the day of your visit.

At Southwark Crown Court, things are even more restricted, as not only is it illegal to photograph on the court precinct, but the area around the court is one of the increasing areas of privately owned space in London, ‘More London‘, whose security guards will prevent you from photographing on the actual roadway outside the court or on the opposite pavement. You are restricted to the actual pavement in front of the court, though I did take a few pictures before getting told I was not allowed to by ‘More London’ staff.


‘More London’ security came and told me I could not photograph here after I took this picture

Generally, ‘More London’ prohibit or control photography over most of the area between Tooley St, the River Thames and Tower Bridge, including outside City Hall, though they generally have the common sense not to try and enforce this for protests outside City Hall itself – and most photographers would tell them to get lost if they tried. There is generally a very clear public interest involved and police would almost certainly avoid taking any action.

The pavement is reasonably wide, but much of it was taken up by the Independent Workers (IWGB) cleaners union protesting for a living wage and an end to bullying and intimidation for the workers, employed by Mitie, who clean the court; protesters are subject to similar prohibitions to photographers and the three photographers present were sharing the space with the protesters. I was pleased to have the 16mm fisheye in my camera bag, its wide angle of view making it possible to photograph in very limited spaces.

This is one of several images that were only possible using it – I would have had to stand on the court premises without it – and that was not allowed (though I might have just briefly got away with it.)

It also let me take this picture without encroaching on ‘More London’s roadway – well I might have had just one foot on it. But useful though it is, it does give some problems, even after making use of the Fisheye-Hemi plugin or other software to straighten the verticals. The curvature of the horizontals can still annoy; it is possible to convert to rectilinear perspective (and Lightroom will do so by default), but you can only do this by sacrificing much of the very wide angle of view that was the reason to use the fisheye in the first place.

Protests, like photography, are prohibited in the court’s precincts, but not all the protesters respected this, with one marching up the steps clutching an IWGB poster ‘Real Living Wage Now!!!’. But unfortunately he soon dropped it…

Undaunted, later he was protesting for a living wage for the cleaners on the pavement as a group of lawyers walked by.

More on the protest and more pictures at IWGB Cleaners protest for Living Wage.

Continue reading Protest at Court

Nigeria and Shaker

I have to admit I got the story slightly wrong when I first uploaded Repeal Nigeria’s anti-LGBTI laws, thanks to mis-reading the press release that was sent to me by the Peter Tatchell Foundation. Although what I think were the main details about the protest- the who, what, where, when and why – were correct, I hadn’t correctly identified the organiser of the protest, at least not in the text, as Nigerian lesbian activist Aderonke Apata, wearing a green top in the picture above with the message ‘President Buhari Repeal Anti Same-Sex Law in Nigeria –  Respect LGBTs’ Human Rights – Freedom for LGBTs in Nigeria – African Rainbow Family.’ It was a sweat-shirt that was almost a press release in itself, and rather too wordy to make a good photograph.

My initial text had given credit to two other groups taking part, Peter Tatchell with members of his Foundation and the Out And Proud Diamond Group. There were also people from Care2, whose petition had gained 65,000 member signatures along with a second Causes petition with over 8,000.

The pictures I think tell the story of the protest quite well, and certainly show Apata’s leading role in the protest. The image at the top was quite tricky to make, partly because of strong sunlight flaring around the corner of the embassy; Peter Tatchell’s head conveniently acted as a ‘flag’ to block much of this, though needing quite considerable ‘antiflare’ treatment in post-processing. As well as including Apata with some helpful cropping of her shirt’s message to the purpose of the protest ‘President Buhari Repeal Anti Same-Sex Law in Nigeria’ I wanted the arms of Nigeria which are in the top of the Embassy door behind her.

A little post-processing was also needed to make those more clear in the final result – reflections in glass are always less distinct in camera images than to our eyes, which perform some pretty sophisticated processing beyond the capabilities of Lightroom which enable us to separate surface from reflection, in part involving distance perception which almost disappears in the camera image.

Things turned a little to farce when the protesters attempted to deliver the petition. During the protest people had been taking deliveries in through the front door and coming out. Ringing on the bell got little response – except perhaps a voice saying that no one was in. The protesters went to the door where people were still entering and leaving around the side of the building – and were told by the security staff they should take the petition to the front door.

They then tried the middle door – but again could get nobody to take it, and went again to the front door.  I had to leave them to go elsewhere  as they were deciding to leave the boxes on the step.

