Category: Political Issues

Sometimes it’s the job of photographers to look under unpleasant stones and I felt this was one of them as I walked into a rather small and disconsolate looking group of the British National Party supporters on College Green. It isn’t often I agree with David Cameron,  reported by  the Daily Telegraph “If you vote for the BNP you are voting for a bunch of fascists … They dress up in a suit and knock on your door in a nice way but they are still Nazi thugs.”

In the middle of a media scrum, their leader Nick Griffin was being interviewed and photographed, and I joined the throng. What I heard did nothing to improve my opinion of his ideas.  At first I was a little way back in the crowd, but as others moved away I gradually moved forward, still surrounded by others with cameras.

Rather than use a longer lens and frame just him and the placard I took a few frames showing the media interest – above with the D700 and 16-35 at 19mm. At ISO 800, working on P gave me 1/400 f10, enough depth of field to get everything but  the foreground lenses sharp, and the shutter speed fast enough to work where there was a little unavoidable pushing from the photographers around me.  I was happy (and a little lucky)  with the framing.

Gradually as other photographers had got their pictures and moved out I got closer, really too close, and took other pictures – which you can see at BNP Exploiting Woolwich Killing Stopped and then Griffin started moving around and talking to a few of his supporters – and getting stopped for more video interviews.

I wanted to take some pictures that showed clearly where he was, with Parliament in the background, and was able to use a longer lens – the 18-105mm  DX at 50mm (75mm equiv – a ‘portrait lens’) on the D800E.  I was pleased to be able to have the clearly anti-Islamic placard – with its ‘no mosque’ motif behind him (though it could have been more visible), along with the slightly blurred and perhaps a little sinister face of a supporter to his right, and the message ‘Enough is enough’.  The image on the web is perhaps a little too dark.

I’d also photographed some of the other BNP members at the protest, though some were not too keen to be photographed, and turned away. But by the time they did so I’d usually already taken their pictures. Some were more relaxed about it, and I had a few fairly normal conversations with some of those I photographed.

But the main story was that the BNP had been prevented from marching by anti-fascists, various groups and individuals who had come to Westminster determined to stop the BNP making capital out of the killing of Lee Rigby. They were defying the police in blocking the road, and I photographed a number of them being arrested and led away to the waiting police vans and a couple of double-decker buses – some more dramatically than others.

But although the police made a large number of arrests – and a few of them seemed to clearly enjoy a little sadistic arm-twisting and thumping of the protesters – I don’t think their heart was really in the job, and they didn’t feel moved to make a really great effort to let the fascists march.

This was one picture of the anti-fascists that I particularly liked. The wide-angle (16mm)  emphasizes the power of the arm holding the megaphone, the banner behind has the clear message ‘Nazis Out’ and the newspaper headline ‘After Woolwich’ adds the context. For me when I was taking the series of exposures that this came from, there was a definite feeling that I was photographing the re-enactment of a socialist realist poster, and I did so with some amusement.  The image is full-frame, though possibly a very slight trim at the left and right edge might improve it.

There are some others I thought weren’t bad too – you can see the rest at Anti-Fascists Stop BNP Wreath Laying.

Continue reading Griffin Halted

One of the questions I’m often asked is how I find out about the events that I photograph. There isn’t a simple answer. Basically I build up a diary from information that I get from various sources, and I think I’ve written a little about this in the past.

But sometimes I just listen to the news and think that people must be protesting about a particular issue – and the protests taking place in Istanbul over Gezi Park were an obvious example. On Saturday 1 June I switched on the computer after breakfast and took to Google and Facebook to find out what was happening in London and when. It turned out to be surprisingly difficult, taking me around 25 minutes to find that people were meeting at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park at 11am that morning, and to work out that if I caught the next train I could be there too.

So I was there  just a few minutes after 11am and taking pictures of a large group of people standing around in small groups, with some sporadic chanting from different areas of the crowd, people carrying banners and placards. Although it was a large crowd it was generally fairly easy to move around, although often not easy to get exactly where I wanted to be, with other people – including a few other photographers – often getting in the way.

