Re-photo

My last two stories for October came along together – in best London bus tradition – on a Thursday evening on the last day of the month.

Probably I should have stayed at the first event, where a small crowd was picketing London University’s Senate House against the invitation to speak at a meeting there given to former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, a man described as a para-military drug gang leader responsible for a ‘dirty war’ against the people of Colombia, responsible for the deaths of thousands and the internal displacement of millions of Colombians. The BBC call him a ‘tough conservative’ whose ‘ political life has been dominated by the desire to rid the country of the rebels who killed his father 20 years ago.’ The opposition in Colombia call Uribe the ‘Vulture of Death‘. He has condemned the efforts by his more reasonable successor to negotiate with the FARC rebels which currently look likely to reach a successful conclusion.

I photographed the protesters moving in to the area in front of the main entrance under Senate House. It’s fairly well lit and for most of the pictures I was able to work at ISO3200 without flash, resorting to flash only when I wanted to be sure of stopping a little action – you can see the pictures at Protest Against Colombian ‘Vulture of Death. Mostly I used aperture priority on the 16-35mm, stopping it down around half a stop from wide open – though that really isn’t necessary with this lens.

But I thought it unlikely that they would actually enter Senate House itself, and that almost certainly Uribe would be brought in, probably with a considerable entourage of bodyguards, by one of several other entrances, and I felt that little more would happen.

I decided I could leave Senate House and catch a bus to Kensington, where a protest calling for the release of the Greenpeace Arctic 30 was taking place close to the Russian embassy. This is one of several embassies in a private road close to Kensington Palace where protests (and photography) are forbidden, and the protests take place a short distance away across the busy Notting Hill Gate, opposite one of the embassy outposts.

Travelling by bus in London in the rush hour is seldom a good idea. My journey started well as the 390 arrived just as I reached the stop and I jumped on, but it was soon caught in the Oxford St traffic jam, moving in fits and stops at around walking pace. Around Bond St the announcement came that the bus would terminate at Marble Arch, and I jumped up and ran down the stairs to get off at the stop before and wait for the next service in the right direction.

This was a good move, as when my bus got to Marble Arch there was a large crowd waiting for it, and room for only a few. The bus crawled along the Bayswater Road and eventually brought me to the stop opposite the protest. The 3 mile journey had taken roughly the same time as I could have walked it. I should have taken the tube – even with a longer walk to the station at each end I would have saved 20 minutes. But fortunately (as I’d guessed) it didn’t really matter – this was a static protest and still in full swing when I arrived.

The protest pen here is perhaps one of the darkest places on a main road in central London. I took a few pictures without flash at ISO 3200, but it was clear that I was going to need flash.

Again I was working with Aperture priority, setting the aperture at f5.0, though since I’d also set the minimum shutter speed to 1/80 I might just as well have used manual, and I think all the images are at f5.0, 1/80s. At ISO 3200 there was generally just enough ambient to show the background, leaving it looking like it was night and avoiding burn out in a bright doorway and the lighting on a nearby pub. The actual level of the ambient light did change a little with the light from the passing traffic.

I particularly wanted pictures of the two journalists – Keiron Bryan from the UK

In front of the protest was a display of black and white photographs of around half of the Arctic 30, all with wide black borders, and pictures of the others were held up by the protesters. All that white did upset the metering a little, and I was working with an exposure bias of -1 EV. For the wide-angle you need to use the built-in diffuser to get fairly even coverage, and I often use the small built-in white reflector with the flash head angled up at 45 degrees too.  For those pictures where I was much closer to some of the photographs than the others I tried to even out the lighting a little by twisting the flash head off-centre away from them, making use of the fall-off, though even so some compensation was needed in post-processing.

and Russian freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov, who I’d just written about.

I’ve seen some other pictures taken of the event that show all the things about direct flash that I don’t like, the flatness and black backgrounds. It doesn’t have to be like this, and while I like to keep flash simple – one flash in the hotshoe – it isn’t hard to do considerably better. I’m sure I could improve on what I do by taking flash off the camera, using multiple flashes and so on (like the Strobist) but I’m reasonably happy with these results – more at Russia, Free Greenpeace Arctic 30.

My decision to leave Senate House was probably a bad one. The protesters did manage to get inside, and protested in the lecture theatre where Aribe was speaking. If I’d stayed I might have got some better pictures. But then I wouldn’t have covered the Arctic 30 protest. I’ve not yet worked out how to be in two places at once, or mastered time travel, though I was accused of being ‘Dr Who’ the other day when friends I’d been with earlier turned up at a protest to find I’d beaten them there.

And yes, there were two cows on the top deck of the bus on my way home.

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It was kind of by accident that I found myself photographing a protest by the IWGB cleaners and RMT drivers actually inside John Lewis’s flagship store in London’s Oxford St. I’d had a phone call earlier in the week telling me there was going to be a protest, but there were few details, and I’d expected it to be on the pavement outside.

I wasn’t surprised when I turned up on time and there was no sign of anything happening. Some  protests seldom start on time and I’ve often been the first to arrive, so I hung around on the corner outside the store where I thought I’d be likely to see them and waited, keeping my eyes open.

