Re-photo

Tariq Ali is really a gift for photographers:

Three views of Tariq Ali speaking

And I could have chosen a dozen or more other frames from the many I took as he spoke with great passion outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, a place which brings back many memories for those of us involved with protest since the sixties.

One of the problems of photographing speakers is always the microphone, making its presence felt in many shots, often getting in the way of the picture you would like to take.  There are relatively few occasions on which it really improves an image to have it in front of someone’s face, but sometimes it can’t be avoided.

The  hardest people to photograph speaking are those who get really close to the microphone, speaking quietly into it and always looking in the same direction. Most of them never open their eye too!  Tariq Ali speaks with great force, making full use of dynamics, and although he took the loudspeakers rather beyond their rated limits, most of the times there was at least a small gap between him and the microphone. And as you can see he has quite a range of gesture and expression, looking around the crowd.  Actually rather more than my pictures here show, as probably around four fifths 0f the time he had moved so that the microphone was obscuring too much of his face for my liking.

There was also space for me to move around, though I had to take care doing so to avoid getting in shot too much for the several video cameras and other still photographers also taking pictures. But I’d started by choosing the position from which I’d taken these shots – usually around my favourite angle for such pictures, and after trying from a few other angles, came back to it, just moving slightly.

These pictures were taken with the D300 and the Nikon18-105mm, and most of the time I was working at its full stretch, equivalent to 157mm.  It is a little long for portraits, but a decent compromise, as I’m looking up at quite an angle to the speakers on a small stage.  I’d set ISO 1000 to give me shutter speeds and apertures around 1/250 f8, though with the camera on P setting they were changing a little frame to frame. But you do need a fairly fast shutter speed both to avoid camera shake with the long lens and also to avoid too much blur with those highly controlled ‘wild’ gestures. And of course they all use flash, which really helps to bring the face out of the shadows.

I tried to keep the focus on the eyes – and to make sure they were open, and generally succeeded. It’s great having the preview button set up to zoom right in during image playback so you can check that these things are right.

Backgrounds are often a problem, and sometimes – as in this case – there was not a great deal I could do about it. I did take a few pictures from a different angle with just a white sky as a background, but again it wasn’t a great background. It would have been nice if the stage had been set to have the embassy US flag and that big eagle hovering above him as he spoke, but it was actually directly behind me as I too the pictures

Of course I photographed others as well,  the protesters as well as most of the other speakers.

Muslim woman in headscarf holds red rose& photo of Cairo victim Sally Zaharan

And of course I had to have at least one picture showing that embassy, eagle & flag.

More at US Embassy Rally For Egypt on My London Diary.

One of many protests against the cuts in public services was a local march on Saturday in Islington. As local marches go, there was pretty strong support, but not as strong as one web report suggested in its headline One thousand march in Islington against cuts.

I often complain that the figures given by police and particularly the BBC (who shouldn’t have an axe to grind) are ridiculously low, though the BBC often play safe, with phrases like ‘Hundreds marched’, which is still rather misleading if – as sometimes – it was really around 25 hundreds. But this time I’d written a report before I read that on the web, and I’d used the actual figure in it.

Unless another 600 snuck in over the last half-mile after I had left to go elsewhere the actual figure was around 400. Just before Highbury and Islington station I stopped and counted as the whole march went past me, and I got to 397. Of course there is a small margin of error in such counts, however carefull you are. But I would be reasonably confident that there were between say 380 and 420 people marching (including a few very young children who were actually being carried.)

It is fairly easy to count a smallish march like this with some accuracy by actually counting individuals as they go past, though just a little tedious. It is easy to miss the odd one or two, and equally easy to count a few twice, but the errors tend to cancel out. Larger marches I count as batches of roughly twenty people, and above a couple of thousand I usually give up and rely on a rough estimation.  Years ago I used to stand two or three mornings a week looking down at around 1200 students in a morning assembly, which still gives me a rough idea of what that kind of number looks like, though protests are sometimes rather more spread out.

It may not be vital, but numbers are a fact which is often commented on and reported, and part of the job of a journalist is to get the facts right.

It wasn’t the most interesting of events to photograph, but people are always interesting, and I found some that  I hope express something of the spirit of the event.

You can read my report and see more pictures at Islington Strikes Back. Like many of the posts on My London Diary it was first published on Demotix, where I managed to upload the image above in a rather dim and dark version, having somehow failed to correct it in Lightroom. All my images get corrected on import using a standard preset which I have set up and this includes having Lightroom automatically adjust ‘tone’ – exposure, recovery (highlights), fill light, blacks, brightness and contrast. But this ‘auto tone’, which is the same as the button in the Basic section of the Develop module, is one area where Lightroom definitely needs some improvement.