When things get very crowded, the 10.5mm often comes in useful, letting you work very close to your subject. Both of the top two images in this post are from the full DX format on the D800E.

Here I was standing very close to the banner, and holding the camera up high to get an idea of the crowd behind. It’s hard to keep it absolutely level, but here the slight tilt gives an added dynamic. I was perhaps lucky that the raised fist almost reaches the top of the frame, as I wasn’t able to see through the viewfinder, but I was trying just to include it. In both frames I’ve retained the perspective of the lens, which emphasizes the central figures, rather than alter it to a cylindrical perspective. I haven’t even added the small ‘distortion correction’ in Lightroom which often helps, just relieving the extreme compression in the corners – a value of 10 or 20% often improves things, these are just as the lens made them.

I was also using the 16-35mm, and the picture below was taken at 32mm at full-frame on the D700 – just a slight wide-angle. The poster the woman is holding is for the Turkish Communist Party. This was the last of six single frames that I took of her over a period of around four seconds, working both with her expression and with the exact placement of the crescent and star on the Turkish flag behind her (the crescent could almost be the blade of a sickle.) I think there is also just enough of the ‘Occupy Gezi’ at the right of the frame and the people around to provide context.

After around half an hour things got much more organised and both less visually interesting and a much harder situation in which to work, as almost everyone sat down. People were tightly packed and it was almost impossible to move around, as well as making me feel much more visible standing up, and much more in the way.

I took a few more pictures – this one at 16mm – and then left.  I had another protest to photograph that was about to start and wasn’t managing to do much here now. I’d hoped to get back later and take pictures either of the march or the rally opposite the Turkish embassy, but by the time I’d finished other things it was almost certainly too late, and I was definitely feeling too tired, so I didn’t make it. It might well have been disappointing, as often if not usually the best pictures of events are taken before they really start.  You can see the pictures I did make at London Supports Turkish Spring.

Continue reading Hyde Park Gezi Park

The ‘My London Diary‘ calendar has a rather variable lag behind the rest of the world, but at last it is now officially June, and May is out, though today it feels rather chilly and I  wonder if casting a clout was premature.

May was rather a busy month for me, probably because I had sworn I would take things a little easier, but things just kept on happening. There are of course seasonal events in May – May Day marches and rallies, May Queen Events and the Bengali New Year – as well as continuing protests against the vicious mix of incompetence, profiteering and malice towards the poor in the government’s policies and renewed attempts to persuade them to truly put pressure on the USA over Guantanamo and more.

But it was also a month where I got away from London a bit on a couple of family walks (a change is almost as good as a rest, but they tend to be rather exhausting) and found a couple of the exhibition openings worth taking a few pictures at. One of them, Estuary,  included some of my own work, and was a reminder to me of how much I’ve neglected some areas of interest recently.

Perhaps I’ll take things easier in June, but somehow I doubt it unless my doctor makes me. But despite being June I think I’m going to get a jumper to put on.

Muslims march for Lee Rigby

March Against Monsanto
Don’t hang Prof Bhullar!
UEFA gets a Red Card for Israel
ArtEco Opening – Daniele Tamagni
Battersea etc

Daddy’s Pig heads for the Trough
Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid
Bring Shaker Home
‘Christian Concern’ Against Gay Marriage
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide
More US Embassy Protests
Guantánamo Murder Scene
London Marches to Defend NHS
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing
Staines Walk

Canary Wharf & Estuary Opening
Hands off Assata!
Leveller Thomas Rainsborough
Bikers
Boishakhi Mela Procession
Kidnapped by Pirates
London’s 101st May Queen
Cleaners Return to Capgemini
Bank Holiday Walk

Beckenham May Queens
Cleaners at Clifford Chance
TUC May Day Rally

London May Day March
Finsbury

Continue reading May is Out

I met the  ‘Red Card Israeli Racism Campaign‘ last year when they were protesting against the detention in Israel of Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak, who was then on hunger strike against his detention without charge since 2009, when he was arrested while moving from Gaza to a new club on the West Bank.  Their protests and those of other groups around the world led to his case being taken up by footballers and football associations around the world, and he was was finally released in July 2012 after appeals from the international professional footballers association FIFPro, Eric Cantona, Frédéric Kanouté and the presidents of EUFA and FIFA, as well as others from outside football.