A short distance away something of a celebration was taking place opposite Downing St after news had at last been given of Shaker Aamer’s eventual release from Guantamo. ‘Bring him back Now’! the protesters shouted; after all he had been cleared for release back in 2007, and had been held without charge or trial there since St Valentines Day 2002.

The supporters of the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, whose Chair Joy Hurcombe I caught hiding her embarrassment in the image above as she was being introduced, were overjoyed at the news – and at getting back the lunchtimes every week they have spent standing in a vigil at Parliament every Wednesday it is in session, are still very much aware of the need to keep up protest for the roughly a hundred detainees still held there who have no UK connection. Monthly protests by the London Guantanamo Campaign – which many of them also attend- will continue at the US Embassy until all have been released.

The protesters were also aware that part of the delay in releasing Shaker is to give right wing pressure groups – like the Henry Jackson Foundation – time to spread misleading lies about him, including entirelyunrelieable ‘evidence’ obtained under torture. There was never any real evidence to hold, charge or try him. Many in the media will also help in spreading rumours and falsehood in an attempt to counter the stories that Shaker is expected to tell about what actually happened to him in Guantanamo and the complicity in his torture of both US and UK security agencies.

But photographically my problem was in photographing a man who was absent but at the centre of these events. There wasn’t even the giant inflatable Shaker from some earlier events – it was at a protest taking place the same day outside the White House.  It was solved when one of the protesters put a new ‘Bring Home Shaker Aamer’ t-shirt on the trolley carrying the sound system. Its bright colour and curve around the handles, helped by a little wind almost made it float in the picture, like Shaker Aamer’s ghost. At least in my imagination.
Continue reading Nigeria and Shaker

Making Pictures

I remember talking with one of the UK’s leading advertising photographers perhaps 30 years ago about the problems of working with advertising directors, and how they would often present him with briefs that were quite impossible to shoot, requiring him to be pointing his camera in opposite derctions at the same time, combining views from very different places or those taken with and ultra-wide and a super-telephoto. Things which had been easy on the AD’s sketchpad were not always so simple in reality. Sometimes, thanks to the superb skills of London’s retouchers in those almost entirely pre-digital days, things could be achieved using multiple exposures, but often what really earned him his money was the long slow business of getting the AD to believe that what was achievable in camera was really what he had wanted after all.

It isn’t a problem I’ve ever had to deal with (though I have a few times been asked by editors for the impossible) but I do often find myself struggling over the tension between recording events in an accurate fashion and producing interesting pictures – although of course trying to combine the two.

I try to avoid the ‘newspaper cliches’ which often involve setting up an attractive person (or better still a ‘celebrity’) with an obvious prop – and of course will not set up such pictures, though I have sometimes taken advantage of them when set up by others – though with a caption that clearly indicates their nature and generally looking for a different view. At some protests where the organisers know me I’ve been asked for advice on what photographers would like, and have always been reluctant to give more than the most general of suggestions, perhaps about setting up something in the shade or with a particular building such as the Houses of Parliament in the background. I’m there as a journalist and not an organiser.

Protest organisers often come up with ideas that don’t seem to translate well or easily into images, and many pictures of protests reflect this. It’s seldom the organised picture opportunities that produce interesting images, though picture editors seem often to prefer these.

But sometimes a little action makes things spring to life, as when the Hashem Shabani Action Group began to stamp on photographs of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or a woman points her finger accusingly at the poster she is holding comparing the Islamic Republic as ‘Like ISIS, Only Bigger’.

There were a few other little moments I caught at this protest that amused me, including one of a man rushing late to the AGM of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce putting on his tie as he runs around the end of the protest.

The huge banner covered with red and blue hand-prints carried horizontally by supporters of British Sign Language at the protest by deaf and disabled people and their supporters at the cutting of the DWP’s Access to Work scheme was also something of a challenge. I’d liked the way it showed the shadows of the people standing behind it and taken quite a few pictures as they got ready to march. Later I’d tried to catch it with Big Ben in the background as the marchers went down the side of Parliament Square, but wasn’t really happy until Big Ben was almost out of sight.