Of course there is always some room for interpretation, but a good starting point for most images is to set shadows and highlights at the two ends of the histogram, and ‘auto-tone’ sometimes simply fails to do so. This image was such a case; Lightroom inexplicably made an exposure adjustment of -0.15 to leave a large gap at the highlight end of the histogram – and the corrected version above has an exposure adjustment of +0.57 – a difference of 0.72.  Normally I improve on the auto settings before sending pictures out, but somehow I missed this one in my late-night rush.

Demotix does a certain small amount of editing on the reports sent with pictures, though the changes made to mine are usually minimal. This time an editor had noticed that I had said that the march started at the Nags Head, and thought it would help to add the words “public house” after it. Unfortunately it’s some years since the Nags Head has been a public house, but it has bequeathed its name to a road junction and the area around it.  Fortunately I was able to log in and add my own correction, but it was a little annoying to have to do it in all the picture captions as well.

Demotix itself is in the news, having struck a deal with the Press Association (PA) which will now distribute some at least of its images.  It is really rather misleading of the report to say that Demotix “receives contributions from amateurs across the globe“, as although it does, it receives contributions from professionals around the world too, as well as some based here in the UK. But it certainly draws on photography from a wider base than existing agencies such as the PA, and often shows the strength of work from people with local knowledge rather than those flying in for short periods from abroad to cover stories. The best work on Demotix is as professional as that from any other agency.

Last Sunday saw another nationwide demonstration by UK Uncut, this time targeting Boots stores across the country. Boots have relocated their corporate HQ to a PO Box in Switzerland, and according to UK Uncut this tax loophole has reduced their annual tax bill from £100 million to just £14 million.

The money that isn’t now coming in as UK tax would, according to UK Uncut, pay the salaries of over 4,000 NHS nurses, now under threat from government changes in the way hospitals are funded.  UK Uncut, in their role as the ‘Big Society Revenue & Customs’ dressed up as doctors and nurses for a protest to make their point that the government are making savage cuts in public services to reduce the deficit while making no attempt to close the tax loopholes through which the super-rich and large corporations dodge £25 billion in taxes every year.

The protest started inside Boots main shop in the middle of Oxford St, but I didn’t arrive early enough to enter unnoticed and was carrying two cameras and a large bag, having been covering another event half a mile down the road, so failed to sneak in past the security guards. Some other photographers had got inside, but were soon escorted out by security and police when they started taking pictures, although the protesters and some shoppers were taking pictures on their mobile phones without being stopped.

Fortunately the shop has large glass windows, and although these are rather blocked with showcases, there were gaps through which we could take pictures – though each had a crowd of photographers around it. Reflections in the glass were a problem, and where possible we worked with the lens as close as possible to the glass to avoid them. If possible right up on the glass, but that does limit you to photographing at right angles to it. Back in the old days when I took a lot of pictures on film through windows I used to use wide-angle lenses with rubber lens hoods which gave a little more flexibility,  but I no longer have these.

Here is one of the pictures I took through one of the side windows:

After post-processing in Lightroom

and you can see some reflections but they don’t really cause a problem.

Out of interest, I also exported a jpeg from the same image after automatic processing in Lightroom 3 and before I had done any of my usual post-processing on it – perhaps you can see some differences:

Imported with my Lightroom defaults

The differences are perhaps a little subtle at this scale, though rather more obvious on the high res versions. At a pinch I could live with the lower version – on which Lightroom has applied both my default curve settings and its auto exposure – but to me at least there are clear improvements in the processed version.

I started thinking a bit more about Lightroom and raw processing again last week, after I’d had a request for a few pictures from 2005. I had the jpegs on my hard disk, but thought I would go back and reprocess them from the raw files; surely six years later I could do a better job.

So I worked away as I now normally do on these .NEF raw files in Lightroom until I was happy with them and then exported the files and compared them with those I had produced in 2005.  The differences were not that huge but were noticeable, and in every case the 2005 images I had produced using Pixmantec RawShooter, the software that was bought up and closed down by Adobe were the ones I chose in a ‘blind’ test.

Lightroom is a great programme, and it does more than RawShooter ever did, and it may be that these results are not typical. It might be the particular subject matter or the lighting, or (and very likely) the user having a bad day.

After around half an hour protesting inside Boots, the UK Uncut protesters decided it was time to leave and made their way to the front of the shop – where the security men promptly closed and locked the doors, so again I was shooting through glass. This time I was kneeling on the ground very close to the glass with a mass of photographers behind and above me blocking most of the reflections, so technically at least things were easier.

Some of the time I was having to take pictures between the legs of the security men though the policeman outside had kindly moved out of our way. When the protesters were finally let out of the shop they continued their protest on the pavement and I stayed until shortly before they were due to leave.

The protesters had thanked the police for the way they had behaved during the protest – and everything seemed very calm and orderly and there seemed little point in staying until the bitter end, and I wanted to return to the other event I was covering. You can read more about the protest and see my pictures in UK Uncut Protest Boots Tax Scam on My London Diary.

