Re-photo

I’d heard a day or two earlier that London’s Mayor had decided to close Trafalgar Square on World Pillow Fight Day, but it still came as a surprise to find the square entirely empty, surrounded by barriers and a a thin line of police and ‘Heritage Wardens’ when I arrived a few minutes before the pillow fight was due to begin.

The Mayors office had put out that the event had been cancelled, but that didn’t stop at least a thousand people turning up with pillows. But instead of taking place in the large area of the main square, everyone was crammed into the much smaller space of the North Terrace. I think because until fairly recently that was a road, it comes under the control of Westminster City Council rather than the Mayor of London.

I was rather disappointed that the pillow fighters didn’t simply push over the barriers and swarm into the square, instead staying on the North Terrace, though of course the organisers couldn’t encourage this – and had come under pressure from the Mayor’s guys to call the whole thing off. But it was the kind of thing that once started could hardly be stopped.

I don’t know why the Mayor decided to be a spoilsport. Its the kind of event that is good for tourism after all – and there were quite a few tourists taking part as well as a good crowd watching. There are quite a few commercial events that take place in the square that I think should be stopped – its a place that should be for everyone to enjoy. And I’d like to see  an end to the ban on unauthorised protests there – it is after all one of the traditional areas in London for protest.

There were different versions of how long the fight was supposed to last, from 15 minutes to an hour, but I understand it continued for rather longer this year, though I had to leave after half and hour. And I was quite pleased to be out of it, as the air got pretty full of feathers and dust and I was beginning to suffer a little.

There are a few sensible rules for the pillow fight, and the one that I particularly like is number 3: “Do not hit anyone with a camera, they are our friends! ”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that if like me you like to get into the thick of things you won’t get hit by quite a few pillows. They are going everywhere and the odd one is bound to end on your head or camera gear. Though some people will apologise after having hit you!  But it does mean that you won’t get set upon and attacked deliberately.

Quite a few frames I took ended up being full of pillow, and others came out rather differently to what I’d expected from the viewfinder,. with people and pillows moving pretty chaotically in every direction. Its the kind of situation where you have to react rapidly and don’t have much time to think.

Before things kicked off I’d taken a few precautions. I’d taken the flash out of the hot shoe and put it away in my bag, and decided I could only really look after one camera and one lens in the mêlée.  I chose the D700 and the 16-35mm and put everything else well out of the way in my camera bag, carefully closing it up.

I’d decided that ISO1250 (or really 1600, as I had 1/3 stop exposure bias set) would give me decently fast shutter speeds to stop motion and plenty of depth of field from a moderate to small aperture, especially since for most pictures I was at around 16mm on the zoom.  I was using the camera on the P setting (though A or S would have done as well) and typically shutter speeds were around 1/500 – 1/800s and apertures f8 -f11, depending on which way I was facing and how many pillows were blocking out the light.

Subject distances were rapid and changing, with some at very close range. I could have used zone focus, but sometimes people were close than this would have rendered sharp, so I opted for autofocus, using the C setting – continuous-servo AF – and auto area AF. This is supposed to be able to distinguish faces with Type G or D lenses like the 16-35mm, and the autofocus is fast.  It all seemed to work pretty well.

Plenty more pictures at World Pillow Fight Day on My London Diary.

I had a shower and a complete change of clothes when I got home, and emptied out all my pockets, took everything out of my camera bag and vacuumed it. A month later I’m still finding the odd feather in unexpected places.

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I think this picture is a good example of why I like to get fairly close to people when I’m photographing them, with the hand and finger closer to the lens being emphasized. Though I wasn’t that close, using the 18-105mm on the D800E, where its 40mm setting as a more or less standard 60mm.

Soon after I took this picture – and others you can see in Muslims & Britain First Clash on My London Dairy, police moved me and other photographers away from the narrow strip of road at the edge of the pavement on the fairly busy Bayswater Road, effectively preventing us from taking decent pictures of the event.

The Inspector in charge told us it was because us standing there were putting his officers at risk from the traffic, but since they continued to stand in exactly the same positions after we were removed that hardly held water.

I and another photographer moved to a refuge in the middle of the road, a perfectly safe place designed for people to stand while crossing each carriageway separately. But again we were told we had to move – and for the same ludicrous reason.

I suggested to the Inspector that if he were worried about the safety of officers he might consider making use of the traffic cones that were present but totally ineffective on the edge of the pavement – as you can see in the picture above. Moving them out perhaps three feet to where the officers were standing would have provided safety for the officers – and a working space for photographers.

