Archive for August, 2018

July 2018 in London

Friday, August 31st, 2018

I’ve already posted about the Hull pictures I took at the end of July on a few days there, but I have now completed the rest of the work for the month, so here are some links to the pictures I took in London during July. As well as various protests I also photographed the annual celebrations at London’s Italian church, St Peter’s, in Clerkenwell, an event I’ve attended most years since the 1990s, along with a few photographer friends, one of Italian origin. It has become an annual day out together, helped along, mainly after the procession, by Italian wine at the Sagra. Every year I try and get a good picture of the release of the doves, whose flight when released is almost entirely unpredictable. At least this year I managed a picture with all three of them in flight.

July 2018

Sagra – Italian festival


Our Lady of Mount Carmel procession


Shut Down Yarl’s Wood 14
Whitehall rally against extreme-right
Anti-Fascists & Police harassed by hooligans


Against Tommy Robinson & Trump
Croydon Pride Procession
Massive protest against Trump’s Visit


Soho parties to protest Trump’s visit
‘Bring The Noise’ Women march against Trump
‘Trump: Climate Genocide’ Giant banner
Noise protest against Trump
UoL #LeadingWomen protest hypocrisy


US Embassy protest says NO to Trump
Vauxhall & Nine Elms
NHS at 70 – Save St Helier Hospital


Free Ebru Ozkan Vigil
Bangladesh Quota Reform Movement
Legal right to use cannabis


Refuse plans to destroy the Elephant

London Images

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Keep Guards on Trains

Wednesday, August 29th, 2018

It wasn’t a huge protest, perhaps with only around 20 people involved, but I was pleased to be there and to be able to photograph it, because I think it raises issues that are important, not just for the disabled people who were protesting, but as an indicator of the values that are important to those in charge of our society.

A UN Committee reported last year that the UK government the government has “failed to recognise living independently and being included in the community as a human right” and its Chair described this as a “human catastrophe”.

Of course there is much more to it than travel, and in particular the committee had earlier  condemned the disproportionate effect of government cuts in health and social security budgets on the disabled, and also the effect of benefit sanctions and the lack of proper education provision.  The government – and in particular Iain Duncan Smith, in charge of the DWP from 2010-2016 – picked on the disabled thinking they would be an easy target, unable to protest and fight back, but protests like this, organised by DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) have proved them wrong.

Perhaps the governments orders to the train companies to get rid of the guards on trains are at least in some small part a reaction to protests such as this, but more likely they reflect a more general disregard for the travelling public in general and the disabled in particular.

Unstaffed stations have long made it difficult or impossible for disabled people to board or leave trains,  and they need to book journeys well in advance to get assistance to do so. And while staff on the platforms generally do their best, the companies don’t always manage to ensure the required help is available despite their duty under the Equalities Act.

Several who spoke at the event told horror stories about their travels, but the protest was prompted by the latest orders given to staff by rail operator Govia Thameslink Railway (which runs trains, though not as often as it should), on all Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express routes that they should leave wheelchair users (it de-humanises them as  ‘PRM’s) on the platform, even when they have arranged and pre-booked a journey, if to allow them to board would hold up the train. They should also be taken beyond their intended stop rather than cause the train to run late.

The new instructions also come with a new timetable which has cut in half the time allowed for most station stops, making it almost impossible to stop long enough to get a wheelchair on board except in the unusual circumstance of a train running early.

It would be simple for the rail companies, including GTR,  to provide the service they are required to provide accessible transport under the Equalties Act on trains with a guard, simply by ensuring all trains carry a lightweight portable ramp, at hand ready to use.  A longer-term solution would ensure that all new trains would be fitted with the kind of retractable access ramps now fitted to London’s buses.

The protest was supported by the RMT, who are campaigning to keep guards on trains for safety reasons, not just for disabled people but for the rest of us as well. As a frequent rail passenger its a campaign I fully support.

DPAC protest GTR rail discrimination

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Down the Tube

Tuesday, August 28th, 2018

I think it was in 1979 that I first met Paul Baldesare. We had both joined a group set up by the then curator of photographs at the Museum of London, Michael Seaborne called London Documentary Photographers. It was not officially a group from the Museum, but held its meetings there and organised a couple of shows on the premises before moving to hold them elsewhere.

