Archive for January, 2019

Boring Street Photography

Thursday, January 31st, 2019

Forrest Walker’s 7 Habits of Boring Street Photography on PetaPixel (from his own web site, Shooter Files) is perhaps too kind. But there is no arguing that he is right when he says “The Internet is filled with boring street photography“.

Also 100% on the ball is his “The biggest problem is people thinking any photo taken on the street is now street photography.” Though I rather blame the instigators of all this, Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz who wrote ‘Bystander: A History of Street Photography‘ for casting their net ridiculously wide.

Perhaps what I find most lacking in that huge pile of boring street photography is intention. Other than that of making an attractive image (though most fail on that too.) You have to feel something and to want to convey it to others. And I think Walker’s bad habits are largely about not making attractive images. But good advice all the same.

Here are his 7 habits – but go and read about them:

1. Nothing of Interest in the Photo
2. Too Far Away
3. Street Performers and Homeless
4. Too Much Bokeh
5. People Doing Nothing Special
6. No Composition
7. Over Edited

And he adds (and I add a heartfelt ‘Amen!’)

Bonus: Using Black & White For Interest

As he says:

Black and white does not fix a boring photo. A boring photo is a boring photo.”

Shahidul News

Wednesday, January 30th, 2019

I’m not a great fan of the Lucie Awards for photography, modelled on the Oscars, which seem to me to bring out the worst of Hollywood, although I’ve never attended the awards ceremony. When they began and I was writing as About Photography guide I used to get invitations to them – and offers of free tickets – but never took these up, partly because I was on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Also because I felt that the last thing that photography needed was something like this, and particularly one that seemed so entirely US-centric.

Part of my mission as a guide was top extend the horizons and to try to promote photography as a worldwide medium. I’m not sure how much my meagre efforts helped, with features on photography in countries around the world and on photographers from other countries than the USA and Western Europe, but things have now changed at least to some extent.

One of the many I wrote about was of course Shahidul Alam, and I’ve written about him on several occasions on this site, most recently following his arrest last August at his home in Bangladesh and the international outcry, particularly by photographers this led to. Of course he is much more than a photographer, setting up agencies to promote majority world photograph, photographic schools and festivals and making photography relevant to the politics of Bangladesh.

Shahidul Alam was – as I’ve previously mentioned – honoured at the 16th Lucie Awards in October 2018 with their Humanitarian Award, and now that he is out of prison (though not out of trouble, still under threat of a trial and lengthy sentence) publishing regular posts on Shahidul News. One recent post was about his Lucie Award and was a link to the video they produced on him for this. I suggest you watch it full-screen, and you can go direct to it on Vimeo.

While you are there you can also watch other short videos on the other honorees, including Lee Friedlander who gained the Lifetime Award and Raghu Rai, along with those from previous years.

Also at Shahidul News is a post reproduced from PIX by Rahaab Allana, The Place of Shahidul Alam, which looks in more detail at some of his acheivements and has a number of comments by others.

You can read a longer piece I wrote about him in 2011 on this site at From the Lions Point Of View.
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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

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Open Bridges

Monday, January 28th, 2019

One of the more interesting projects as a part of Hull’s year as City of Culture in 2017 was ‘Open Bridges‘ , an event unlike some truly based on Hull, a city which has long been split in two by its river. Rivalry between East and West Hull is at its highest in terms of sport, with Hull Football Club on the west formed in 1865 and Hull Kingston Rovers in the east from 1881. The sport is of course Rugby League, though other codes of football are available.

Back when I first began visiting Hull in the 1960s people were always complaining about being late for things because North Bridge or Drypool or one of the other bridges “were up“, disrupting bus or car journeys.  Then the bridges opened frequently with a great deal of traffic moving up and down the tidal river  to various wharves, though now bridge openings are fairly rare (except for Scott St bridge, a listed structure permanently open since some time in the 1990s.)