But police officers sometimes go into a curiously deaf mode where they refuse to listen to any advice or comment, however sensible. And he did, simply repeating over and over that I had to move from the refuge where I was talking to him in a very reasonable manner and go to the other side of the road.

After I’d been trying to talk to him for a minute or so, he grabbed hold of me – I pointed out he was committing an illegal assault – and pushed me across the road, causing cars to have to brake to avoid the two of us.  Having pushed me onto the pavement, he then walked back into the road without looking, and a car had to do an emergency stop to miss him.

While I appreciate that police have a difficult job at times, this was no way to engage with the public, and certainly not in the spirit in which the police are supposed to cooperate with the press (and my suggestion to him was made in a spirit of cooperation.) Fortunately I’d had time before this officer started behaving stupidly to get the pictures I needed, and when a few minutes after this incident the Britain First protesters on the side of the road I’d been pushed to packed up and went home, I left too.

I later heard that after I left the  Inspector had come to apologise to my colleague for moving him from the refuge, admitting he had been wrong to do so; perhaps if I’d stayed on I would have go an apology too.

This was a protest involving two fringe groups, neither of which I feel any sympathy with. The Islamist fringe associated with Anjem Choudary had a least come to protest with a genuine grievance over the arrest and attempted arrest of Sunni Muslim activists in Lebanon and were also more interesting visually, while Britain First I just found rather sad, apparently there only to insult the Muslims.  Britain is still – at least in many respects – a free country and groups like both these have a right to protest, even though I think both stand for a society in which we would enjoy very little freedom.
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I’ve never had to have a great deal to do with probation officers, though I’m sure they do a very useful job, and also sure that the plans by Justice Minister Chris Grayling to sell off 70% of the service this year will result in a considerable deterioration – as well as handing private companies around £700 million a year worth of business. Doubtless many of those picking up the contracts will have links to various politicians, largely but not entirely in the Conservative Party.

It’s long been time for our opposition to have a rather tougher policy over privatisation – and particularly over the reversal of privatisation. In this case the Labour Party have asked that the contracts be written so they can be cancelled by a new government without huge financial penalties, but perhaps they should be thinking of bringing in legislation to put the reversal of privatisation on a more even basis to the selling off.

But I was there to take pictures, not to tell the Labour Party what to do. I didn’t really find anything really interesting at the rally, though there were several nice placards and posters, and a few faces that attracted the attenti0n of several of the photographers present.

Perhaps one problem is that ‘NAPO‘ always seems a rather ugly name to me, though I’m not quite sure why; perhaps it’s too close to nappy, though the other suggestion that comes up as I type it in on Google is ‘Napoleon. But I’m rather surprised they didn’t change it to something more pleasing when they decided the  National Association of Probation Officers was too much of a mouthful.

Or perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood after the previous couple of events I’d photographed.  The lighting was a little tricky, with a low sun often shining into my lens. Some pictures I used fill flash, and others I had it turned off, and the Nikon SB800 seemed to be having one of its unpredictable days. I lost a few pictures where the flash had completely overexposed the image

Fill-flash was essential with a very deep shadow from this woman’s hands on her face

I did put the flash into the hot shoe and turn it on, but there were some of the audience where either I wasn’t using it or had turned it too low. One of the problems of working with two cameras and one flash unit is that it is often on the wrong camera. If you wait while you move it, the picture often disappears.

Things got rather more interesting later outside the Ministry of Justice, where after a few pictures of people standing with banners outside the entrance I wandered off towards the birthday cake which I thought would be important in the next part of the event. That was a little premature, but I did find I was standing next to the PA system, which seemed to be a good place to be.

At 58mm (87mm equiv)

And so it proved, when singer/songwriter Tom Robinson was introduced to lead the singing of the special verions of ‘Happy Birthday’ for Grayling, and then to open the presents for him, which included a book, ‘The Book Thief’ for the man who had just announced that prisoners in UK jails would not be allowed to be sent books from outside prison.

At 17mm

For once I was pretty well in the right place to take photographs – and without a crowd of other photographers pressing on either side. The crowd of protesters was simply too closely around and behind me for other photographers to approach. A few like me had followed what was happening enough to be around, but had chosen other positions where they had less good a view.  This time I’d been lucky and had taken a lot of pictures, both with the 16-35mm on the D700 and the tighter head shots with the 18-105mm on the D800E.

The 16-35mm also came in useful when the cake was being carried in to the Justice Ministry, though I was disappointed on this occasion to be stopped by security as I tried to follow it in. They had obviously learnt from our previous visit on a legal aid protest in March – Outraged Lawyers Legal Aid Protest.

More pictures in Probation Officers Strike for Justice.

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