Re-photo

You may well not have heard of WACT, the ‘World Association of Carbon Traders‘ and some of the slogans on the placards they carried in Saturday’s Climate march may have surprised a few, though it would have been hard to miss the irony in ‘Trust Me, I’m a Banker‘ or others such as ‘Greed is Green‘. They also stood out from the others taking part in not following the recommended dress code of blue and preferring pin-stripe suits and ties.

‘Carbon Trader = Eco Crusader’ and WACT’s logo is CO2$

I don’t believe that photographers should pose people or tell them what to do when taking photographs – though I might occasionally ask someone to turn their placard so I can read the message, in general I’m at pains not to intervene in the situation I’m photographing. But as I photographed this group of ‘city gents’ (and ladies) coming down the road I couldn’t resist pointing out they were approaching the Institute of Directors, with the hope that they might in some way react. And they did, running across the road to pose for a group photograph in its doorway.

Of course it is only too obvious at the moment that many people are profiting from climate change and that carbon trading is one way that the rich can make money and keep in charge – markets are always controlled by those with money.

More about the WACT and more pictures on My London Diary.

The Climate Emergency Bike Ride organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change last Saturday morning was pretty straightforward to photograph.  It can sometimes be useful to actually go on a bike when photographing bike rides, but it wasn’t convenient to do this on Saturday as I was going on to photograph other things where a bike would have been very much in the way.

Of course I could have left my bike somewhere locked up, but in London I normally like to use my folding bike, and these are very attractive to bike thieves because of their relatively high value and being so easy to transport away in a car boot or the back of a van. The big advantage of the folder for me is that it is so easy to put it onto a train – including the London Underground.

The start of the ride – sun right behind the riders

Anyway, I was without a bike, so an essential piece of research before the event was to find out the important places to be on the route and work out how I could get to these. Fortunately for this ride it turned out to be pretty simple – from the start at Lincolns Inn Fields I could go with the bikes the few hundred yards to Holborn Station, jump on a Piccadilly line train to Picadilly Circus and jog the quarter mile from there to the first stop outside BP’s Offices in St James’s Square in time for the ride to arrive.

I was waiting at St James’s Square when the ride arrived

Then it was only a few yards to the next call for the ride. From there I could make my way back to Piccadilly Circus and on to Marble Arch with plenty of time to spare for the bikes to arrive at the end of their demonstration.

The end of the ride at Hyde Park

One thing I’ve learnt is to avoid trying to use buses when moving from one part of a demonstration to another. Marches or bike rides both tend to cause traffic chaos, and it can be extremely frustrating to be sitting on a bus in a traffic jam unable to get where you want to be.

Advance planning is also needed because some weekends the London Underground system has large parts shut down for engineering works,  so I check Underground (and bus) journeys on the Transport for London web site.  It isn’t infallible – last Saturday it was telling me I couldn’t use the train from home up to London which was actually running normally, and it isn’t unusual for it to suggest completely nonsensical routes. Particularly if I intend to photograph several events on the same day, the actual working out of the journeys between them can take an hour or two.

Everything worked out fine on Saturday, and I got to the right places on time, even managing to fit in a few more photos on the way.

The sun was not far out of the frame for this image

The only real photographic problems were at the start of the ride in Lincolns Inn Fields where a low winter sun was shining from behind the riders. Even the fairly effective lens hood on my 55-200 zoom had to be augmented by a carefully held hand, while those on the wider zooms are pretty ineffectual at the best of times. But by working slightly from one side and keeping a careful eye in the viewfinder for flare I was able to get some decent pictures making use of the lighting – and of course using fill-flash to bring out some shadow detail.

Using flash also creates problems, particularly because cyclists – like the police  – tend to have lots of bits of reflective clothing as well as other reflectors on their bikes. Often quite a little work is needed in Lightroom to tame these images, and that ‘magic’ highlight removal tool got a fair bit of exercise on images like these:

You can read more about the demonstration, part of a day of actions over Climate Change aimed at pressing the government to take effective action at the Copenhagen talks and in its policies here, on My London Diary, where there are also more pictures from the event.