For Open Bridges, for the first time ever, all the bridges were opened simultaneously at 20:17 hours on the autumn equinox, 22nd September 2017, splitting the city completely in two, although only for a few minutes. Open Bridges also included a film and specially commissioned musical work for the event.

A River Full Of Stories is the follow-up to Open Bridges, and with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund is producing a film, exhibition, website and a book which will be given to each library and museum in Hull and the East Riding.

I’m very pleased that some of my own work is now included on the web site as one of the Open Bridge Stories,  The River Hull 1977-85 by Peter Marshall, with links to my ‘The River Hull’ and ‘Still Occupied’ books and my Hull web site.

My web site was also produced, but as an entirely unofficial contribution, for Hull’s year as City of Culture and rather to my own surprise I managed to post a new picture on-line every day during 2017 on it, as well as on Facebook, where I also put some short comments.  But I have to admit that I’ve rather neglected it since then, posting only a very few new pictures, and making little progress with adding the text about the images which I’ve written on to the web site.

Recently I’ve begun to scan some more of the colour images I made, at first on colour transparency, and from some time in 1985 using colour negative film. Technical problems in getting the results I wanted from slide film in pictures from Hull were a major motivation in my moving to negative film, and problems in getting the results I wanted from commercial printers led to me setting up my own colour print processing line – and doubtless breathing in lots of harmful fumes. Things are easier in many ways now, though scanning colour negatives still remains rather a dark art.

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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

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A Day out in London 1974

Saturday, January 26th, 2019

In 1974 I moved back from Bracknell, where I had been working since 1971 to the outskirts of London, buying a small Victorian house, built as agricultural worker’s house, in Staines, one of a row of 6 properties split by narrow passages into three semi-detached houses. Staines is inside the M25, probably the best definition of Greater London, but our area is the only part of Middlesex not to be included in a London borough in 1965.

Thanks to the objections of local Conservatives, particularly from the posher parts of the area we were delivered out of the London Borough of Hounslow, where Staines had been placed and obviously belonged and handed over to Surrey, across the River Thames, with whom Staines had very little in common and which still hasn’t quite accepted us, becoming the borough of Spelthorne. It was a decision based more on a snobbish disdain than political nous, as had the area been included, Hounslow would almost certainly have become a Conservative majority borough.

We moved to be closer to London, not for the benefit of my photography, but because my wife was then working at the British Library, then inside the British Museum. We needed still to be on the Reading line for me to travel to work in Bracknell, and had found nothing in Twickenham or Richmond we could afford, and the next station on the service at that time was Staines.

We moved in some time in August. After the move I was kept busy, painting walls and making small repairs and improvements inside the house, as well as digging up the extensive remains of the concrete floor of the former piggery a few inches below the large nettle patch in the garden. But I suspect I may have taken a day off during the October for the walk.

The pictures are something of a tourist view of London – and rather more so including some of the pictures I’ve not thought worth putting on-line, but obviously from a long walk carefully planned – at least in outline – before the event.

I wrote a short text to go with the pictures when I first put these online a few years ago, and here is most of it (with a few minor corrections.) You can see the other pictures not included here on my London Photographs site.

The Golden Hinde II seen moored in some images was launched in Appledore in April 1973, and came to London from Devon before her ‘maiden voyage’ in late 1974 – with a crowd here queuing to visit her.  I think the ship arrived at Tower Pier in London in September and left the following month to sail to San Francisco, making a number of trips to various countries before becoming a tourist attraction on the opposite bank of the river in St Mary Overie Dock. They were probably made using a Zenith B, for which I had the standard 58mm f2 lens along with a Russian telephoto, though I also owned an Olympus 35SP, possibly the best fixed lens rangefinder camera ever made, with a superb 42mm f1.7 lens.