I left the Access to Work protesters to rush off to Grow Heathrow at Sipson, where the Harvest Festival celebrations included an open meeting on the expansion of Heathrow. Its only a few miles – across the airport – from where I live and something I’ve been involved with since birth. Long before that we had more sense, and in 1920 closed down London’s first commercial airport – on Hounslow Heath just a few yards from where my father used to live – because there area was too often subject to fogs, and Croydon became the site of London’s Airport. We managed to close that too in 1959, though meanwhile London Airport had come back almost to Hounslow with a huge airport across the orchards, farms and market gardens of Heathrow, using a wartime emergency requisition order to avoid any public inquiry – which might well have ruled against it.

By 1966 questions were being asked in Parliament calling for the closure of Heathrow, and several commissions and inquiries have been set up since, most recently the Davies commission, which cunningly sifted out the most suitable alternatives before going on to its final detailed considerations.

This was also a discussion in which I took part, asking several questions and making a few short contributions which perhaps went past journalistic objectivity. Discussions are seldom easy things to take lively images of, and I was quite pleased with what I managed to show both of that discussion and of Grow Heathrow, though I was disappointed not to have time to stay for the free six course vegan meal.

Sunflowers and Serwotka


D810 28-200mm at 28mm (42mm) 1/800s, f/11, ISO 800

I’ve long admired union leader Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, the trade union for British civil servants. I’ve heard him speaking sense at many events, and was shocked to hear of the sudden mystery illness in 2010 that had come close to killing him and left him being kept alive by a pacemaker and later permanently hooked up to a ventricular assist device. Despite all this he has kept on working and supporting his members.

When first elected in 2000 the retiring General Secretary refused to step down and it took a legal battle in the High Court to get him in post. Since then he has won three further elections, unopposed in two of them. In 2000 he had promised only to take the average civil servants salary and apparently still returns a proportion of his pay to the union.


D810 28-200mm at 70mm (105mm) 1/500s, f/9, ISO 800

He was the main speaker at an event to mark 100 days of strike by gallery assistants at the London National Gallery, against privatisation and the victimisation of PCS Union Rep Candy Udwin. To mark this were three strikers each carrying a digit of the number ‘100’; the ‘1’ was rather ordinary but the two zeros each used the sunflower motif taken by the strikers from one of the Gallery’s most famous images, with a hole in the centre.


D810 28-200 at 38mm (57mm) 1/500s, f/9, ISO 800

As soon as I saw this I moved around the circle of people listening to the speeches trying to make use of it as a framing device. Getting into exactly the right position to use one of the ‘0’s behind Mark’s head was a little tricky, not least as he moved a little while speaking. I quite liked my first attempt (or at least the first I got it right) but felt I could do more, though getting to the exact height needed was a little of a strain on my knees.

Next I tried to get a frame that showed him and the other two digits, but this was tricky as people were standing a little too close in to show the whole of the ‘1’, and I didn’t quite think it worked.


D700 16-35mm at 26mm 1/400s, f/10, ISO 800, slight crop

I used a wider view to include Candy Udwin as well and was quite please by this.


D810 28-200mm at 70mm (105mm eq) 1/500s, f/9, ISO 800

Then tried again, tightly cropping the two ‘0’s. Really I would have liked the guy at right to be more central in the aperture, but I couldn’t manage this.

I’m not entirely sure of the order in which I took these images, as I was working with two cameras, the Nikon D700 and D810 and hadn’t synchronised the clocks for a while. I think I altogether took around 30 images on each, a total of around 60 or 70 in a little under three minutes before the guys holding the figure took a rest and put them down on the pavement. A few frames were ruined by blinking or flags or placards coming into the scene, but most are simply slight variations of those above. I like when I can to push each idea until I’m sure I’ve got what I want – or the opportunity disappears.

Around the final frame I made of the scene is the one at the top of this post and my favourite of the set. It’s the widest view and the sun was causing me some problems – though was also the reason why the other photographers at the event weren’t standing where I was.  It takes a little work in post to reduce the flare in the image. But I liked the bus going past with people watching from the top, and telling us that this was London, and the placard at top left with its message of what the protest was about.

Continue reading Sunflowers and Serwotka

My Valentine

I’m sorry that I won’t feel well enough to attend the Reclaim Love Valentine Party I’ve been to at least a part of every year’s celebration since 2005, when Venus Cumara organised it around the statue of Eros for the first time (the previous year that I’d missed it had been in Trafalgar Square and I was in Paris.)

We were back there in 2006:

And for a rather smaller event in 2007 without Venus:

But Venus was back and spraying love around the area in 2008:

2009 was another good year,

And 2010

In 2011 Venus took everyone – around 250 people – to the ring of trees in Green Park and the police were not amused.