Last Wednesday, 1 December, was exactly 8 months since the death of Ian Tomlinson after a police assault at the G20 protests. The Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign wants a full investigation to find out what happened and to bring those responsible for his death to justice.

They decided to hold a public Candlelit vigil in Royal Exchange Buildings where he was assaulted and invited the press and others to attend. I’ve written a more detailed account of the event on My London Diary (and also on Demotix) so I won’t repeat the details here, where I want to look mainly at some of the problems in photographing such an event.

Firstly of course there were perhaps 30 other professional photographers there- including some from the national press and the picture agencies as well as other freelances, along with several TV crews and some other videographers. This made it fairly difficult – and at times impossible – to get into the positions for taking the best pictures (and also means that the chances of getting my pictures used in the news media is even lower than usual.)  Working in confined spaces with professional photographers generally isn’t too bad – everyone appreciates the problem and within reason people cooperate with each other (with a few exceptions.)

Working with digital has actually made it a little harder, with a growing tendency by some photographers – even when working with DSLRs when they can’t see the image – to hold their camera out in front at arms length to take pictures – and usually getting it into the frame of the rest of us.  They wouldn’t actually walk in front of us to take a picture, but somehow they seem to think it’s ok to shove a camera out there.

Working with videographers, particularly from the TV stations can also be rather difficult. They tend to like to set up on large tripods and take and stay in a good position, and sometimes feel they have a right to barge in front of stills photographers. Actually on this occasion they didn’t do so, but it still creates a barrier to movement in a way that still photographers don’t.

The light in Royal Exchange Buildings was fairly dim – it’s a pedestrian area and not particularly brightly lit.  I’d prefer not to use flash for a candlelit event, or at least only to use it sparingly to keep the effect of the candles. Using too much flash – as the the first picture – does create a very artificial effect an, with flash on camera particularly, does rather make people look like cardboard cutouts.

The Tomlinson Family arrive at the memorial event

This was taken at ISO2000, 1/60 f9, and flash is the main light source. The aperture ensures that I have sufficient depth of field to keep everyone sharp and even at f9 the ambient light does give some – if limited – background detail at 1/60s. I’d started taking pictures as they walked towards the event, moving backwards as they came; I hadn’t wanted to get in their way or stop them, but seconds after I started taking pictures I found myself with other photographers on both sides and behind me shooting over my should and I – and the family –  had to stop.

From there I managed to find a space crouching in front of the TV cameras and very close to the family. Having taken a few pictures with flash to make sure I had something sharp – if rather boring – I stared working by available light. Using the Sigma EX 24-70 f2.8, exposures were pretty variable, ranging from 1/20 to 1/60 at f2.8 to f3.5 at ISOs between 1000 and 3200.  Many frames were not sharp due to subject movement or camera shake, and the limited depth of field. The lens is just very slightly soft at f2.8 but good enough to use, particularly in difficult conditions.

Mrs Julia Tomlinson

Flash is of course more intrusive, and although we had been invited to photograph the event and I wanted to produce pictures that might generate more publicity for the family campaign, I still found it hard at times to take pictures and wanted to do so with the minimum of intrusion. So when the family moved to the spot where Ian Tomlinson actually collapsed and died I needed flash to prevent blurring when they were laying flowers, but went back to available light to photograph them paying their respects after a short prayer from the minister present.

But after taking this I was not sure if it would have sufficient depth of field (looking at it now, although only Ian Tomlinson’s widow is really sharp, the image still works) and decided I had to take a similar picture using flash.

It is sharper, the colour is more accurate. Although probably I could process the raw file rather more carefully to get a better result, I think I prefer the atmosphere of the exposure using available light.

The story made the front page on Demotix, and I also published it on Indymedia, as well of course with a few more pictures on My London Diary.