My Own Work | >Re-PHOTO

End Colour Fringing

The Nikon digital 10.5mm semi-fisheye is one of my favourite lenses, although it needs to be used sparingly. I wrote about it at some length for About.com shortly after getting it, with various suggestions for using and altering the images it gives. Since then I’ve used it to create several images I feel proud of, subjects that just fitted the effect it gives, like this circle of druids at the spring equinox in London:

Druids in London (C) 2007, Peter Marshall
Spring Equinox at Tower Hill, 2007

Anyone reading this in Hungary who saw the recent ‘Europe of Culture the culture of urbanity‘ show this year will have seen this picture I took at Contretype in Brussels, where the circular stairway of the Hotel Hannon provided another ideal subject.

But the lens does have one severe problem, chromatic aberration, which needs to be corrected at least for good large prints. For the Hungary show, I spent ages working on the file, removing some of the more noticeable colour fringing using Photoshop.

But of course there are easier ways, and one of the best I’ve found is in Lightroom, which I now use for converting my RAW digital files. (People tell me the Nikon software does a good job, but even several years and 2 camera bodies later I still can’t bring myself to pay for the software that Nikon really should have supplied free with the cameras.) It isn’t just useful for the 10.5 Nikkor, but almost all the images I take when I want to make critical large prints, as nearly all zoom lenses show some chromatic aberration at most focal lengths (the Nikon 18-200, for example, is fine at 24mm, but away from this needs a little help.)

If there is anyone using Lightroom who has yet to find this, or anyone still wondering if Lightroom is worth the money, in the Development mode there is a panel headed ‘Lens Corrections‘ with two and a half sections. The first part has two sliders to control chromatic aberration, one for Red/Cyan and the other for Blue/Yellow. Here is a small section of an image taken by the 10.5mm, from close to a corner and at three times actual size to show the effect exagerated.

3:1 section of original
Before any correction – image at 3 times actual size

And here it is after adding -46 Red/Cyan and +32 Blue/Yellow

After Chromatic removal

There is still some colour fringing, although it is a lot improved. Below the two sliders is a ‘Defringe’ setting that controls the removal of blue fringing found in many digital images. If set to ‘All edges’ it finishes the job, giving an almost perfect result (and with a little tweaking of the sliders I could probably improve it slightly.) It actually makes the settings for chromatic aberration easier to determine if you set the ‘defringing’ first.

Image defringed

Lightroom will also do a little more for these images. Most pictures taken with the 10.5mm show some vignetting, usually giving images that are lighter at the corners. The lower half of the ‘Lens Corrections’ panel can deal with this, often looking best with values around -35 for amount and 21 for midpoint.

I spent some time playing with this today as I used the semi-fisheye for some pictures at Notting Hill Carnival over the weekend, which I’ll write about a little more later. Again it let me take pictures that could not have been taken any other way.

Peter Marshall

Janam Ashtami Shobha Yaatra

Janam Ashtami Shobha Yaatra is, I think, the procession for the anniversary of Krishna, which is on September 4, and the procession through Southall last Sunday from the Shree Ram Mandir (Temple of Lord Rama) in King Street marked the beginning of the celebrations. There was a festival atmosphere, and much fine food, a little of which I enjoyed, although it’s hard to eat while I’m working.

Taking religion seriously doesn’t mean always being serious about religion, and I love the enthusiasm and joyous fervour that many of those taking part display, as well as the colour and noise of the event.

Last month, Southall elected a new Labour MP, Virendra Sharma, and he was there taking an active part in the festival, with everyone wanting to have their picture taken with him. Working on a very crowded pavement I was glad to have the 12-24mm lens on my Nikon D200 – if I stepped back at all people flowed immediately into any free space.

I followed the procession through the centre of Southall, taking the chance to have some more refreshments there, and finally left it as it passed the Vishwa Hindu Mandir in Lady Margaret Road, where people had come out to watch it pass. It was a drab day, threatening rain, but in Southall there was plenty of colour.

You can see more pictures as always on My London Diary

Peter Marshall

Around Heathrow

This morning I rode to Southall on my push bike, the 1957 vintage Cinelli that was my best birthday present ever when I was 13. It was a real racer, and had spent the previous season being pounded over the cobbles of Europe by a guy who got himself a new road machine every year.

Now, like me, its a lot older and in a pretty sorry state. Wheels almost twice as thick and tyres several times fatter when I got fed up with mending punctures in thin racing tubulars and indignities such as a carrier and pannier, not to mention rust, scratches, some rather careless paint jobs and a ton of greasy hardened on dirt.

