Category: Photo Issues

The march at a cross-roads in the centre of Enfield

Enfield is right at the north of London, and I’d been photographing a march on Oxford St, and the problem was to get there in time for the start of a protest march calling for the re-opening of the A&E department at Chase Farm Hospital, closed three months ago.

The closure came after a long fight, starting before the last general election, with the Tory candidate getting elected on the back of a campaign in which David Cameron, the leader of the opposition had come to the Labour seat and pledged the Tories would keep it open – as so often pre-election promises mean nothing.

A month after the closure, a desperate woman rushed her sick child to Chase Farm only to find the department locked. By the time an ambulance had been called and arrived and taken the child to the nearest A&E around 25 minutes drive away 2-year-old Muhammad was dead. The health authority’s response has been to replace the small sign at the hospital about the closure with a much larger one.

Marchers, including a woman on a mobility scooter, go past Enfield Market

No problem I thought:  tube to Finsbury Park, then the Overground to Enfield Chase, a few yards from the gathering point. The Transport for London web site gave me the times I needed to arrive a few minutes before the start of the march. But on the Central Line platform at Bond St, the next train to Oxford Circus was unusually delayed. It would probably have been quicker to go back to street level and walk. Normally I’d have got a bus to get to Oxford Circus, and the only reason I’d taken to the tube was because the march I’d already photographed was blocking the street.

So I missed the connection for the half-hourly service from Finsbury Park, but fortunately I’d also noted down an alternative train from Seven Sisters which I could still probably make. It took me to Enfield Town station at the other end of the town centre, arriving 3 minutes after the march was due to start. I jogged through the town centre, almost certainly the fastest half-mile I’ve done for some years (but still not that fast), to arrive very much out of breath just as the march was about to start, a little later than planned.

It was a reminder (though with rather long-winded unnecessary travel details here) that for taking photographs of events the most important thing is to be in the right place at the right time. Information and ‘logistics’. I’ve often felt the old photo-journalistic adage ‘f8 and be there‘ was the wrong way round, though ‘be there and f8‘ doesn’t sound as good. You can write a story without being there, but you can’t take the pictures, though I suppose by now our ‘security’ services are tapping in to those millions of CCTV cameras without budging from their screens in Cheltenham or Fort Meade. It’s not something that makes me feel safe.

As I ran and my heart rate soared, the thought did occur to me ‘What would happen if I was to have another heart attack?’ Would I survive the wait for an ambulance followed by the possibly 25 minute journey through heavy traffic blue lights flashing to the now nearest A&E? I ran on slightly slower…

Some of those on the march were workers from Chase Farm Hospital

On the march I struggled to find images that would dramatise the protest and make it of interest to those outside the immediate circle of those taking part and personally affected by the story. It isn’t enough just to show what is happening, your pictures (and text) have to reflect on the what and why and to provoke a response from the audience.

It isn’t really a camera that you take pictures with, but your thoughts and feelings. Framing and composition is all about expressing those as strongly and directly as you can. The real sensitive material in photography isn’t the film or the sensor but your mind.

One woman was marching with the help of an oxygen cylinder

There are some events which are easy to photograph, with a great deal happening, and others, like this march, which take rather more work to produce something. It’s not the greatest set of pictures I’ve made, but by the time the march had taken me back past Enfield Town station I felt I’d as much as I could, and made my goodbyes and took the train home.

Reopen Chase Farm A&E

Continue reading Chase Farm

It was certainly an event where I occasionally felt I was the odd man out, though there were not a million women on the Million Women Rise March, but it was a women-only event. Or at least almost so, as later as it went along Oxford St I did spot one very bearded young man among the marchers. But a the stewards did make it very clear to a small mixed group wanting to join the march in support of mothers in Syria that they were not welcome.

It’s an event I’ve photographed annually since it started a few years ago, and even supplied a few pictures in the past at the organiser’s request for use on their web site. Most of the women were pleased to have their pictures taken (and some fairly insistent that I do so), and generally my presence before the march started was welcome, though I was pounced on at one point by a woman (not someone I was photographing) who objected to me taking pictures.

If women feel they want to march in an all-women march it isn’t a problem so far as I’m concerned (not that my opinion matters, only that if it was I probably wouldn’t bother to cover the event.) But the slogan on their banner and placards is ‘Together We Can End Male Violence Against Women’ and I think it will take both men and women together to really tackle it (and for that matter other personal and domestic violence.)

Photographically the main problem was in lighting contrast; it was a bright clear day and there were areas of bright sun and others of deep shadow. Working in the shadows  wasn’t a problem, but in the sun things were a little harder, and I should have used fill flash on some of the images, but I think I was just feeling too lazy.  So there was quite a lot of post-processing needed to burn down sunlit areas and bring up shadows in some images. But at least with digital you can rescue these things, and work far better in situations with both sun and shade than was possible on film.