Their protest on May 24 was to take the message to the UEFA meeting taking place in a hotel on Park Lane that they should not be holding June’s under-21 men’s football tournament in Israel, because of that country’s continuing record of human rights abuses and the breaking of UEFA’s rules in their treatment of Palestinian footballers, two of whom are still in prison in Israel.

There were two parts to the protest. Opposite the hotel in the wide central reservation of Park Lane they were holding a rally all day, and a march was going to the rally from St Pancras International station, where around 40 protesters were arriving by train from France and Belgium.

My plan was to start with the marchers at St Pancras, walk with them part of the way and then take a bus so I could be at the rally well before them to take pictures of the rally and their arrival. On my way to the start of the march, I’d noticed that the police were preparing for a large protest outside the Indian High Commission, and had decided that rather than take a direct bus, I could take a bus there, spend a short time taking pictures there and then get on another bus to go on to the ‘Red Card’ rally.

It more or less worked. The only real problem was the rain, moderate but steady before the march started, it soon began to come down heavily, and I, the protesters and my cameras were all getting rather wet.  Not just wet, despite it being May, I was also getting rather cold, as I was working with my jacket open halfway down so I could tuck my cameras under it out of the rain when I wasn’t using either of them. I was glad I’d thought to put on a vest under my shirt and a jumper on top, but I was still chilly.

I was pleased to be able to leave the march after around half a mile, when it still had another couple of miles to do, and head for the bus stop. It wasn’t too long before a bus came, but again the weather was a little problem. London’s traffic is slow at most times during the day, but when it rains, more people use their cars as well as the buses. The bus was full and I had to stand for a couple of stop, and going down to Holborn it was stuck in a slow-moving stream, slower than walking, but finally we arrived close the the High Commission.

Both police and protesters were obviously expecting a much larger protest than the group of around twenty Sikhs I found there – and again I expect many were put off by the weather. It was a part of a protest that has been going on since the middle of April opposite Downing Street, against the hanging of Professor Bhullar, a Sikh who has been held on death row for 19 years after his conviction on the basis of a confession forced out of him under torture; the final barriers to his execution were removed in April and he could now be hanged at any time.

Here all the protesters were at least under umbrellas, while I was working in the rain. It is just possible to hold an umbrella while taking photographs, but it isn’t easy, and it makes it difficult to get the camera in exactly the right position – those little movements that can make all the difference to a picture.  And when working with very wide lenses – like the 16mm end of the 16-35mm – it is rather easy to let the umbrella drift into the picture, and it also cuts down the light. So although I didn’t stay long taking pictures, the rain was by now heavy, and I got rather wet by the time I rushed to the bus stop for the bus to Mayfair.

I’d hoped the cameras might dry off a bit on the bus journey, but the bus was steamed up, and by now I was running out of dry cloths to wipe the gear with, but I removed as much of the surface moisture as I could. Again it was a slow journey, thanks to the rain and traffic, at the end of which I had around half an hour’s walk in the rain to the rally. But at least I could zip up my coat and pull up my hood as I walked (it gets in the way too much when I’m taking pictures.)

At the rally there was a little shelter from the large trees, but by now the rain was also dripping from them, and again I got wet taking pictures. By now the viewfinder of both Nikons was misted up and it was hard to see exactly what I was taking, but at least to start with the lenses were still clear, and the dim lighting meant I could see the images fairly clearly on the back of the camera, and they seemed reasonably sharp.