But the end turned out to be very bitter, and provided the main story from the event – which I missed.  As UK Uncut were getting up to leave, one of the women protesters pushed a leaflet through the gap between the glass doors of the shop, and was promptly arrested for alleged “criminal damage.” An argument between police and protesters ensued, in the course of which one officer used a CS spray on twelve of the demonstrators (and himself.)   Boots staff apparently rushed to give first aid to those who had been sprayed using eye wash bottles from their shelves, but three required hospital treatment.

I was shocked when I heard about this later in the day. It seemed completely out of keeping with the atmosphere of the event. The arrest seemed ridiculous, and the use of CS spray totally inappropriate.

Last Saturday’s student demonstration against the fees increases, the ending of educational maintenance allowance and cuts in public services was a rather tame affair, despite attracting between five and ten thousand marchers, mainly students, with a sprinkling of parents, trade unionists and others.

Perhaps the main reason for this was the discussion that had taken place beforehand between the organisers and police, and the leaflet that the police again handed out to protesters detailing both the route and the way that it would be policed. This kind of preparation is important to the police as well, as their briefing will doubtless have dealt with the same matters. It begins by stating that police service is committed to upholding the right to protest, something which has not appeared to be at the top of police priorities in some past events.

Of course there was plenty for me to take pictures of, but the lack of confrontation means that the chances of the media using these pictures is greatly reduced; peaceful demonstrations seldom make the news. But my work isn’t mainly for the instant news media, but more about recording events and trends for a future audience. Though making the news would pay some of the bills.

Bright red flares present colour temperature and exposure range problems at Downing St

You can read my account of the march (first published on Demotix) on My London Diary at No Fees, No Cuts! Student March, accompanied by the usual large selection of images.

By the time I’d walked all the way along with the marchers – probably covering twice the distance they did, including quite a lot walking backwards – I was tired and in pain (I’ve been suffering from plantar fasciitis in my left foot for the past five months and it hurts if I walk any real distance – and unfortunately I mustn’t take Ibuprofen) and decided to call it a day. Most of the marchers were however game for more and a large group – probably between 500 and a thousand – made it to the Egyptian embassy and on to Oxford St.

There are two stories about what happened at the embassy. A photographer who made it there with them told me that the Egyptians were not very happy with the many placards  from the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and told them to go away, and the second, from a Guardian story, that this was a great result on its first outing from ‘Sukey‘, an anti-kettling system, which uses text messages (and now a smartphone application) to give phone and smartphone users information about which routes are open to them, and which are obstructed or closed by police.  The new app, not available for this demonstration, uses green to show open directions, yellow for obstructed but passable and red for those that are completely blocked.

Sukey gets its information by Tweets with the hashtag #sukey and other messaging from people on the spot, uses a team in their control room to analyse it and then displays the results on its web site and relays it back as text based warnings to protesters; it now also has a compass-like smart phone application to show protesters the status of routes from their current position – green for open,  though this wasn’t ready for last Saturday.  But apparently protesters close to the Egyptian Embassy who had signed up to the system received a text message from the Sukey control room telling them that there were a lot of reports coming in that the police were about to form a kettle – and so they quickly left.

Although police have kettled protesters on numerous occasions (in recent student demonstrations in Whitehall, Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square and on Westminster Bridge), the fact that there are a lot of police in a particular place doesn’t necessarily mean that they intend to kettle protesters.

Before Christmas I was with students as they took off on a ten mile fast march around London because every time they saw police at a junction someone shouted ‘kettle’ and the march took off in another direction. Police denied that day that they had any intention of kettling, and apart from one brief incident in Parliament Square and later in Trafalgar Square, they seemed to me to make no attempt to do so. Despite this, some student and left-wing web accounts wrote it up as some kind of victory of the student movement over the police.

Since then we’ve seen two student marches where the police have issued a leaflet to try and counter what I called ‘kettle paranoia’ by students. There has been no obstruction or kettling of students during either of them on the agreed route.

Though attempts such as ‘Sukey’, named from the nursery rhyme ‘Polly put the kettle on’ in which Sukey (Susan) takes if off again are welcome as attempts to share information (along with the police leaflet and police Tweets) I do rather worry that it may well simply provide greater positive feedback to the kind of wild rumours about police behaviour that drove that out of control ten mile student route march.

Police like to keep order. It’s their job after all, but they do take it too far. They like everything cut and dried and going to plan.  The police understand static demonstrations and marches that keep to a prescribed route but characterize the kind of freely moving protests that some groups have been making recently – sometimes called  ‘civic swarms’ – as disorder, and have so far not found an effective and proportional way of dealing with them.

Information about the whereabouts of protesters will be of great interest to them, and I am sure they will both be monitoring the reports provided by Sukey as well as perhaps producing their own applications to track the locations of tweets with the #sukey tag, and possibly making use of location data from mobile phone companies.

If you are going to mask up to protect your identity, should you take the battery out of your mobile phone too?

No Fees, No Cuts! Student March.