I left the march as it made its way along Oxford St to rush off to another event in the north of London.  More about it and many more pictures at Million Women Rise March.
Continue reading Women March

It was perhaps appropriately a rather grey day when lawyers came to Old Palace Yard opposite Parliament to show their outrage at the response by Justice Minister Chris Grayling to his Transforming Legal Aid consultation on criminal legal aid.  They describe it as ‘A shameful day in legal history’ and it was hard to pick a fault in their case, though it was perhaps naive to expect anything positive to emerge from any ‘consultation’.  Governments have never been strong on consultation, and for present ministers they are certainly just an opportunity for people to talk to deaf ears before they do exactly what they had previously decided.

They are almost completely discredited exercises by a government that prefers its own dogmatic and largely unthinking solutions. The only kind of logic behind its proposals appears to be that people who get brought to court are criminals and we shouldn’t waste much public money giving them a proper defence.

Lawyers as a whole are generally rather unexciting visually, and looking at the crowd as a whole it seemed a dark mass. There was something a little surreal seeing barristers and solicitors many in legal dress of black gown and horsehair wig holding up placards and shouting slogans in a political protest on what was their first every full day’s strike.

Legal dress is worn far less now in courts, and for some of those attending it was a fairly rare outing for their ridiculously expensive horse-hair.

Our legal system is ridiculously expensive, and in need of extensive reform to make better use of the time of everyone concerned. There are occasional abuses of legal aid, with some taking advantage of it who should not be and others who need it not being eligible. But while some reforms are needed, the government proposals seem simply to be about saving money at the expense of those on trial, making them far less likely to get justice.

Certainly the most impressive and powerful speech at the event came from a man who had been wrongfully convicted for an offence he did not convict. Better legal aid at his initial trail might have made the initial miscarriage of justice and the life sentence less likely, but it was legal aid that enabled Paddy Hill and the others of the Birmingham Six to eventually get justice. Had Grayling’s proposal already been in force they would still be in jail for a bombing they did not commit.

It was an electric and rabble-rousing call for revolution, if in the situation only theatrical. By contrast most of the other speeches seemed a little dull and pedestrian. Hill too was more interesting to photograph, with a strong face and a full range of expressions, while some of the lawyers were about as interesting as a blancmange. There were exceptions – including most if not all of the women who spoke, but by the end of the speeches (I think around two hours of them) I’d had enough.

The speakers were on a scaffolding platform, standing with their feet around head height with the main event banner in front of them. Some stood a little back and were too much obscured by the banner. Mostly for the speakers I was using the 70-300mm Nikon on the D800E. It’s a full-frame lens and I didn’t think to set the camera to use it in DX mode, so they are 32Mb files, much larger than I need. At ISO800 most a typical exposure was 1/400 f10, and I was working at focal lengths from around 100 to 300mm. The lens isn’t at its best above around 200mm and it would probably have been better to use it in DX mode for these tighter views.

A big problem when photographing speakers at events is the microphone. Different speakers use them in different ways, some staying very close, others standing back more – almost always better for the photographer.

At many events there is a crowd of photographers that make it hard to change position, particularly when celebrities are speaking. Here there were no real celebrities, and there was quite a lot of relatively empty space in front of the platform so I was able to move around and pick my angles. I live to work from one or other side, at least so the speaker’s mouth is not obscured (though that’s hard with the mike-huggers.) Here I was able to move closer or further away, with one of two images from quite a close position looking up as well as those with a long lens from a distance.

Changing position also varies the background, with some pictures against almost entirely empty sky, and others with parts of the Houses of Parliament visible – with different degrees of blur.

The came the march to the Ministry of Justice, via the Liberal Party HQ, where Paddy Hill led those going into the offices with their letters – and I’d taken up position to photograph him doing so, and a minute or so later photographed him inside after letting some of the others follow him.

When a small group went inside the Ministry of Justice led again by Hill carrying a scroll to present for the minister I was with them, and walked past the rather surprised-looking security guards to photograph the scroll being presented to an official. When I saw him rolling it after looking at it with its back towards me, I asked him if he could show it to us too, and he did. I think it made a better picture. I don’t really think it counts as setting it up.

As we turned away to leave the ministry, more protesters and photographers pushed in, and things got a little more interesting, though everyone eventually left after the security had requested us to do so.