There were around 30 photographers who attended that meeting, and most of us brought at least some examples of our work to show the others. Several people stood out for the quality of their work, and one was Baldesare, who showed pictures from a project he was still making of travellers on the London Underground.

These pictures were all unposed, generally taken without the subjects noticing the man sitting in the seat opposite or just down the carriage with a camera – I think usually a Nikon with the pentaprism removed so he could look down and frame the image on the top of the camera body. Fortunately tube trains are usually noisy enough to drown the rather loud shutter sound.

Soon after the group decided to produce a show on the theme of Transport, which Baldesare’s pictures fitted perfectly. I didn’t have any current work that fitted, and having seen his work on the tube, decided to try my hand at some similar work on London’s Buses. You can see some of the work I produced in an earlier post, On the Buses Again.

Some of Baldesare’s work is now also available from Café  Royal Books, which has just published his ‘Down the Tube Travellers on the London Underground 1987–1990‘, available like my Notting Hill volume for just £6.  You can save on shipping by ordering the two – and other volumes – at the same time. Another recent volume by a photographer I  know that I’d highly recommend is Paul Trevor — India Road.  I’ve long been of the opinion that Trevor was the most interesting British photographer to emerge in the 1970 – bar none.

You can see more of Baldesare’s work on his own web site. Click on ‘Portfolio’ and scroll down the page to find three black and white projects,  his tube pictures, and two others which are due to also come out on CRB, Victoria Coach Station and A Local Event, pictures from carnivals and village fairs in the Surrey Hills.

Notting Hill

Monday, August 27th, 2018


Notting Hill in the rain, 2000

Today the Notting Hill Carnival is taking place, but I won’t be there. Yesterday I thought seriously about going to Childrens’ Day, but decided against it because of the rain. Today I decided the noise and the crush would be too much for me, and am going for a walk with with my wife instead.

From 1991 on, for the next twenty or so years I hardly ever missed going to Carnival, usually on both days. It was one of the highlights of my year,certainly photographically.

There was one year when I was out of the country, and another when I had a knee injury. That year I got ready to go, hobbled the quarter mile or so the the station, staggered up the footbridge, then halfway down the other side before collapsing in agony. It was only then that I realised I couldn’t possibly make it and rested a little before going back up and over the bridge and  slowly, painfully made my way home, stopping several times on the way.

Regular readers of this blog will of course be aware that a book of my black and white pictures from Notting Hill Carnival in the 1990s was published a few days ago by Café Royal Books – where you can both view it and buy it.

Rather than show you the same pictures that are in the book, in this post are some of the others I took then that there wasn’t room for. And the last one is one of my personal favourites.

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

London 1977 (2)

Sunday, August 26th, 2018

Continuing my series of posts of my pictures from 1977 with my comments. All of the pictures (and more) are in my London Pictures web site, and eventually I hope to add the comments there too, but that is considerably more time-consuming and will have to wait for some time.

There are also some earlier pictures  on the web site that I’ve not written about – and if you have any questions about those or any of the other of my London pictures feel free to ask them here.
__________________________________________

London 1977 (2)

Click on any image to go to the web page with a slightly larger picture.


High St and Town Meadow, Brentford, Middx, 1977
13e34: Hounslow, Middx, street, advertising

Town Meadow is a small street off Brentford High St, and the only trace of anything rural was in the advertising poster on the corner. The shops on the High St are long gone, replaced by some fairly characterless flats, though there are now trees opposite.

This picture, along with another taken the same day a short distance away and a picture from Staines made a double-page spread in the final Creative Camera album, Creative Camera Collection 5, which greatly pleased me. It was only a small publication, but the volume included work by John Benton-Harris, Fay Godwin, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Otto Steinart, Martin Parr, Chris Killip, David Goldblatt, Raymond Moore, Bruce Gilden, Marketa Luskacova and other well-known photographers.


Brentford, Middx, 1977
13e36: Hounslow, Middx, river, boat

Another picture from Brentford. Behind the High St were a number of backwaters as well as the canal and the River Brent which in part shared its course.


Hollows Cafe, 408 High St, Brentford, Middx, 1977
13e42: Hounslow, Middx, cafe, flats,

This scene has changed relatively little, though the Hollows Cafe is now Kew House, offering Chinese Cuisine. I don’t know what the building at the left of the image was back in 1977, but it is now an Irish pub. The flats in the background of this and yesterday’s picture are still there on Green Dragon Lane.