I left early in 2012 when torrential rain threatened to flood my cameras, but not before joining in the fun and taking quite a few pictures

I was late for the party in 2013 having been with friends who were blocking Whitehall but not too late:

And in 2014, things seemed to start rather slowly but I was sorry I had to rush away:

Last year was another good year:

and I’ll be sorry to miss this year’s event, but I probably shouldn’t go a spread my germs to everyone even if I do feel fit enough to make it.

But I’ll miss the ‘bands, dancing and a “Massive Healing Reclaim Love Meditation Circle beaming Love and Happiness and our Vision for world peace out into the cosmos“. We could certainly do with peace and should I make a miraculous recovery I’ll be there with the rest at 6pm in time for the World Peace Meditation at 6.30pm chanting ‘May All The Beings In All The Worlds Be Happy & At Peace’.

Continue reading My Valentine

My First Colour Negs


Scott St Chapel, a Weslyan Methodist chapel built in 1804 and probably the first in the area. It became home to printers Mason & Jackson around 1910 until they ceased trading in 1997. Attempts to list it failed, and it was demolished in 2001.

As I’ve mentioned here several times before, 1985 was the year I finally was able to give up transparency film and move in my colour work to using colour negative. Since then I only used slide film on a very few occasions, mainly for copy work to make slides for teaching before we got digital projectors and film scanners. Perhaps a job or two where a client insisted on it – but I didn’t often work for clients, as until the film scanner came around I was still working full-time in education. But most of the work in those days that went into libraries and agencies was black and white prints, and most publications were black and white too. Things have changed completely in the past 20 years or so.

I did have a little colour work with one agency, but sales were poor. I don’t think I even recovered the cost of making the medium-format transparencies they demanded, which were actually photographs of 15×10″ exhibition quality prints, the originals of which were taken on 35mm colour negative film.


The River Hull

My switch to colour neg wasn’t really just a technical matter, but also reflected a change in direction of my photography, analogous to one that I had already taken around 8 years earlier in my black and white. There the emphasis had altered from being interested in picture-making and form – shape, line, light, composition to one on using these elements to say something about the real world, from form to content. With colour, transparency film had not been a problem when my pictures were largely about light and colour – and indeed its exaggerations had contributed to the images, but became a source of frustration when my concern became the subject.

I had decided that my photography was no longer about photography, about creating images, but about making images that said something – I had become a documentary photographer. I wasn’t throwing shape, line, colour, light, composition out of the window, but recognising them as simply means rather than the end.


The River Hull

I took only a couple of colour neg films in 1985, during the October half-term when I was continuing the project I had started a few years earlier on the city of Hull and shown there in 1983. A few of the pictures were of places I’d earlier photographed on slide. Later I would develop separate projects to work on in colour and black and white, though usually ones that I could easily work on together.


A smoking shed in the Old Town – with details visible in the shadow area

I didn’t take any great pictures on those first two rolls, but the differences were enough to know I was on the right track. Working in low winter sun I could now see detail in shadows and was less likely to lose highlight detail. Another advantage was the ability to easily see to the edge of the frame without having to demount a slide. The OM viewfinders showed about 95% of the frame – very close to the edge, and slide mounts usually had a 22x34mm aperture, showing only around 87% of the image – and more was often lost by the printers.


S Low, laundry. Spring Bank – negative


S Low, laundry. Spring Bank – transparency

This was one of my favourite shop fronts on Spring Bank, partly because of the name – and I think it was a Chinese Laundry. It is still basically there on Street View but no longer a business, with no name and no Laundry sign and the street numbering has changed. Gone to is the very Hull touch ‘No Bicycles please’ and the Sentry Alarm with its Hull phone number. I’m not sure which is the truer colour (and I’ve only done a fairly rough balance on these images), but they have similar sharpness, and as a bonus the negative version has a fishmonger handling fish seen through the shop window at the right. I hvent gone too find the slide and checked, but I suspect it would show I had carefully framed the bottom of the shop at the bottom edge of the image, and it has been cut off by the slide mount in which this images was scanned.

I had a lot to learn, not least how to make my own colour prints. It took me a while, and eventually I had to buy a roller processor for my darkroom. Things became so much easier when we could print digitally.