Story and pictures: Outraged Lawyers Legal Aid Protest

Continue reading Legals Protest

I’d really gone up to London not just to photograph the City pancake event and meet up with a couple of other photographers but to visit SOAS where the cleaners were on the first day of a two day strike to gain equal treatment to other staff working there.  The picket line had formed at 4 am and apparently by 6 am, the normal shift start time, almost the full normal morning shift were there taking part.

It’s too far from where I live to get there for the early morning – I’d have to stay up in London overnight to cover events that early, so instead I went to the lunchtime rally that they were organising.

I left the pancake race  early, arranged to meet my friends in a couple of hours time in a pub in Holborn and got to SOAS just as the rally was about to start.  The cleaners at SOAS belong to Unison, and the SOAS branch has there has actively pursued their fight first for a living wage and now to be brought back in-house and to get decent pensions, holidays and sick pay – with the slogan ‘One Workplace, One Workforce’.

The cleaners at many other places have not  been supported by the traditional unions and have chosen to leave these and form their own union, the IWGB, and some IWGB members were there in support of the SOAS campaign. The two groups have have worked together with others in the ‘3Cosas’ campaign in the University of London for proper conditions of employment (a campaign which the Senate House Unison branch seem to have worked with the management to try and subvert, as well as apparently fiddling branch elections to prevent cleaners being elected.)

Of course at a rally you photograph the speakers and the people listening, looking for ways to connect both with the event – easy in this case because so many were wearing ‘Justice for Cleaners’ t-shirts or Unison tabards or holding posters. There were some large banners too, though not always easy to photograph – it was quite hard to see the red text on the one in the picture below, and harder still in photographs.

But perhaps what you don’t expect to find on a picket line is a band (or perhaps I should call it an orchestra) playing Latin American music and people dancing.

And it was the people dancing who created problems for the Fuji X-Pro1, with well over half the images showing them slightly out of focus. The 14mm focuses pretty rapidly most of the time – fast enough for the delay to be hardly noticeable for static subjects – but was totally unable to keep up with dancers at close distances.

The really stupid thing was that I did not need to focus at all. Back in the old days working with the equivalent 21mm on a range-finder body, I’d simply have set the focus at my usual 1.8 metres and with a aperture of say f8 and everything would have been sharp. We called it zone focus – depth of field on 35mm meant anything more that around 3 ft away was sharp (they ‘hyperfocal’ distance was around 1.8 metres at f8, and could easily be set from the nice depth of field scales all decent lenses had.)

It’s a habit I’ve got out of using cameras with fast autofocus, and also slightly less useful. Using manual focus on the Nikons isn’t always easy, as the viewing screen isn’t really designed to make it easy to judge sharpness, and with zoom lenses the depth of field scales if present are only rudimentary.  Lenses too are designed with a different ‘feel’ to the distance ring; in the old days although they moved smoothly a little more effort was required to start them, while with most modern lenses the slightest accidental touch may shift focus. When I set the lens at 1.8m in the old days, it would still be at 1.8m until I deliberately moved it to a different distance, but most lenses just work like this now.

With the 14mm at f8, the hyperfocal distance is  1.24 m, and setting the lens around that distance would have meant everything from 0.62m (2 feet) to infinity would be acceptably sharp.  I’d probably have chosen to focus a just little closer as I didn’t need the background sharp. Adjust the ISO to give a sensible shutter speed and everything would have been fine. I felt very stupid when I saw the images on the computer (most looked sharp enough on the back of the camera while I was making them.)

The 14mm is a very nicely built lens, and it does have a depth of field scale, although it is rather more conservative than the figures I give above (the actual figures depend on an assumption about how sharp things need to be to seem sharp – the value of the ‘circle of confusion’.)  Optically too, it is virtually perfect. But I’d like just a bit more feel on the focus ring.

All equipment has its limitations, and automation isn’t always the best answer.  I got enough pictures with the Fujis, but its always annoying to lose things, and as usual it was some of the best that were not usable.

On the plus side, I really appreciated having a much lighter bag –  with the much of the weight being essentials like a book to read on the train and a bottle of water. Two Fuji bodies and three lenses – including the Samyang 8mm which I used in the pub later – hardly seemed to weigh anything. Even with neck straps and the several spare batteries you need to carry the whole kit weighed only just over 4lbs.

More pictures at SOAS Cleaners Picket Line.

Continue reading Picket Line Dance

In front of the Ecuadorian Embassy

It was a protest against “the corrupt systems governing the world, bankers and the military-industrial complex” in the tradition established by the Occupy Movement, and it was hard not to sympathise which much of what people at it said. I used to think that although our government was corrupt it was at least less corrupt that most of the rest, but under the present coalition I’m rather less sure of that.