You can clearly see some streaks of rain in the top left of this picture

It wasn’t too long before the march arrived, though I didn’t make any very good pictures – the weather was against me, and the marchers rather bedraggled. I was ready to leave, but hung on for a few minutes as Mahmoud Sarsak was present and going to speak. It was tricky keeping him in the frame at the telephoto end of the 18-105mm when he was on the makeshift platform, needing to keep wiping the front element of the lens (and cursing the fact that I’d lost the lens hood a few days earlier and was waiting for a replacement to arrive – it really does help to keep the rain off. By now I was only getting a very dim image in the viewfinder, and even on the camera back it wasn’t too clear, but there was only a little condensation actually inside the lens and the images were still more or less ok  I kept at it for a few minutes until I was sure I had a couple of decent frames, and then hurried away to catch the bus to the station.

Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak
I was quite pleased with the pictures I took given the conditions, and even more pleased when the cameras and lenses all seemed to dry out without problems, though neither the Nikon 16-35mm or the 18-105mm are made for working in the rain, and are likely soon to need expensive repairs or replacement.

You can see the rest of the pictures and more about the protests at UEFA gets a Red Card for Israel and Don’t hang Prof Bhullar!
Continue reading Red Card and Rain

Some days – like tomorrow – there are more protests in London than I could possibly attend, starting in different places at the same time, and I have to make a choice of which to attend. Although tomorrow I’ll miss at least the start of most of them, with the memorial service of an old friend taking place in the middle of the day.  But two weeks ago, there were a number of events nicely spaced out across the day, so I could easily cover a number of them.

 

First was a protest outside Parliament against the Israeli actions against Palestinians, now relegated to around an eighth of the land they occupied before the formation of Israel, End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing marking Nabka Day (actually a couple of days earlier) which had been brought forward a couple of hours to enable those attending it to go on to a march supporting the NHS and opposing the plans of the government for its privatisation, which is going ahead full steam through the back door – more in London Marches to Defend NHS.

The Nabka day event didn’t quite get going soon enough, and was really just getting into its stride around 12.30pm when I decided I needed to be on the other bank of the Thames at Waterloo where the NHS march was massing. The quickest way was on foot, and normally it would have taken me a little under ten minutes, running a little or at least walking fast, but I was slowed down by being with a couple of other photographers who obviously weren’t as fit as me and it took a little longer.

The NHS march was a fairly large one, with several thousand marchers from across London, including many I’d photographed at the various protests against hospital closures in Ealing, Lewisham and North London. Like most such things many of the best opportunities for pictures are in the half hour or so before the march starts, and I was a little later getting there than I would have liked. It started more or less on time at 1pm, and I went with it across Waterloo Bridge and up the Strand.

Normally I would have stayed with the NHS marchers and photographed the rally they were going to have in Whitehall, but I wanted to photograph another protest, starting at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square at 2pm, a Guantánamo Murder Scene marking the 100th day (actually the 101st) of the hunger strike by over a hundred prisoners there.  As the march stopped just before Trafalgar Square I scurried down into Charing Cross Underground station and took the tube to Bond St (a short journey with just one change) rushing out and across Grosvenor Square to arrive just a couple of minutes late – for once the protest had started very much on time.

Had I been there earlier, I might have suggested the organisers move it just a few feet away from the hedge towards the embassy, which would have made it easier to photograph. Because if you are going to have a protest at an embassy, it is often a good idea to have the embassy visible in the pictures, and when I got there all the photographers and videographers were in a long line with their backs to it.

I took the picture above a little later, when they had dispersed a little around the scene, but I think I will have got in rather a lot of other people’s pictures earlier, trying to get similar images. As you can probably see, I’ve made use of the wide angle of the 10.5mm Nikon fisheye, correcting the verticals in post-processing using the Fisheye-Hemi plugin as I often do.  The wide angle means I’m very close to the ‘bodies’ on the pavement, emphasising them in the image while getting all seven in (earlier there were eight – one for each of those who have died probably as a result of earlier hunger strikes there.) Keeping the lens upright keeps the verticals on the building upright, and the wide angle just takes in the roof of the embassy with its American Eagle and US flag. Fortunately the bodies on the ground weren’t moving so I was able to wait until the wind was blowing the flag out well.