Music Nightly, Red Lion, High St, Brentford, Middx, 1977
13e43: Hounslow, Middx, pub, gate,

Another from Brentford. There was something odd about this gate fixed on a very solid wall that promised nightly music.

The Red Lion it was on the side of was a well-known rock venue which was demolished in the 1990s to make room for a McDonald’s. It was relatively small and intimate, but attracted some great musicians, including Bo Diddley who did at least a couple of gigs there, Dr Feelgood and Ben E King.

It had been built in 1964-5 as a replacement for an earlier pub of the same name on the opposite side of the High St, demolished as a part of a road widening scheme when the gas works was being demolished, and which destroyed most of what then remained of Old Brentford (a few shop fronts went to the Museum of London.) Fortunately the road scheme stopped a couple of hundred yards to the west and was never completed, possibly because of local government re-organisation in which Brentford became a part of the LB Hounslow.


River Thames, Brentford, Middx, 1977
13e44: Hounslow, Middx,

Lighters moored alongside the former gas works site on Brentford High St. The gas works was demolished around 1964 and the area became public open space, Watermans Park. Hounslow Council had for some years been attempting to evict the 25 boats moored there – some since the 1960s – to build a £5.4 million marina to gentrify the area and won their legal case last November, with the eight remaining boat owners having to pay over £300,000 in legal costs and given 21 days to move.

The Thames Steam Tug and Lighterage Company was taken established in 1856 it set up a yard on Lots Ait a few yards upstream from here in 1904 which repaired and built barges and tugs for use on the Thames. At that time the company owned 340 barges and five tugs. At its peak the Lots Ait yard employed around 150 men and 2 women.

In 1961 although business was beginning to fall the company still employed over 400 lightermen when it was taken over by the Transport Development Group, and later amalgamated with he General Lighterage Company in the 1960s to form the Thames and General Lighterage Company. Around 1979 this was bought by William Cory Ltd, who moved away from coal and oil transport to waste disposal.

Lighters like this were made from 10mm thick steel, and slowly rust both from the outside and often from the inside, eventually becoming unusable as the steel remaining gets too thin. But there are still quite a few around as this may take a couple of hundred years – and small areas that get too thin can be repaired.

Brentford was where traffic on the canals met the river Thames, with goods being transhipped between large barges like these and narrow boats. The company operated Brentford Dock together with the Great Western Railway, with a line from the main line at Southall which brought Welsh coal, and for some time also had a passenger service with a station on the London Road in New Brentford where you can still see the remains of the bridge which took the line across, and a part of the line further south is now Augustus Close, leading to the private Brentford Dock housing estate with its notices ‘Private Property Residents Only No Public Right of Way’.

As with the railways, it was Dr Beeching, a man deeply in thrall to the road lobby, that did for the river traffic and canals, and in 1963 he recommended that waterborne traffic be moved to the roads; the the Lots Ait yard closed in 1980.

In 2005 the Ait was sold to investors and a retired solicitor, John Watson, decided he could open a new yard there. A new footbridge to the island was built and John’s Boat Works opened there in 2012. Occasionally the island is opened for conducted tours, though I’ve never managed to go on one.

Brentford was another place we sometimes took photography students, and if the tide was right many of them would wade onto the mud bank opposite Lots Ait and sometimes most of the way across. I don’t recall seeing any great pictures that they took, but they seemed to enjoy getting covered in mud.


Daltons Weekly, South Lambeth Road, Vauxhall, 1977
13f56: printers, works, newspaper, Victorian

According to Wikipedia:

Established during the late 1860s by Herbert Dalton, Daltons Weekly was initially a single broadsheet listing ‘Accommodation for Gentleman’ in the then fashionable middle class suburbs around Vauxhall in South London. The paper proved very successful, but within two years of starting the paper, Dalton died, leaving it to his brother, who was a butcher and had no interest in publishing. The brother sold the paper to two brothers by the name of ‘Hebert’, for £100. For the next 102 years, Daltons Weekly remained a family business owned by the Heberts.

In 1972 the company was sold and the new owners concentrated on using it to market holidays, properties and businesses. I suspect that it was then it moved out of these premises in Vauxhall which I photographed in a rather casual snap (I think taken with tiny Minox 35mm camera I carried in my pocket) on my way to Vauxhall station.