Refugees Welcome

September 12 was an important day in British politics, possibly a turning point we will look back on, the start of a new era on honesty and straightforwardness, though we still have a while to wait to see if a decent and principled man can survive as leader of his won party for long enough for the electorate to be allowed to pass their judgement. It certainly won’t be easy, with not only the Tories and most Labour MPs keen to preserve the status quo, along with the entire mass media baying against him. But even though our newspapers have recently been judged as the most right-wing in Europe, if he begins to look as if he may win, some will change their tone. Its always more profitable to be on the winning side, even if it rather sticks in your throat to be so.

My main concern on September 12 was not however with the Labour Party leadership – in which I didn’t have a vote, never having got over being thrown out of the party as a member of a Labour student organisation that was ‘proscribed’ back in the 1960’s, although I did briefly photograph one of the victory parties – and wrote about it here earlier.


Zita Holbourne of BARAC with one of her artworks showing a boat full of refugees

Also taking place was one of the larger protests that London has seen for a while, the Refugees Welcome Here national march. The plight of refugees, mainly fleeing from war-torn Syria and other areas of conflict and making their way across the Mediterranean, facing hardship and death had captured the attention of the British people.

It was of course the pictures and videos and stories on TV in particular, but also on the press that had made us aware and awakened our concern. The stories were dramatic and shocking enough to gain extensive coverage, enough to overcome the continual drip-feed of anti-refugee propaganda which usually fills our media. The continued and systematic use of the words ‘migrants‘ and ‘immigrants‘ rather than ‘refugees’ or ‘asylum seeker’s, the ridiculous, sloppy and inaccurate use of the term ‘illegal immigrant‘ (or even the shorter ‘illegals‘) and the hysteria whipped up over migration statistics and stories which should be about the failure of our government to provide support for local authorities where these people settle rather than blaming them.

Then we have a whole raft of racist legislation – the setting up of prison camps like Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth – and raids on shops, offices, restuarants, stations and streets by ‘border police‘.

Although tragedies reported by the media brought a positive response from the British people, our government was largely unmoved. As I wrote “More than 50,000 people of all ages from across the UK marched through London to show their support for refugees facing death and hardship and their disgust at the lack of compassion and inadequate response of the British government.”


Maimuna Jawo a refugee from Gambia and from Women for Refugee Women wearing an ‘I’m a Refugee’ t-shirt left Gambia to avoid having to take over when her mother, the local FGM ‘cutter’, died.

Before the march there was a rally and I photographed all of the speakers – including the Liberal Democrat leader, London’s MEPs for the Green Party and Labour, and representatives from various groups concerned with refugees. Two of the speakers, Zrinka Bralo of Citizens UK a
and Maimuna Jawo of Women for Refugee Women had come to this country as refugees.

I photographed the front of the march, and walked with it for a few hundred yards before stopping an photographing others as the march streamed past, filling the wide carriageway of Piccadilly. It took an hour to pass me by and then I rushed to the tube to get to Westminster, one stop away, where the march was heading. I arrived just before the front of the march, which must have been around a mile long.

I took a few pictures as the front of the march went in front of the Houses of Parliament, and a friendly steward let me in to the area in front of the banner, but I had to work very close to it as otherwise there were too many people in the way. I’d have liked to have the banner clear to read, but it wasn’t possible.

Another rally was starting, along with some celebrity speakers, but I decided I was too tired to cover it and sat down for a few minutes to eat a late lunch on a wall on the other side of Parliament Square as the square filled up. By the time I left it was pretty full, with people still coming in – and many others like me deciding it was time to go home.

Rally Says Refugees Welcome Here
Refugees are welcome here march
Refugees Welcome march reaches Parliament

Continue reading Refugees Welcome

East from Gravesend

The third new book I’ve produced this year is the final volume of the series along the lower Thames in the 1980s, East from Gravesend.  As well as my own walks out from Gravesend to Cliffe, it also has pictures from a couple of earlier visits with a small group of photographers further into the Hoo Peninsula and on to the Medway and the Swale.

All of these pictures are taken on the south side of the Estuary in Kent, and it was a few years later that I ventured much to the east of Barking along the Essex coast, with the exception of another outing with the same group to Canvey Island. So for the moment there are three volumes of my Lower Thameside series, but perhaps as I work through my many folders of contact sheets and negatives there will be more than cover the north bank.