Oxford St is pretty busy on a Saturday afternoon even two months before Christmas (the decorations were up in the shops), and a lot of people walked past, but still no protest. But finally I saw a familiar figure approaching and walked up behind him. “Fifth floor” he told me out of the side of his mouth and I followed, a few paces behind, up the series of elevators, as he made his way to the restaurant area. It did rather feel like something out of a spy movie. I lost him again there, looking away for a couple of seconds as a group of people came between us, and spent a rather frantic half minute or so searching the whole eating area until I came upon him again, now with a group of cleaners, and getting out flags and banners for the protest.

Until now I’d been trying hard to look inconspicuous, as if that large black bag on my shoulder wasn’t a camera bag and I wasn’t a photographer, but now it was time to get out a camera. I decided that working inside the store I would only need the wide-angle 16-35mm on the D700, and set that to ISO 3200. There would be quite a lot of movement and the light levels in parts are quite low – the first pictures I made were around 1/60 f4, but the lighting got better when we moved out into the main part of the store, and there exposures around 1/125 at f5.6 were typical.

Apart from their lack of support for the cleaners and the victimisation of staff who have supported them, the John Lewis Partnership are in many ways an admirable organisation, generally treating their direct employees – or rather ‘partners’ – well, and they get a share of the profits as a considerable annual bonus. But the low paid workers in the store such as the cleaners are not employed by JLP, but come in on a contract from another employer who cuts costs by low pay and poor conditions. Somehow the JLP management think it isn’t appropriate for them to insist that people who work for them in the same shop – or in the lorries that make their deliveries are treated fairly. ‘Never knowingly undersold‘ is the JLP slogan but they can add to that ‘Never caring about how the low paid workers we depend on are treated.’

But JLP staff handled the protest very professionally and simply stood back and let it take its course, applying a little persuasion to the protesters to leave, encouraging them to make their way down the escalators. One person who tried to physically object to the protesters was quickly moved away by security. I wasn’t hassled in any way, and my main problem was avoiding knocking into any of the shop displays as I took pictures. At times I did think of myself as an elephant in a china store.

It was on the escalators that I took some of my favourite images, including one of the protesters making their way down and the people looking up at them, in the foreground a woman blowing a red vuvuzela. At first I was a little disappointed that this horn wasn’t in focus, but I don’t think it matters, and may even be preferable – and at 1/100 f4 it wasn’t possible in any case. Even at 16mm focal length depth of field has its limits. The ‘hyperfocal distance’ is around 7 ft, so to get the figures on the ground floor sharp it was impossible to have anything less than 3’6″ sharp too. Of course I didn’t have time to look it up on the spot, things were moving far too fast. That I got it about right can probably be put down to the camera’s autofocus system and a bit of luck. But I was pleased I was using the D700.

Nikon changed the way you control focus between the D700 and the D800, and I think rather for the worse. With the D700 you have a three-position switch at the left of the lens for focus mode – C, S, M (continuous, single and manual) and another 3 position switch on the camera back for autofocus area mode – single point, dynamic area and auto area.

For fast changing situations like this I generally use S mode and auto area. On shutter half-press, this puts little red rectangles briefly on the areas chosen for focus, allowing you to decide if the camera has got it right. If not I try again, possibly with a slight movement of the camera. Usually it works, though it can sometimes get too fixated on near objects in the frame. Its easy and fast then to use to rear of camera switch to change to dynamic area or single point (which both work the same in S mode.) You don’t need to think about it and can do it pretty well without looking. And change back equally easily.

On the D800/D800E, forget about changing focus mode in a hurry. The switch on the front of the camera only switches between auto and manual. There is no switch on the back of the camera. To change from C to S or between area modes you have to press the little button in the centre of the AF/M switch, look at the LCD screen and use the control dials. Probably you will need to read the manual too! Why, Nikon, Why?  I think the change was to enable Nikon to give the user more control over exactly how the autofocus works, but it does so at the expense of usability. Surely the most important thing in a camera. Stick the more fancy focus bits on a menu – we don’t really need them when we are working.

I don’t think the protesters actually intended to go down into the basement, but its always hard to know which floor you have got to.  I think some stores deliberately hide the ground floor to stop shoppers escaping. We wandered around there, eventually finding the up escalator and make our way to the ground floor, where there was time for a short rally before the police arrived around 20 minutes after the protest started and told the protesters that the management had requested them to leave and they would be committing an offence unless they did so. And so, rather slowly, they did, and I photographed them coming out of the store and continuing their protest on the crowded pavement outside.

By now it was around 5.30pm and getting dark, and in most areas darker than inside the store (it looks lighter in the photographs than it actually was.) I took a few pictures using flash, but wasn’t happy with them, and went back to working by available light, still at ISO 3200.

A couple of weeks later I met some of the protesters again, this time in a protest outside John Lewis on Oxford St. One of them had earlier gone inside with a small child, intent on buying a toy for them and had been recognised and asked to leave. It seemed rather petty.

More pictures – and more about the protest – at Cleaners Invade John Lewis Oxford Street.

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