Rather to my surprise the building which was derelict when I took this picture is still there, though rather difficult to spot as its 1930s facade that interested me has been stripped off and the doorway completely removed in a remarkably convincing ‘reconstruction’.


Green Park, Westminster, 1977
13j22: park, people

Back in 1977 I wasn’t using zoom lenses and I think this picture was probably taken with a relatively short telephoto, a 105mm, but would probably have been better with something a a little longer. Though perhaps the out-of focus foreground does add something to isolate these two people in a world of their own in Green Park.

There are more on the London Photographs site from 1977, but I’ve not written comments on them. This series of posts will continue with pictures from 1978.
______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no
sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

London 1977 (1)

Saturday, August 25th, 2018

Some time last year I started putting up a few of the pictures I had taken in London in 1976-8 on Facebook in occasional posts, and now I’m doing the same with pictures taken in 1979. But Facebook posts seem to disappear without trace – and many of my friends don’t see most of them in any case.

So I’ve decided to post some digests of these posts, perhaps half a dozen images at a time, along with the comments I wrote about them on FB. All of the pictures (and more) are in my London Pictures web site, and eventually I hope to add the comments there too, but that is considerably more time-consuming and will have to wait for some time.

There are also some earlier pictures  on the web site that I’ve not written about – and if you have any questions about those or any of the other of my London pictures feel free to ask them here.

__________________________________________

London 1977 (1)

Click on any image to go to the web page with a slightly larger picture.


Ionic Temple, lake and obelisk, Chiswick House Gardens, Chiswick, 1977
10c103: Hounslow, garden, urn, lake, pond, temple, obelisk, pre-Victorian

Chiswick House Gardens is one of London’s less well known parks, but one of the most interesting. I went there occasionally with my family, and we used to take photography classes there, at least until we lost a student. Actually we usually lost students on photography trips, at least in later years when they would decide to go clubbing rather than travel back with us. But this was one of the first times, and we did get rather worried, and later made a complaint to the police who had grabbed him for running across the park when he realised he was late and was trying to catch up with us, and kept him locked in the police station without allowing him to contact anyone. Apparently he kept telling them they could check with the college but they didn’t.

As usual on such outings I took a few pictures myself, as well as dispensing advice to those who sought it and some who didn’t. The one drawback of Chiswick House Gardens was that it was too far to the nearest pub, where on some such occasions my colleague and I would retire at lunch.

If you don’t know the park it is worth a visit. Bill Brandt took a couple of memorable pictures there and Grade I listed Chiswick House is one of the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in the country and the gardens were created by William Kent. I’ve never made a really good picture there!


Kew Bridge Engines, Brentford, 1977
I10d201: Hounslow, pump, engine, waterworks, steam, Victorian

Although I’d been through Brentford many times as a child, usually on the top deck of a bus crawling through the High St, often on the way for a family outing to Kew Gardens (when it was still a penny to get in) I don’t remember the pumping station – we would have sat if possible on the other side of the bus to view the much more interesting gas works, and be getting ready to get off at Kew Bridge by the time we passed Green Dragon Lane, though I’m sure the name would have greatly appealed to us.

A few years before my visit the site had been taken over from the Metropolitan Water Board by a museum trust, and they had completed the restoration of one of the giant steam engines only a couple of years before I went there on a family visit (I doubt if our son, then around 9 months, appreciated it greatly, though he did our later visits.) The Boulton and Watt engine, the oldest working waterworks beam engine in the world, was the baby on the site, with a cylinder diameter of only 64 inches (161 cm) but impressive in steam, while its two larger companions at 90 and 100 inches were more photogenic – and allowed almost unfettered access.

It was on this trip that I first came across the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society (GLIAS) which had been formed a few years earlier, picking up a leaflet and joining – and I’m still a member. Later in 1977 I returned to the pumping station to take part in a photographic competition, and a few years later we had a birthday party there for one of my sons.

It’s now a few years since I last visited the London Museum of Water and Steam, and by then it was a much more professional museum rather than the enthusiasts paradise of those early visits, but still remarkably impressive, and if rather more expensive than in the old days still seemed excellent value.


Kew Bridge Engines, Brentford, 1977
10d704: Hounslow, pump, engine, waterworks, steam, Victorian

Another picture from the museum at Kew.