I can recall little of that day even with the aid of the contact sheets, but I appear to have started taking pictures from London Bridge (probably having taken a train to the station there from Waterloo East) before making my way along the south bank to Tower Bridge, then crossing that to St Katharine’s Dock beofre wandering back through the city along the north bank to St Pauls Cathedral and on along Fleet St to Trafalgar Square, then going back to the Thames and the Albert Embankment, probably on my way back to Waterloo Station.

I took remarkably few pictures – 49 in all, on two Tri-X 36 exposure rolls. About half are shown here; a few of the images – of St Paul’s and in Trafalgar Square hold little or no interest, but most of the rest have at least some details.

It’s surprising to look at some and remember how much has changed. There were then no walkways beside the river on either bank in the City or opposite in Southwark, with only short lengths accessible. Many of the former industrial buildings have now been replaced by large office blocks, and in one image, smoke emerges from the towering chimney of the Bankside Power Station. Of least interest are the more touristic pictures – such as those of the Tower of London.

London Photographs site.

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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

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Extinction Rebellion Buckingham Palace

Friday, January 25th, 2019

Perhaps the most surprising part of the Extinction Rebellion Day came outside Buckingham Palace, where protesters marched up to the impressive front gates behind teh ‘OUR FUTURE’ coffin, at first raising it up, and then lowering it to the ground in front of them.

I think people didn’t know what to do next, though there was some noisy shouting of slogans and then many of us started to wander away and see what was happening behind us.

There was a crowd behind the ‘REBEL FOR LIFE’ banner, with an empty space in front so that people could take pictures. This was one of many occasions where the 18-35mm was not quite wide enough, and I really needed the extra 2mm of the 16-35mm, unfortunately broken beyound economic repair.  I do have another, even wider full-frame lens, a Sigma 12-24mm, but the image quality falls short of the Nikon lenses so it gets left at home.

Normally I’d use the 16mm fisheye to get a wider view, but I know this isn’t really satisfactory when looking at rectangular objects – such as the banner and the palace – head on. The banner would be considerably taller in the centre  than at the edges, as the camera to subject distance is further for peripheral objects; while this makes sense in terms of optics, it just doesn’t look right.

I seldom like to photograph banners (or buildings) head  on, but for this image it makes sense, and I was just able to get back far enough to squeeze it all in. I did also move to one side to use a more oblique view – as you can see on My London Diary.

There was some uneasy grumbling in the crowd as Gail Bradbrook of Extinction Rebellion read a very humble address calling on the Queen to get her government to take the urgent action needed to save her country – and the world. Certainly as I noted, some in the crowd would have been happier to bring a guillotine. There was rather more unity behind yet another joint reading of the ‘Declaration of Rebellion’.

There was then a period of silence in memory of those who have already died because of glabal warming, after which people were invited to bring their wreaths flowers, placards and other objects to lay on top of the coffin, which was soon under a large pile.

The protest ended with dancing, while at least one person superglued herself to the railings by the main gates. Pictures of this and much more are on My London Diary at Extinction Rebellion Buckingham Palace.

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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

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Extinction Rebellion Funeral March

Thursday, January 24th, 2019

The coffin was carried off of the grass in Parliament Square and to the roadway in front of Parliament, where slowly the protesters formed up behind it. A short flight of steps at the back of Parliament Square enabled me to photograph it looking down and to show the large crowd in the square behind. Using the 16mm fisheye gave me a usefully wide angle of view (about 147 degrees horizontal) which meant including at left the lens of a photographer standing next to me at the top of the steps.

One man had brought a coffin of his own, complete with an animal skull, and another protester had a similar skull on her head, and there were plenty of other creative placards and artifacts. Others carried flowers. It was raining slightly as the march went up Parliament Street into Whitehall and many put up umbrellas, though I found none to photograph with slogans on them.

When the front of the funeral march reached Downing Street, there was a sit in for around 10 minutes, followed by some loud shouting of slogans as they got up and moved on.