It still rides fairly well and gets me places, but is the kind of bike you can leave on the street almost anywhere and expect to find it there when you come back. I do usually lock it, but more for my own peace of mind rather than thinking that anyone might otherwise take it away.

Cycling through light rain along the edge of the airport at Hatton Cross I saw two police standing in the refuge at the cross-roads. I think they only bothered to stop me because they were bored – there were really very few people around at half past ten on a wet Sunday morning.

Are you going to join the climate camp I was asked, and I replied no, I was on my way to Southall to photograph a religious procession. And since I carry a UK Press Card, supposedly recognised by “The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Nothern Ireland etc” I got it out to show them. I thought that should have been enough, but they decided to go through the whole business of taking my details and searching my bags etc.

The two officers were at all times polite – and we had a reasonable and pleasant enough conversation, and it relieved their boredom a little, while only holding me up for around five minutes. But I don’t like the process and it seems like something from the kind of police state I don’t really relish living in. It also seems to make a mockery of the Press Card, which should serve to identify me and gain the cooperation of the police.

Police Search form

After I’d been to Southall, I had to cycle back past the airport again, and this time went along the A4 which runs along the north side of Heathrow. Parts of it were swarming with police, and I did photograph a few of the demonstrators (and a proud mother.) I was pleased to see them too – it really is time that we got rid of Heathrow, built by deception in the wrong place 60 or so years ago.

Demonstrators and Mother

A little further on a stand-off was developing around some BA offices, but things didn’t look promising for the demonstrators. The place was buzzing with photographers and film crews and I decided I wasn’t going to get anything different to the crowd, so I moved off down the road to see if anything else was happening. I met a few more small groups of demonstrators coming along the road:

Demonstrators and Police

each group accompanied by a police van. The police were for some reason making a big fuss of photographing the clown army. They still haven’t learnt that the best tactic with clowns is to ignore them – unless they actually commit a crime.

Clown Army

I’d seen enough to be fairly sure that nothing much was likely to happen along the A4, and I checked out BA’s Waterside HQ. There they had police horses and a lot of guys in their black fighting gear wandering around the grounds with absolutely nothing to do. I didn’t stop to give them another chance to harass a photographer.

I couldn’t be bothered to try the other side of the airport, where more might be happening (it was, as I later heard on the news), and came home.
There will be a few more pictures from Heathrow on My London Diary shortly. And some rather more interesting images from Southall.

I Love Peckham

Well, that’s perhaps going a little far, but it’s certainly an area I like. Peckham, for those who don’t know London, is “south of the river”, one of those parts that many – including taxi-drivers – like to avoid. At it’s heart is the bustling, colourful shopping centre of Rye Lane, but increasingly Peckham is also becoming one of the artistic ‘quarters’ of London, home to artists including Antony Gormley and Tom Phillips.

But there are still areas and estates where I would probably not choose to go at night, and places where it pays to be streetwise. One shadow still over Peckham is that of the young Damilola Taylor, murdered on his way home in 2000.

‘I Love Peckham’ is an annual festival organised by Southwark Council to celebrate the more positive aspects of Peckham, with a week of artistic events, music, dance, street performances, food stalls, markets and more. I only spent a few hours there on the Saturday afternoon, mainly in Peckham Square and Rye Lane, though I took a walk again down Bellenden Road, the centre of one of the more successful regeneration projects of recent years. As you can see, I was not the only visitor:

Rye Lane (C) 2007, Peter Marshall
Astronauts in Rye Lane

I think this was also the first show of ‘sofa art’ I’ve photographed, and there were also some interesting shop window displays. But then Rye Lane is always full of interesting windows.

You can see more pictures from ‘I Love Peckham’ on My London Diary.

Saffers Against Crime

Last Saturday I photographed a march in the centre of London. Nothing unusual in that, but this march was different in that it was made up almost entirely of South African expatriates living in this country. It’s also attracted criticism both from some South Africans living here, and also from back home.
(C) Peter Marshall, 2007
This quote from Mandela was carried at the head of the march.

The march was against crime and in particular violent crime in South Africa and in support of the South African Police in their fight against crime. It was organised by a group called ACT4SA, ‘Against Crime Together For South Africa’.