Pictures from this museum are the largest single group in what became my most successful early web site, written for me around 20 years later by the small baby in a buggy who we took there in 1977,  London’s Industrial Heritage.


Chiswick House, Chiswick, 1977
10e404: Hounslow, house, gate, Palladian, pre-Victorian

I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a slight lean in my pictures which somehow have never looked right in the viewfinder if things are objectively level or vertical. This picture of Chiswick House takes it a little further than usual, and I would probably have corrected the lean to the right in the darkroom when making a print.

Making such corrections – and those of converging or diverging verticals is of course much easier with digital images, and I often do so. But working with these digital files from my old negatives I’ve almost always presented them with the exact framing as taken, as close to the full frame as possible. Perhaps because it would otherwise be something of a slippery slope.

But the slight tilt here could have been intentional, my reaction against the perfection of the building. Certainly the decision to put it off-centre, with one of the entrance pillars breaking the symmetry of the frontage was very deliberate.


Syon House, Isleworth, 1977
10g61: Hounslow, house, park, pre-Victorian

The lane from Isleworth to Brentford is a public footpath and a useful short-cut for cyclists. It runs past Syon House, where I photographed a man taking a dog for a walk.


Grand Union Canal, covered bay, Brentford, Middx, 1977
13d52: Hounslow, Middx, canal, boat, sheds, cranes

This dock and shed on the west side of the Grand Union is I think the only part of the canal docks that were on the north side of the High St that still remains; though it has now lost its cladding and roof and become an art project it remains recognisable.


Grand Union Canal, Brentford, Middx, 1977
13e12: Hounslow, Middx, canal, barge, sheds

Commercial traffic on the canal had more or less ended when I took this picture.These canal-side sheds (in a rather dark image) have now been replaced by blocks of flats – and you can buy a 2-bed flat here for around £700,000

More to follow….
______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no
sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Rolling Picket against Gaza Killings

Friday, August 24th, 2018

From a silent protest inside one branch of Barclays Bank I moved to join a rather noisy event meeting up outside the Tottenham Court Road branch, the start of a number of protests by the Revolutionary Communist Group and Victory to the Intifada outside businesses whose activities support the Israeli state following the barbaric massacres by Israeli snipers of unarmed protesters taking part in the Great March of Return protests in Gaza, which by then had killed over 60 and seriously wounding thousands.

Barclays had been chosen because of its massive investments in Israel supporting the state there – just as years ago they supported apartheid South Africa – and I took part in protests against them over this back in the 1960s. Barclays is also the largest global investor in the arms trade.

Although the branch had ‘Barclays’ in large letters across its front, it was rather high up, and including it in my pictures was something of a challenge, even with the group pictures. Since it was on glass it also rather disappears into the reflection. particularly with its blue on a blue sky, though some post-processing could have made it stand out more, adding a little contrast, clarity and perhaps saturation. It stood out visually considerably more than the photograph suggests and I think adding a little emphasis would be acceptable. It is a little unfair that Sainsburys, who were not the subject of a protest, comes out rather more obviously in several of the pictures.

The protest moved on, at first just a few yards down the road to Boots, who sell beauty products made in Israel. Their logo was rather easier to include, being a little lower down. Carphone Warehouse was again something of a challenge, as the protesters stopped in front of the door which had no visible branding around it, but also because the pavement here on the corner of Oxford St was much busier and it was difficult to avoid people walking past blocking my view unless I moved in rather close to the protesters.

This problem got even worse as the protest made its way down Oxford St, with pauses for protest outside Zara – where the image above has passers-by at both edges, with one holding a cup of coffee – and then outside H&M.

Popular though Oxford St is with tourists and shoppers, it comes close to my idea of hell, and I was getting rather hot, so I was quite pleased to leave the protesters at this point, with several more stops they intended to make to make my way to meet friends elsewhere in London for a small celebration.

Previous protests against shops on Oxford St had been met by a small group of extreme right Zionists waving Israeli flags and shouting insults, but there was no sign of them on this occasion, and many who saw the protest expressed support, clearly condemning the cold-blooded shooting of unarmed protesters by the Israeli army snipers. Just a couple of people who walked past shouted at the protesters who as always it was made clear that this was in no way an anti-Jewish protest but one against the actions of the Israeli state and calling for an end to the killing of Palestinians and the siege of Gaza and for a free Palestine.