I remember back on the morning when the story about UK Members of Parliament expenses broke in May 2009 with the leak being published in the Daily Telegraph that really this was an unimportant story.  And although it seemed to occupy most of the papers for the next year or two it still seems to me pretty trivial compared to the other scandals the press should be investigating and reporting. But it’s easier to write about duck houses than dig the real dirt.  And today some of the papers are wasting space about claims for spectacles for staff who use computer screens, and suggesting that £354 is a ridiculous amount of money for the taxpayer to fork out.

A little research would have told the reporters concerned that if – like my wife – you have a complex prescription, the lenses are expensive and need special frames. The amount they were getting worked up about it is about what her last pair cost. Mine cost about half that, but still rather more than the papers seem think a pair of glasses should cost, though I usually choose around the cheapest frames my optician has on offer.

‘Mutual Aid not Private Profit’ and ‘RIP Welfare’ banners on poles

But given that Parliament is spending (and at times wasting due to incompetence) billions of pounds getting worked up about a few hundred pounds makes no sense. The fuss about expenses is all simply a distraction from the real corruption and scandals in the system. Which occasionally we get to know a little about, generally not from the work of mainstream journalists but from leaks by whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden, from bloggers and particularly from Wikileaks.  The Occupy movement has done much to make clear the links between government and big business at all levels, and to at least sketch out that other ways of doing things are possible.

As you can see from the picture above, the event started at Trafalgar Square, with Nelson above and police below keeping an eye on events. Though I don’t think the police liaison officers were actually spying on the protesters who will almost certainly have  included at least a couple of plain clothes police whose job it is to keep in touch with such things, if not the odd undercover officer.

One protester actually came with a copper on his back (the face was rather familiar) and was carrying an Ulster flag. I talked to him after his conversation with one of the police and found he had come over from Northern Ireland to London for the protest.

Taking pictures at an event like this isn’t just about making pictures, but also about conveying the message and of showing what the event was like. The two things don’t always go together and it annoys me to see the newspapers use images that make striking pictures but are superficial or only trivially about the event they were made at.  Of course the simplest way to connect images with the message is through words on placards or obvious symbols such as the Anonymous flag or mask.

Misfit’ tattoo and Sex Pistols patch

In Against Worldwide Government Corruption you can see a series of pictures in which I am working hard to try to make a picture using the rather fine tattoo above. It proved to be difficult, as it was a moving subject, and the other elements I was working with were moving too – including a flag blowing in the wind which always tends to be frustrating. The main problem I had was with other people walking into the area in front of me to take pictures.

It would be so much easier to set things up, to direct a scene rather than photograph actual events, but this would be falsifying things. And it would not leave room for the magic of the unexpected which can be so much more exciting than a preconceived idea. But though I tried hard I don’t think it quite came off. Quite a few pictures that almost work, but I never got to one that really sprang out at me when I saw the result on screen.

There was something of a happy accident about the image of an Anon holding an Anarchist Anon flag above his head. I took it with the 18-105mm on the D800E, where the DX lens gives a dark line frame to show the actual image area. Its something I rather like, though it makes the viewfinder image just a little small, but it is great when you want to frame precisely, giving the DSLR a similar (but much more accurate) facility to a Leica.

But here I was too hurried (perhaps because I was standing in a busy road in the way of traffic about at any moment to be given the green light to drive at me) and as I pressed the shutter realised I had framed using the whole visible image rather than the DX frameline.  I’d seen the top of the flag and the chin of the mask in the viewfinder but immediately realised they would not be in the picture. I took a second exposure putting these elements inside the frame as I’d meant to, but on seeing the two images decided it was better with them cut off.

Another picture I took a couple of variations of – and they are both in My London Diary – was of a woman holding a poster with the message ‘F**k Cops’, with a police officer standing behind her.  It’s the contrast between the two figures, their expressions, body language and clothing – as well as the poster – that make this image work for me.

Taking pictures of some of the people and events I photograph, it is impossible sometimes to avoid bad language in pictures. Sometimes there are things that might offend people, although standards have rather changed. But I think few people now would object to seeing ‘F**k’ in an image, though they might find ‘F**k   Cops’ less acceptable. While 20 years ago I might have thought twice about sending the picture to an agency now it wouldn’t occur to me it might be a problem.

From Trafalgar Square the protesters moved on to the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Julian Assange has been holed up since June 2012. It was entirely predictable that they would make an attempt to enter the building, though the police and most other photographers were slow to realise this. So I was in a good position when it happened, though soon with photographers shoulder to shoulder on both sides, and unable to move or even change a lens. But I was in the right place and prepared for the picture at the top of this post, unexpected though it was.

More at Against Worldwide Government Corruption.

Continue reading Against Corrupt Government