One thing I’m not entirely happy about is the colour, and particularly the orange suits, some at least of which I think incorporate fluorescent dyes. They tend to block out all highlight details when exposed normally, despite the highlights being kept within the histogram.  I was using the 10.5mm on the D800E to get reasonably sized files (16Mp) from the DX format, and I don’t have ‘untwisted’ profiles – which usually help – for that camera to use in Lightroom. I had to do quite a lot of burning and slightly de-saturating some of the suits for this image – and in the hurry to file the pictures it wasn’t perhaps quite as careful as it might have been.

While I was at the embassy a couple of other groups of protesters also turned up. One was a protest by a few Syrians and the CPUK-ML (Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist-Leninist, a small anti-revisionst splinter from the Socialist Labour Party) in support of President Assad, and the other  a group of Muslims who had come to support the protest by Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye and her daughter I wrote about in Lonely Vigil at US Embassy a few weeks ago.  I didn’t have time to do both justice and took rather more pictures of the Muslims,  as you can see in More US Embassy Protests.

I also knew that there was another march taking place through London, and I left the US embassy shortly before the event there finished, hurrying down on foot again through Mayfair towards the Ritz hotel which was on the route. Quite by luck I’d timed it about right, and was able to catch up with the head of the march – Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – about halfway between there and Piccadilly Circus. By now I was rather out of breath and was happy to stop there and photograph the rest as it passed by me on the way to a rally at Waterloo Place.

As the end of the march passed me – and the officer in charge of policing breathed a sigh of relief, saying “it’s the end at last” as there had been several thousands – I hurried down by the side of it to the rally, which had not yet started, taking a few more pictures before I decided I was tired and had done enough and it was time to go home and file the four stories.  Too late of course for them to be ‘news’.
Continue reading Touring the Protests

It’s hard to avoid clichés when photographing protests (and many published images I see haven’t tried) but I do my best. The cleaners are good to work with because they often pull little surprises and their protests are particularly active events, though every time I get to one I remember that I meant to bring ear plugs, as they really do make a lot of noise, as I think the image above suggests.

Cleaners Return to Capgemini shows their second protest outside the company’s offices in Vauxhall, where they say they are treated like dirt, paid the minimum legal wage – recognised to be insufficient to live on in London – and that the largely Spanish-speaking workforce are subjected to racist comments by their ISS manager. They call for fair and decent treatment by their employers, saying, “We are not the dirt we clean!” And saying this and other slogans loud and clear and again and again between bursts of blowing on trumpets and whistles, banging on saucepan lids and generating noisy feedback from a powerful megaphone, the whole protest to a background of heavy drumming.

Mostly they do this outside on the pavement, but early in the protest they took the opportunity to go inside the office foyer for a few minutes until they could no longer ignore the requests from the security to leave – and did so. Later in the protest they tried to enter the building again, but stopped when a man and a woman stood in the doorway and refused them entry.

They stood in the entrance way for a minute or so, with the cleaner’s leader Alberto Durango talking with the man – I took a few pictures from outside through the glass, but it was rather dirty, and by the time I’d got out a handkerchief and wiped it, the confrontation was over.

Unlike on the first protest here in March, there was no visible police presence until the protest was almost over, when a car drove up and two officers went in to the building to talk to those inside. Capgemini hadn’t called the police – and quite sensibly not, as there was no real threat to the people or property in a legal and well-ordered protest, and no point in escalating the situation.

But I later found that a man working nearby had, and he came to watch what they did. When I talked to him he seemed unreasonably upset about the noise that the cleaners were making, telling me they should protest in silence so as not to disturb him, and he was making threats to get something done about it. I did photograph him but didn’t think it necessary to put his picture on the web.

It certainly was noisy. I’d moved in close when the police officer went to talk to Alberto but hadn’t expected quite the intimate tête-à-tête shown here, as the officer moves close to hear what Alberto is shouting into his ear over the background noise. I was only a few feet away but couldn’t hear, but I think he is saying that they will end the protest in a few minutes – it lasted altogether for around three-quarters of an hour.