Solidarity with Gaza – end support for Israel
______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Dance in Barclays

Thursday, August 23rd, 2018

I had little idea what to expect when I turned up in Golden Square in Soho to meet DANCE, the Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement. And I was a little disappointed at first to find there were only nine people taking part in this action against Barclays, where they hold a monthly protest.

But even nine people walking in a silent row with placards and posters create quite a stir in the streets of Soho. Their aim was to challenge the huge amounts – $12billion in the last 3 years – made by Barclays into into coal, oil and gas exploration which will lead to global warming, melting ice caps, bleaching coral reefs, causing forest fires and more intense storms. As well as climate change, these investments cause human rights abuses in Columbian coal mining and elsewhere, and DANCE urge Barclays to invest instead in renewable energy.

While I watched some of the group settling down to sit in silence on the pavement outside the Poccadilly Circus branch of Barclays, I was rather taken by surprise when four of them walked into the branch. But of course I followed them.

Once inside, three of them sat down in the middle of the large expanse of floor space, while the fourth went to explain to the bank staff standing around what they were doing and why.

I hadn’t been prepared for this, and I wasn’t thinking at my photographic best, and didn’t really make the most appropriate adjustments to my camera settings. So though I took quite a few pictures, many were not very usable. I was worried that I would be asked to stop taking pictures and didn’t really stop to think, rather hoping that my camera would take care of the technicalities, as it usually does.

I’m not quite sure why it got it so wrong with the D750. I was working with auto-ISO, and while that works well so long as you have sensible manual settings, on this occasion shutter speed and aperture were way out, the speed too fast and the aperture too small, and even at high ISO some pictures were grossly underexposed. Those dials by the top of the camera in front of and behind the shutter release are just far too easy to push around by accident, and by the time I realised my mistake it was far too late – and I’d discovered some lens apertures smaller than I knew existed on the 18-35mm lens. I’m not quite sure if I joined the f64 group, but it got pretty close, and on small formats like ‘full-frame’ that isn’t good news.

The lighting inside the bank is not particularly low, but it is considerably less than that outdoors on a bright sunny day as this was. So where the large window across the whole front of the bank more or less filled the frame, auto-exposure ensured that the figures in the foreground were more or less in silhouette, which was not at all what I wanted. I needed either to move and take the pictures at a different angle to avoid the window, or to let it overexpose and make the picture at more or less the right exposure for the protesters.

Fortunately I did rather better with the D810, where the aperture was only f8 and the images were far more sensibly exposed. So although I’d messed things up a bit I still had the pictures I needed.

Even with that large window I’d dialled in -0.7 stops of compensation and the results – with considerable burning and dodging – were usable. After taking some pictures I walked outside the bank and covered the protest from the pavement using the 28-200mm for the people inside. Probably I could have got away with using 1/125 rather than the 1/500th, but the results at high ISO are so good that it wasn’t necessary to risk any subject movement or camera shake. Though I’ve now decided to set the upper limit on auto-ISO to 6400 as above this the loss of quality can sometimes become too noticeable, and I’d like to only use higher settings when I’ve made a conscious decision to do so.

On the D810 you can lock both aperture and shutter speed, and I have put this setting onto the personal area of the camera menu. I often keep the aperture locked at f8 as a good general setting, but it is fairly fast and easy to unlock it when I decide I want greater depth of field. Switching the shutter speed to the front dial makes it less prone to fiddling fingers and thumb, and you can in any case hear the difference if you select an unduly slow shutter speed. Apertures work silently.

The D750 is more of a problem as I can see no way to lock either aperture or shutter, and those dials seem to move almost when you look at them. You can reverse the rotation of the dials, which is worth trying, as working at full aperture is generally less of a problem with the wide-angle 18-35mm I usually have on the camera, though it can easily lead to over-exposure. I find it useful to set the rear display to give flashing RGB highlights or to show histograms so this becomes very noticeable if you chimp.

I need not to let myself get carried away and to be far more aware of the camera settings – which are there in the viewfinder, even if not immediately visible on the camera body as in the old days.

Digital controls are far easier to get wrong than those rings and knobs we set on the old film cameras, which were generally pretty hard to change accidentally, and often using ‘P’ setting has made me far less aware of the settings in use. Usually automation works, but sometimes it breeds bad habits.