In May this year, a group of young ‘Saffers’ in the UK were appalled to hear that one of their friends, Mark Joubert, had been murdered in a Durban restaurant. His death was one of many, the figures showing around 50 murders in the country every day, but it was one that aroused particular attention both in Durban and here. Working through the Facebook Saffers network they belonged to, they decided to organise this protest march in London. Hundreds promised their support, and on the day perhaps around 600 or 700 turned up and marched.

Before the march there were a number of comments by bloggers and others, mainly suggesting that if they wanted to do anything to help in South Africa they should start by going back there. At least one SA police chief went public saying that he didn’t need this kind of support.

The marchers, mainly young white South Africans, many here working in IT, were obviously sincere and concerned. It was a well-ordered march and the two speeches, one by one of the organisers and a second by Shannon Joubert, the sister of the murdered man, were positive about the need for South Africans in all communities to work together so that every South African would be able “to feel secure in his own home, to feel save in the cities, towns and rural areas… to travel to work, to school and other places without danger.” (Nelson Mandela)

The march paused for a few moments opposite South Africa House

Unfortunately you don’t have to look very far at all to find sites where racist discussions are latching on to this protest, suggesting linkups with the British National Party and full of overt racist statements and language that we no longer allow in polite discourse.

The ACT4SA march was led by a banner shown above quoting Nelson Mandela, but the discussion of it on one web site i visited seemed largely concerned with racist and personal attacks on him and other black South Africans.

While I’m sure the organisers of ACT4SA worked from quite different motives, they will need to put in a great deal of work – especially to enlist support from more black South Africans – to stop their efforts being hi-jacked. The fight against crime in South Africa also has to me a fight against the racism which still seems endemic among many.

(C) 2007, Peter Marshall
I didn’t take any great pictures of the event, though overall they do give a good idea of what it was like. You can see them as usual on My London Diary.

Heathrow Climate Camp

I grew up under the flightpath into Heathrow, reaching up from my back garden I could almost touch the planes as they went over a couple of miles from touchdown. I still live around the same distance away. Back in the 1950s we resented the airport for having stolen productive orchards and farmland and being a noisy and smelly bad neighbour. In the 1960s I became a climate activist of sorts at a time when ‘Friends of the Earth’ were only Californian weirdos. We understood then about global warming and that human activities were beginning to have often entirely unpredicted effects on ecosystems.

Heathrow from its inception was in the wrong place, too close to built-up areas. Had they been open about the plans it would almost certainly have been turned down as an unsuitable site in the 1940s, but the public – and the authorities – were deceived. Since then, the airport has broken every promise it ever made about expansion, taking over more land, causing more pollution. I supported the efforts to stop T5, marched with the protesters against the third runway in 2003.

Of course it provides a great deal of local employment, but it is still long past the time for a start to be made on running down the activities there, rather than continuing the program of expansion.

So will I be photographing the Heathrow ‘Climate Camp’ set up to the north of the airport yesterday? Regrettably I think not. Despite being entirely in sympathy with the movement’s aims, I can’t stomach the restrictions they have seen fit to impose on photographers and journalists:

Media wanting access to the camp will be invited to come on site between 11 AM and 12 noon. All visits will be over and journalists off site by 1 PM at the latest. Journalists will be given a tour of the site, accompanied at all times by two (or more) members of the media team, who will carry a flag to make the journalists/photographers identifiable. Journalists will be required to stick with the tour and will not be allowed to go into marquees or meetings and workshops unless invited at the agreement of all participants.

These are not conditions I can work under. Such draconian news management isn’t something I want anything to do with. So the camp itself will not get the kind of sympathetic coverage that I might otherwise have provided, and I know many other left photojournalists are equally disappointed. You can read Sion Touhig’s blog and his comments – along with some rather unconvincing attempts to justify the policy. Marc Vallée is there doing his best to cover the event, and I wish him the best of luck. I’ll probably try to cover some of the things happening on the outside later in the week.

The Italian Job

One of the larger community festivals in London takes place every July in Clerkenwell around St Peter’s Italian Church, which holds its Procession in Honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, when floats and walkers representing biblical scenes, various associations and banners and the heavy statues from the church are paraded around the neighbourhood, followed by the priests and a large crowd of parishoners.

At the climax of the event, in front of the statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, white doves are released and soar up into the air. This year they stopped around long enough to form a rather neat triangle for my image.

Release of the doves, Clerkenwell, July 2007

At extreme left, the statue looks on, while the hands of the priests stretch up into the air, and the crowd behind cranes for a view. I was pleased to get this image, as it’s a tricky and rather unpredictable occasion, with everything happening rather fast.

