Category: Political Issues

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.

Continue reading Syrian Flags

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.)
Continue reading Tibetan Colour

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.
Continue reading NHS End Game

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

I was sure I’d finished posting my work for February on My London Dairy a couple of weeks ago, and was congratulating myself on being almost up to date. Then, a few days ago I found that although I’d published a few things from March, there were still a couple of things from the last day of the month, Feb 28, that I’d somehow neglected.

Students chalk on the pavement at the start of the student protest

One has come back into the news – and even at last made the mainstream – in the past few days. Last July the woman speaking in the picture below was arrested for chalking slogans about the 3Cosas campaign cleaners’ struggle for decent pay and conditions across a foundation stone at the Senate House. I wasn’t there when Konstancja (Koshka) Duff did this, nor when she was arrested with unnecessary force later, and charged, following pressure from the University for her to be charged. In the picture I took the following day when she spoke at the 3Cosas protest at Senate House, signs of her beating by the police were clearly visible.

A bruised Koshka Duff speaks at the 3 Cosas protest she was promoting a day after her arrest

The caption I wrote in July was “They claimed chalk caused damage and was expensive to remove. I find a damp cloth works well“.

A couple of days before the protest at the end of February her case finally came to court. The police, having mistreated her on arrest adopted what appears to be their normal tactic of charging her with assaulting the police officer and special constable involved, but fortunately for her video and photographic evidence showed that the police accounts were not not consistent with events. The judge said that one had “exaggerated her evidence” and the other had clearly not been in a position to see what he had described in court, having been behind the van door, and dismissed that charge.

Of course there is no chance that the officer who assaulted her will ever be charged with that crime, despite many witnesses and video evidence, nor that either will be charged with perjury for lying under oath in court.

Although the university authorities now deny it, there can also be no doubt that the arrest and prosecution only occurred because of pressure from the University of London’s deputy director of property, Paul Nicholson-Lewis, who, according to police evidence at the trial was “very keen to press charges”.

Although the major charge of assaulting a police officer was thrown out, Koshka Duff was still treated very harshly by the court, with the judge in a highly curious ruling reported in London Student, rejecting Duff’s claim that she had chalked on the stone to advertise the following day’s 3 Cosas protest and finding her guilty of criminal damage, ordering that she pay £810 to cover the cost of repairs to the stone and £200 towards prosecution costs. You can donate to the Chalk Fund to help her pay the fine.

The case made the news again after an open letter signed by 49 academics mainly from London University colleges to the university gave advice that a damp cloth could be used to remove chalk and helpfully enclosed several cloths for future use. The high cost of cleaning – the £810 charged to the student – appears largely to be because the unnecessary use of high pressure hydrocleaning damaged the gold lettering which had to be replaced.

So the protest against the University Vice-Chancellor began with some highly symbolic chalking on the pavement, demanding that he resign.  Not just over the chalking affair, but because of the increasing bringing in of police onto the campus, over his decision to close the student union, his failure ensure that outsourced staff working on the site are given decent conditions and more.

It took place very quickly and it wasn’t easy to find a good angle to photograph. I also wanted to make what they were writing visible in the images, which meant photographing as they finished it.

Students protest outside the Senate House

Students protested outside Senate House, and the gates at its base were locked. Someone opened a fire exist and they went inside to protest, hoping to find the meeting of Vice-Chancellors, but it appeared to have been moved elsewhere.

Students protest inside the Senate House

They were careful not to cause damage and clearly were not intending to occupy which would have been in defiance of a High Court injunction obtained by the University management against its own students.  I went outside as some students climbed out onto a balcony and watched from outside as they went through an open window into the Vice Chancellor’s offices, where they apparently went through some of the files. But by this time I was elsewhere.

More pictures and about what happened at Students tell Vice Chancellor to Resign.

Elsewhere was a protest against security company G4S outside their offices in Victoria Street, one of a number of protests for International Israeli Apartheid Week. G4S runs a number of prisons in Israel and you can read more at G4S & Israeli Prison Torture.

Continue reading Chalk and Protest