Re-photo

I think I would have been fairly pleased with the pictures I took on Saturday of the Vaisakhi celebrations in Woolwich if I hadn’t photographed similar events at half a dozen other Gurdwaras in previous years. Certainly I enjoyed my visit – and I wonder why so few people seem to venture inside their local Gurdwara when these events are taking place. Of course you can see the processions on the street, and certainly quite a few people other than those taking part do stop to watch the spectacle, but it is even more interesting to make your way inside. I’ve always been made to feel welcome.

There were times during the prayers in particular where I felt the noise of my D700 in particular was too obtrusive (it has a sharper sound than the D300) and I stopped taking pictures, but otherwise I could photograph fairly freely. Of course in photographing any religious event you need to have a certain respect and to observe some of the practices – and it can be very difficult to know exactly what limits there are.  Inside the Gurdwara you need to cover your hair in an appropriate way – and there will be scarves provided if you don’t have one, and there will be at least some areas where you need to remove your shoes – and generally there will be notices to tell you and somewhere to leave them, although if possible I put mine inside my camera bag as I don’t then need to stop to pick them up on my way out and perhaps miss a chance to take pictures by doing so. This time my boots wouldn’t fit in my bag so I left them in the racks and it wasn’t a problem as things moved relatively slowly, partly because the Khalsa also stopped to change into trainers before going out of the Gurdwara rather than walking barefoot through the streets.

It helps to understand the reverence that the Sikhs have for their ‘eternal guru’, their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, which of course plays a vital part in these processions, where it is brought out and carried around the neighbourhood on a float.

The Gurdwara I was visiting had a number of generally helpful points in its ‘Visitor’s Guide’ on the web, one aimed at photographers: “Care must be exercised by photographers during service so that the Guru Granth Sahib is faced at all times.”

It’s something that needs a little interpretation in practice, but certainly you need to show a proper respect. It helped me that there were Sikhs videoing and photographing the event and I could at times work beside them when otherwise I might have been unsure about what was acceptable.

Fortunately the GUrdwara was fairly well lit, with large windows on both sides, although these did make for a few minor problems with exposure. Although I needed flash for a few pictures, to keep on using it throughout the proceedings would have seemed to me too obtrusive. I would have been better setting a higher ISO on the D300 which I was using with the 28-105, as quite a few pictures were lost through camera shake. For some reason I’m not sure of, I also seemed to be having some focussing problems with this camera – something I need to look into carefully later.

To get really good pictures you need a little luck and the right geometry in terms of where you can stand in relation to things that are happening. I’ve often stressed the importance of standing in the right place to take pictures, but sometimes either there just isn’t a right place or if there is I can’t find it. Nothing quite came together for me on Saturday, either inside or outside the Gurdwara, although there are a few pictures I quite like – largely because of the people – nothing that really grabs my attention, and I think I’ve done better in earlier years.

See more from this year’s Vaisakhi Celebrations in Woolwich. In 2009 I photographed Vaisakhi both in Hounslow  and Slough, and you can find work from earlier years either on the site search or index pages of My London Diary.

Today I read a short article in a magazine that mentioned two former photographers who have turned their back on the medium and now work in paint. Not that there is anything wrong with that, although so many photographers – Henri Cartier Bresson certainly the most notable among them – who have done so have ended up being rather indifferent painters. And I can think of others who have shown paintings based on their reputation as photographers who have been considerably worse than Henri.

Equally we see shows of photographic work by painters or writers that are frankly embarrassing.  Even giants like Picasso never quite became a master of the camera, and people who have produced work of interest in both painting and photography are pretty rare – Charles Sheeler and Paul Nash come to mind – or find ways to use the photographic medium that in a way that is not really photographic in the normal sense – like Hockney‘s joiners. Of course some photographers had worked rather like him previously – its something most of us have done from time to time on a rather smaller scale, and some had done it rather more cleverly, but no one before him had done it as a famous artist!

May photographers have of course benefited from a training as artists that may well have involved them in painting and drawing, and it may even help them in their photographic work, but photography is really a very different medium and requires us to work in different ways.

I’ve not I think made a serious attempt to paint anything since my art classes in secondary school, though I have from time to time produced some seriously bad drawings which I have the sense not to show people.  I did spend several years making screen prints based on some of my photographs – and even sold a few of them – and while doing this I would often make quick sketches using paint, mainly to work out the colours I was going to use, and some of the people who saw these did suggest I should take up painting, but it never interested me.

This is where I was hit by paint

Most of which was aimed at the doors (here lit by a red flare)

or the police

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself rather more intimately connected with paint than was either healthy or convenient, hit by a paintball, possibly aimed at the police while I was photographing them making an arrest outside Topshop on Oxford St.  Fortunately most of it soaked and washed off my shoes, jacket and trousers, and even almost all from the jumper that took the direct hit, but the shirt underneath had to go in the bin.  The D700 got rather a lot of paint on it, the D300 a little less, but both kept on working – and so did I for a couple more hours, though I took 20 minutes out to scrape and wipe off the worst.

Finally last Friday I managed to get the pictures that I took while covered with paint on to the web,  along with the rest of the work from the long day of the march:

• 26March: TUC March – Midday
• 26March: Dancing in Trafalgar Square
• 26March: Black Bloc Goes To Oxford St
• 26March: UK Uncut Party & Protest
• 26March: The End of the TUC March

I’ve now scraped most of the paint off the cameras themselves, though some of the rubber surfaces won’t clean off entirely. There is still paint I can’t easily get off the camera straps and camera bag.

People do react to a paint-covered photographer

Since then all I’ve had thrown over me while taking pictures has been feathers and flower petals, neither of which leave a permanent stain.

Although there were no real problems photographing the ‘Armed Wing of the TUC’, and certainly no hassles with military security, it wasn’t too easy to get good pictures. One problem was that tall banner stating ‘Capitalism Isn’t Working’, great on its own but so good at hiding the five horses behind it, breaking the whole parade along the street very much into two parts.

Of course I could photograph the horses separately, and I did, and there was a short period when the banner was lowered when it needed fixing and I had a few seconds to try and take a picture.

After we reached Kennington Park, it took me a while to find anything to photograph, as very little was happening.  There was also the problem that while I like to photograph things as they are with a little chaos, perhaps like this:

as soon as people saw me taking pictures they wanted to pose with their banner. So of course I take their picture doing so, though I’m unlikely to use it.  Things were a little easier once the speeches started as instead of standing around in small closed groups people turn round in the direction of the speakers, and if they are concentrating on what is being said take little notice of the photographers.

Again, once people actually start marching, photography becomes easier too, though I often find myself telling people not to stop, to keep walking while I take their picture.

It was a dull day, and most of the time I had been mainly working without flash, although I needed it with a few pictures, mainly where otherwise faces would have been in deep shadow, as when people wear hats with large brims. As you can see, I chose to use it on the picture above, and some of the others on the march, really just to bring people out from the background a little, although often in post-processing I then have to burn them back down.

You can now see rather more of the pictures I took in Camberwell and Kennington last Saturday in  26March: Armed Wing of the TUC and 26March: South London Feeder March on My London Diary.