The cleaners use noise as a way to draw attention to their grievances, as well as the visual signals from the flags, banners and placards. It helps to make their protests effective, and while it may annoy a few people around, it isn’t loud enough to damage hearing and doesn’t happen for long enough or frequently enough to be a real nuisance (and certainly not a statutory nuisance.)

You can read more about the protest and see quite a few more pictures that tell the story of the protest on My London Dairy. I hope there aren’t too many clichés among them.

  Continue reading Cleaning Capgemini

Cleaners’ leader Alberto Durango in front of Clifford Chance – a portrait format might have worked better?

I was a little worried at the prospect of photographing the cleaners protest at Canary Wharf. It’s one of these large private estates complete with its own law force who dress in a way that might get anyone else arrested for impersonating a police officer, and one with a record for harassing photographers.

My own problems there go way back, with various arguments with security while the site was being redeveloped when I would find myself arguing with security men. Then I was usually able to remind them I was standing on the public highway and had a right to take photographs if I wanted, and would suggest they called the police if they had a problem with that. But now, the whole Canary Wharf estate is private property – including the highways – and you have no legal right to take pictures.

I’ve twice had problems with taking pictures there more recently. Once when I was photographing a war memorial hidden away on one of the dockside walkways and they thought I must be planning some kind of robbery (they’d never noticed the memorial) and another time when I tried to photograph a bunch of security men beating up a drunk who they’d thrown out of one of the bars. But although I’ve heard many stories of other photographers getting stopped, I’ve also taken students there and run a couple of photo workshops in the past without permission – and on rather more occasions walked around myself taking photographs without getting bothered – as do many tourists every day. Generally if you don’t go into unusual places or use a tripod and keep a fairly low profile they don’t seem to bother you.

Protest is also banned at Canary Wharf. So the cleaners’ action hadn’t been advertised in advance outside their group, and phone calls to a few photographers and videographers the group trusted had told us where they would meet up to travel to the protest.

I was only slightly worried. The worst I expected was to be escorted off the premises, so there was just a chance it would be a waste of time. In the event I had no problems at all and the whole thing went very smoothly, as you can see from the pictures at Cleaners at Clifford Chance.

There was a fairly intense confrontation between the cleaners and the man at the right, who I think is Canary Wharf’s Head of Security. I’d photographed him before in 2007 when the Space Hijackers held their ‘Suited & Booted’ May Day party there. But neither then or on this occasion was I asked to stop taking pictures or to leave. And as you can see from this extreme wide-angle image I was very close to him.

I think the rules are generally simple. Even on private land you can take pictures, but if requested by the owner or a representative of the owner of the land to stop you should do so. I would only defy such a request if there was a clear public interest involved that I felt obliged me to do so – for example to secure evidence of a crime being committed. But any pictures that I take before being asked to stop can’t be required to delete and can use.

It was important to get the name ‘Clifford Chance’ as well as some of the protesters

When the cleaners went into the building I went in with them. Had anyone tried to stop me I would have stopped, and if I was asked to leave I would leave. But no one asked me. They did ask the cleaners, and when after a short delay they left, I left with them. But events like this are certainly ones I would be doubtful about photographing without a UK Press Card.

The cleaners had been briefed before the protest about how they should behave, and they were better briefed than some of the security staff who did at times start pushing people around. The cleaners made a lot of noise, made their point clear, showed they were angry but kept calm and simply shouted when a woman was hit, telling the security they had no right to do that.

Alberto Durango speaks at the end of the protest as security look on

The Head of Security did quite a bit of shouting and pointing, some of which you can see in my pictures, but eventually saw and talked sense, telling the protesters they had to leave. Fine, said the protesters, we’ll finish our protest and then leave. It ended with a row of security men across the front of the building, standing back and watching the protest for a few minutes before they marched away for a short meeting close to the tube station entrance before going down the stairs into the station.

Photographically there were few problems, with largely good light with a lot reflected into the shadows from the tall glass-sided buildings. I didn’t need fill flash most of the time, which was just as well as when I tried it, I couldn’t get the exposure right, with burnt out highlights. It was only a problem as the cleaners marched away, with a fairly low sun right behind them – so there are no pictures from this short part of the protest in Cleaners at Clifford Chance. It wasn’t a great problem. Later, as I described in Too Much Control? I found the problem – an incorrect setting for Custom Setting e1, the flash synch speed.