Saint Veronica is said to be the patron saint of photographers (and laundry workers) as an image of Christ’s face remained on her towel after she wiped him with it as he was on his way to the crucifixion. Her day was a week or so earlier on July 12, but I have to admit I hadn’t prayed to her. But I certainly did a lot of praying on the day, if largely to St Ansel.

Incidentally, despite shooting this on a Nikon D200 which can shoot at 5 fps, I still took this on single shot mode, trusting my reflexes rather than motordrive to catch the precise moment. I’m happier working this way, though I suspect it may be rather less reliable.
It’s actually a great event to photograph, hard not to make some decent portraits, especially of the children. You can see my virtually ball by ball account at My London Diary.

Down in the Sagra or village fair, much Italian wine was being drunk and ice cream and food being eaten and various aspects of Italian culture being celebrated, including the argument. The cheap red wasn’t bad at a pound a cup on what we voted the best stall there.

An animated discussion at the Sagra

Rhubarb Rhubarb: Images now on line

As promised, images from Rhubarb Rhubarb are now on ‘My London Diary‘

As well as pictures of the main event, from the launch above and the portfolio reviews at Curzon Street Station there are also pictures from the party:

as well as other occasions during the event – such as the mystery trip:

I’ve also included a few images that I took walking around the area.

The pictures were shot on a Leica M8 digital camera, mainly using a 35mm f1.4 lens that Leica say is not compatible with the camera. Equipped with the necessary IR cut filter, and with an appropriate Leica lens code applied to the mount with a black ‘sharpie’ fine point permanent marker, it seems to work perfectly.

The party shots were made wide open working at ISO 2500. Lighting was generally non-existent, with some flashing coloured effect lights, and it would have been pretty impossible to work with film. People were moving quite a lot and with speeds of around 1/30-1/90 I sometimes managed to avoid blur. Thanks to digital I was saved from either having to dance or to go to bed early.

Peter Marshall

England under water

So far I’ve been fortunate to escape the floods that appear to have crippled much of England, though last week I was in Hull and East Yorkshire where around 17,000 homes were damaged in June. In London just over a week ago I sheltered under a tree on the embankment during one of the heaviest rain storms I’ve ever seen; at its worst there was an almost total white-out, with anything further than around 25 metres disappearing from sight.

I’d kept dry under the tree for some time, but when it really came down it offered no protection at all, and the umbrella I put up wasn’t entirely effective either, though it kept the worst off. I was too busy trying to keep dry to take pictures until the worst was over, and even then it was difficult to keep the camera dry.

London (C) 2007, Peter Marshall
I took some pictures when the rain eased off

The floods are moving down river towards where I live at the moment – we have a flood warning in force and its likely we will get flooded. Its 60 years since the house was last flooded, and the levels are said to be a few inches higher than then. So I’m starting moving what I can to the first floor.

28 Seconds

It took 28 seconds from my first view of the cyclists as they rounded the corner some distance down the road until the last of the 189 cyclists had passed me. Last Sunday, the Tour de France started in London, and I thought I shouldn’t entirely miss it. I decided Woolwich would be a good place, just a few miles down the road from the real start of the race in Greenwich.
(C) 2007, Peter Marshall
People had already started to gather along the route when I arrived an hour before the riders. Fortunately it was a fine day and many settled down at the roadside with the Sunday newspapers or a book as the occasional race vehicle drove past.

Finally, along came the pack of riders.

(C) 2007, Peter Marshall
I’m not a sports photographer, and hadn’t really though I’d take more than one or two pictures, but the excitement carried me away a little and I found I’d made around 30 shots – and for the first time ever had managed to fill the 21 shot buffer on the D200. Had I really been intending to take pictures I should have switched from raw to jpeg for the event, and I could have shot many more.

Normally the only time I ever run into buffer problems is when the card is nearly full. The camera won’t allocate more images than it thinks it has space to write to disk, so you can find the buffer will only hold a few images. It usually makes sense to put in a new card whenever you find there are less than 21 shots (the full buffer capacity) left.

Actually it gets a bit silly, as the current Nikon firmware doesn’t attempt to estimate the actual number of shots left if you are using compressed NEF. So it acts like there are only 21 left when in fact you will fit roughly double this number onto the card. It’s a problem that Nikon fixed on the D70 in a firmware upgrade, but which they have left on the later D200.

From the race I went back to the cycling festival in Hyde Park, where there was some more racing (and I took a few more snaps) as well as other related activities.

Peter Marshall