Barclays Stop Funding Climate Chaos

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Against Israeli Massacre – and more

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018

Tuesdays aren’t usually a busy day opposite Downing St, but 15th May was an exception. When I arrived a protest by Kurds was still in progress, at the end of a busy day for them protesting against the visit of Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan who they say is a dictator and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Kurdish civilians.

One or two of them were not happy to be photographed, one man in particular complaining to me that I “put people’s faces on-line“.  If you protest you will be photographed, and if Erdogan and the Turkish security services have any interest (as I’m sure they do), you can be sure they will be taking pictures, though probably rather more discretely than me, rather than relying on my rather idiosyncratic selection of images.

People who have a real need to protect their identity but decide to take an active part in protests need to take suitable steps to disguise their appearance, perhaps with face paint and wigs or other disguises which don’t attract the attention of UK police, or with face masks which may, though usually only if worn together with black clothing.

The Kurds soon left and were replaced by people who had come for an emergency protest called after the news that Israeli army snipers had opened fire on unarmed protesters a few hundred yards from the separation wall in Gaza, killing 58 and seriously wounding over 2700.

Many of them had been shot in the back as they ran away from the wall, and it was clear that the snipers were following orders to shoot, and either to kill or seriously maim the protesters, using bullets designed to expand inside the body on impact and cause maximum damage, which are thought to have been supplied from the UK. Most not killed were shot in the legs, leaving many unlikely to walk again.

Among those killed were medics treating the wounded and clearly identified journalists wearing distinctive blue press vests. At that range both would have been clearly identifiable to the snipers.

Videos and reports of these killings horrified the world and were widely condemned internationally, even by many supporters of Israel. Gaza has been under siege by Israel with supplies of most materials including medical supplies only allowed through in very limited quantities, and few of the wounded are likely to be able to receive the level of treatment which would be acceptable in this country, despite the dedicated efforts of medical staff. Many of us were revolted by what we saw on the Internet to donate to give medical aid to Palestine, but actually getting it there is difficult.

Among those who spoke were MPs from Labour, SNP and the only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, and there were also Muslim, Jewish and other speakers, as well as some from the peace movement and Palestinian supporters, as well as journalist Owen Jones and Tariq Ali. Also at the protest were a group of ultra-orthodox Jews opposed to Zionism who view the existence of a Jewish state as an offence against their religion.

Although the protest had been called at short notice, well over a thousand people managed to get to Downing St for the protest on a Tuesday evening.

A few yards away, ignored by most of the large crowd, and behind a line of police stood a small group of Zionists, hurling insults at the crowd which few could hear. They insisted that all those killed were terrorists who deserved to die. I was disgusted but tried to keep calm as I photographed them.

Erdogan, Time To Go
Israeli massacre of protesters
Zionists defend Israeli shootings

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Lightroom Sucks?

Tuesday, August 21st, 2018

PetaPixel recently published an article by wedding photographer Andy Hudson with the title Lightroom Sucks: An Open Letter to Adobe in which he goes through a number of the problems – mainly fairly minor niggles – that he has with Adobe’s Lightroom software.

I’m not an uncritical user (my wife says of anything…) and there are a lot of things I would like LR to do better, but for me it’s still the best of the bunch and seems to show some improvement with virtually every new upgrade. A recent one which made the ‘Auto’ button in the Develop module work so much better has cut down the work needed considerably, though there are some types of high contrast images it consistently gets very wrong.

There was one fairly disastrous upgrade recently, so buggy that Adobe had to replace it at short notice, but other than that I’ve had no real problems with the upgrades. I’ve tried some of the alternatives over the years and have not found anything yet that suits me better.

One big advantage for me is that for my subscription – about £10 a month – I also get the latest version of Photoshop. It isn’t a program I use a great deal now, but there are some things it can do that I need, and the old version I actually owned wasn’t always up to the job. Photoshop also gets new and improved features, though nothing in recent updates that really makes a lot of difference.

Where I am in full agreement with Hudson is that it would be good for Adobe to spend rather more time on sorting out bugs and issues and concentrate on this rather than new features. It would be good too if they could improve the speed, but I suspect any really useful improvement could only come from a complete change in the way it is written and developed, really going back to square one.