Continue reading Cleaners Visit Canary Wharf

Not all of those who go on the May Day March stay for the rally, and numbers drop off fairly rapidly after the start. I’ve not always bothered with it myself, and marching a couple of miles does tend to develop a thirst for something other than standing around listening to speeches. Not that there were not some rousing speeches, but there was little novelty and it was preaching to the converted.

At the start there was the usual rush by protesters to take their flags and banners onto the plinth below Nelson, and this year there seemed to be an extra horde of photographers as well. The stewards started late to control access by the steps, but the plinth is too low for this to be effective, at least for the young and active, and even I can struggle my way up if I really have to, putting my cameras and bag up first and then scrambling after.  It’s something I try to avoid, particularly since I managed to injure a knee carefully (I thought) dropping down to the ground eight years ago. At the time I hardly noticed the jolt, but by the time I arrived home an hour or so later I could hardly walk – and it was a couple of weeks before I could work again, and several months before I could walk without any pain.

For a while there were so many people and so many banners that it was almost impossible to work, but eventually the stewards got them sorted out to leave space in front for the speeches and just about for us photographers. The ideal position for photographing the speakers there would be levitating in mid-air above the square – but failing that there are two choices – either to work from the platform to one side or to stand at ground level and look up at them. Usually I take the second alternative, but today I kept at platform level. If only the put the microphone a couple of feet back it would be much better, though as you can see I was able to get slightly in front of the speakers without falling off the plinth – though I was just a little worried I might get pushed off the edge by accident – or get so engrossed in taking pictures that I forgot where I was and just moved a little to my right…  Photographers have died falling off cliffs trying to get the composition right!

Probably the best pictures of the speakers are of them waiting to speak. Len McCluskey was in front of a Trade Union banner with the message ‘Trade Union Rights Are Human Rights’ and looking just a little sinister in dark glasses, which reflected the scene in  the square in front.

But  even with the 75-300 I couldn’t see the reflection well enough – it was better with NUT General Secretary Christine Blower who turned slightly towards me so that I could see the National Gallery in her glasses.  McCluskey took his glasses off to speak, but the sun coming from behind him made pictures a little tricky.

After his speech I decided it was time to get down, and I photographed MP Jeremy Corbyn as a groundling, when the 75-300 really made a difference compared to my normal 18-105mm. The image below was taken at 210mm (315mm equiv) with the sunlight just coming over his left shoulder, and most of his face in shadow. As usual he gave a fine speech, but is often a tricky subject to photograph, not least because he tends to close his eyes when speaking.

The march banner, with its deep red I thought made a good background. Despite being a cheap lens, the Nikon 70-300 is remarkably good, especially when used on the DX format, although above the focal length I used here it does get a little soft.  It’s also small and light for what it offers – and the f4-5.6 aperture is fast enough given the high ISO performance of the D800E.  I could easily have taken this image at ISO200, but there seems little reason for most purposes ever to use the camera below the ISO640 I had set for this day.  The aperture in use was probably unnecessarily small at f13, though I wanted to be sure all of Jeremy was sharp, and their isn’t a great depth of field at 315mm equiv, and it still gave me a shutter speed roughly twice as fast as the 1/focal length rule suggests necessary, at 1/640.

The 1/f rule is still one I find useful, even though most of my lenses – but not the 75-300 – now have image stabilisation. And the focal length I use is not the actual focal length but the 35mm equivalent. It still seems to be a useful guide, though I often use slower speeds, either by design or by accident.

I didn’t stay until the end – and nor had most of the marchers, with Trafalgar Square beginning to look rather empty by the half way mark. I couldn’t help thinking we were supposed to be celebrating and it didn’t look or feel much like it. Perhaps we should have had some socialist maypole dancing. In clogs?

More pictures at TUC May Day Rally.
Continue reading May Day Rally