As with most of my recent publications, this is published as a PDF and the digital version has ISBN 978-1-909363-18-2 . Blurb will also print you out a copy if you are feeling rich. The PDF gives you an instant download for £4.99 while the print copy is a ridiculous £29.95 plus post. I have a few copies available for my UK friends, and will hand one over for £25 or post it to any UK address for £27.00* – faster and cheaper than ordering via Blurb and their courier delivery.

There are several great advantages to publishing as a PDF. Most important to me is image quality. Assuming you have a decent screen these pictures are more detailed and have better contrast and density range. Blurb do a decent job of printing, at least on the premium paper that I specify, and while it is better than some of the photographic books on my shelves (particularly some of the older ones) it certainly doesn’t compare with good duotone or quadtone printing.

Cost is an obvious advantage, and publishing digitally cuts my costs considerably. If you assign a print publication a UK ISBN, then you are obliged legally to deposit a copy with the British Library – UK National Library. I’d be happy to do that, but if they request it, you also have to send free copies to the Scottish and Welsh National Libraries, and also Oxford and Cambridge universities and Trinity College Dublin.

When I started producing books, these other libraries didn’t get round to asking for their copies, but they now appear to be more organised, and after I spent around £250 on their copies and carriage for a couple of books I decided to go digital.

Its perhaps surprising that our national library doesn’t appear interested in digital publications, although they do have these in their collection. But they have never responded when I’ve sent them copies of the PDFs and have not added them to their collection.

As usual there is a preview of the book available, including over half the pictures in the book. Click on the icon to make it full-screen and enjoy:

I’ve written two previous posts about my own walks from Gravesend to Cliffe while I was preparing the images for this book – quite a while ago,
North Kent 2 and To Cliffe which have more information about the work.

*Contact me from this page to be sent the further details needed to place an order, which can then be made either by post including a cheque or by email and bank transfer.

Continue reading East from Gravesend

Arms Fair

Looking back on a busy few days in September when activists protested against the DSEi arms fair held in East London.  When you see reports of wars, atrocities and killing around the world, there is a very good chance that at least some of the weapons involved will have been sold at this event, which is said to be the largest arms fair in the world which takes place here every two years.

In the week before the arms fair took place, activists held a number of protests and tried to stop lorries bringing exhibits to the arms fair. The first day of protests. DSEi Arms Fair protest Israeli Arms Sales, concentrated on the sale of arms to Israel, and the sale of arms by Israeli companies who trade on the fact that these arms have been ‘battle tested’ in the various attacks on Gaza.  In my picture police talk with protesters who have stopped a lorry carrying a military vehicle and climbed on to it. Eventually police persuaded the protesters to allow the lorry to continue.

The following day was a day led by faith protesters with a DSEi: Pax Christi Vigil which was followed by a Catholic Workers Funeral

procession and service, which ended with them occupying the road to stop traffic. They continued to block the road for quite a while until police finally forced them to the pavement, with officers picking up and carrying the mock coffin.

Later that day a small group of Christian campaigners, Put Down the Sword, made their way to the other entrance to the former dock site including the centre where the arms fair was being held and blocked all traffic for around an hour before police finally dragged them away.

I couldn’t attend every day of the protests at DSEi, as other things were also happening that week in London, but three days later returned for Refugees Welcome, Arms Dealers NOT, where protesters dressed as and alternative Border Force again moved onto the road and stopped traffic going into the arms fair, moving back to the road a number of times after police dragged them off.

Of course, these actions didn’t prevent the arms fair, and attracted very little attention in the mass media – arms sales are big business and big businesses fund much of our media through advertising for their less lethal products. But they did make clear the opposition many feel to the arms trade and the way it profits from the conflicts that it fuels around the globe.

While the arms fair was taking place there were further protests. As on previous occasions local people opposed to it organised a procession to lay a Wreath for Victims of the Arms Trade. There is high security around the actual event, and the bridge across the dock is closed and the group walks in procession around to a point on the opposite side of the Royal Victoria Dock to lay the wreath on the water.

Also on the same afternoon, a group of Kurds came on the same route to say Stop arms sales to Turkey and some dressed in fake blood-stained white shrouds staged a die-in on the dockside opposite the fair, in view of those attending and visiting the naval display in the dock.

The Kurds say that Turkey sponsors ISIS both by turning a blind eye to its military operations against the Kurds and active support in supplying arms and refining and smuggling large exports of oil from ISIS held oil-fields that bring millions in to fund them.

Continue reading Arms Fair