My computer which runs LR is now antique in computer terms, bought in 2011, seven years ago. It beats the minimum specification but with Windows 7, an Intel i5-2500 CPU at 3.30GHz and only 8 Gb of memory it isn’t as fast as I’d like. So sometimes I do find myself waiting a few seconds for the screen to reflect a change I’ve made.

So far, the hassle of re-installing everything on a new machine has put me off upgrading, though at some point I will have to do so. I’d expect LR to be a bit nippier when I do.

One thing that makes LR easier to bear is that I don’t rely on it to do an initial edit of the pictures I’ve taken. It is agonisingly slow at going through perhaps 500 pictures on a memory card, even with a USB 3.0 card reader. Some years ago I tried out FastPictureViewer Professional, which claims to be the fastest image viewer in town and also features:

“full color management for faithful color rendition, instant zooming to 100% and back, to check for sharpness, instant RGB histogram to evaluate the exposure, instant lost shadows / highlights view to see where the blocked-up shadows and burned-out highlights zones are located and their extent, and instant EXIF shooting data at a glance”

As well as selecting the images you want, FPV can also give your pictures a star rating that LR understands – and you can use this to select them, and you can export them either as you go through them or as a batch.

It’s software that solved the worst of my speed problems with LR – but it is Windows only. Possibly there is an equivalent for Mac users, though I doubt if it will quite match FPV, which claims to let you review up to 4,000 pictures an hour – surely enough even for the most profligate wedding photographer. And for the same money you can still get a rather faster machine using Windows than Mac. Macs have their good points, but value for money generally isn’t one.

FPV can actually do  considerably  more than I’ve suggested, including an IPTC editor and lots of other stuff – like using your camera tethered, none of which I’ve really explored, though I expect some features could save me even more time. It has become my default image viewer for almost any kind of image file. Now costing around $50 it has kept my sanity. Probably. So highly recommended – and I don’t get a penny for saying so.

I suspect some of the problems I do have with LR are ones that I could solve if I really read the on-line help and found out how to do things properly. But things have to be seriously impossible before I turn to the help.

The most annoying thing for me happens when going through a number of images to refine my selections (once imported into LR and previews have been made I don’t find this too slow) If I’ve held the arrow key down for too long (often a momentary sleep after a long day and a few glasses)  LR starts going though tens or hundreds of images after I’ve taken my finger off instead of simply moving to the next image as intended.

I’ve found no way to stop this (though it shouldn’t be too hard to change the programme to avoid) but at least it doesn’t usually move the film strip and if I click on the image I wanted to move to it will finally jump back to this. But for a minute or so there is just nothing I can do other than watch and curse.

I’d also like to be able to lock the sort order of the image. Usually I want it to be date ascending and set it to this, but after various selections and exporting etc it generally changes to some order based on these operations. Perhaps someone somewhere thought this was a good idea, but I don’t.

It would be nice also to be able to change the sort order when in the develop module, rather than have to go back to the Library module, but that’s a minor gripe.

I only suffer from a few of the problems that Hudson describes, mainly that there are sometimes a few seconds wait for the display to catch up with what I’m doing. Several I’ve yet to encounter – changing catalogues for example have never given up on me.

I do have a problem with loading images from LR to Photoshop, but the reason is not a LR problem but simply that PS is too slow to load. The simple solution is always to have PS already loaded when you want to export an image from LR.

We’d all like every piece of software to work better, but I do feel that Hudson is going a little over the top. Though perhaps I’ve just been luckier than some, and I do wonder if Mac users may have more problems.

At the bottom of the article is a poll – and I voted ‘I use it and it’s ok’, which turned out at that point to be the majority view.

Thank you for voting!
I use it and it’s perfect 5.95% (155 votes)
I use it and it’s okay 37.12% (967 votes)
I use it and it’s bad 25.87% (674 votes)
I use it and it’s horrible 11.67% (304 votes)
I switched to something else 14.4% (375 votes)
I’ve never used it 4.99% (130 votes)

I think it would be fairer to discount the votes of those who are not current users, which on the results below would leave 2097 votes. Of these, 1122 thought it OK or perfect (53.5%), which is a rather low satisfaction figure, and ought to worry Adobe. Of course those who are happy with LR are probably rather less likely to read to the end of the post and less likely to vote than those who are dissatisfied.