I let the front of the march go on and waited for others to pass, wondering if there might be other actions taking place in Whitehall. As I stood next to the memorial for the Women of World War II, a man got out a paint spray and began painting a slogan across it. He gets as far as ‘MOTHE’ and tries to write an ‘R’ as a police officer grabs him, and he is led away and arrested.

I turned back to the crowd still outside Downing St, and see they are standing around in a large circle round a circle of people lying on the ground. Inside them are other bodies making out the double triangle ‘hourglass’ symbol, completing the XR symbol, which has also been chalked or painted on the roadway in several places.  I held the 16mm fisheye as high as I could above my head and took a number of pictures. By using this on the D750 (rather than the D810 which has a fixed rear screen) and working in Live View I was able to swivel the rear screen and have a good idea of the framing. For once the curved horizon adds to the image. Unfortunately I forget to switch from ‘movie’ to ‘still’ mode in Live View, and so get a 16:9 frame rather than the normal ’35mm’ 1.5:1, an annoying feature of the camera.

Others are writing on the walls in Whitehall – and getting arrested for it. Many of those taking part in Extinction Rebellion are deliberately seeking to be arrested, working on the hope that large numbers of arrest give the protests a higher public profile and may prod the authorities into doing something about the problems.

The front of the protest halted at the top of Whitehall, for me and the other protesters to catch up with them, before setting off under Admiralty Arch (now owned by a hotel company) and along the Mall towards Buckingham Palace. A few police try to stop them, but are ordered back to allow the protest to go through – and on to the next stage in the protest.

Many more pictures at Extinction Rebellion Funeral Procession.

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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

________________________________________________________

Extinction Rebellion burial thwarted

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019

It was a big day for XR (Extinction Rebellion) which began with several groups blocking the roads around Parliament Square where a rally was taking place in the newly turfed centre.

The XR ‘Declaration of Rebellion’ was again read by all, pointing out the failure of government and of “corrupted, inept institutions”  to take action, thus threatening our future, and declaring it to be “our duty to act on behalf of the security and well-being of our children, our communities and the future  of the planet itself“, and then there were speakers, singers, a flute player and more before it was time for XR to carry out a burial, with a black coffin, topped by lilies being carried by pall bearers into the centre of the square. The protesters formed a tightly-packed ring around the centre of the square and the grave-diggers brought in their spades and began work.

Unfortunately when they began digging, caerfully lifting the turf and putting it to one side, they found the turfing had been done on the cheap, and the ground beneath, compacted by years of feet and occasional heavier use, was like concrete, making digging almost impossible. No wonder too that the grass which had grown there previously had never shown much resilience, turning to mud after almost any slight footfall – as it will have had no roots below the top inch or so.

But the protesters care – and their intended digging out of a grave, which after refilling would almost certainly have been beneficial for the lawn – was for naught, as police forced their way through the crowd, trampling the carefully laid aside turves to pieces and further compacting the bared soil. It’s arguable whether or not the protesters were guilty of ‘criminal damage’, but the police certainly were.

Things got rather intense, with a great deal of forceful pushing and shoving by police and we were all packed together. Using the 16mm fisheye and the 18mm end of the 18-35mm lens enabled me to continue taking photographs, though at times it was difficult to lift a camera. The XR organisers tried to keep the protest going and calling for calm and for people not to be provoked by the police action.

I was right at the centre when I saw the coffin surrounded by police near the edge of the crowd, and it was had to get out of the crush, even though everyone was happy to let me through. I managed to rush around the outside of the crowd and then make my way in again towards the coffin.

More pictures: Extinction Rebellion Parliament Square

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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

________________________________________________________

Police had surrounded and stopped the coffin being carried further onto the square, where they also apparenlty stopped a second attempt to dig a grave, though the crowd in the middle of the square was too dense for me to see or photograph this. For some minutes, everything came to a tightly-packed standstill until eventually XR decided the time had come for the next stage of their action.

Founders Day

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019

Workers protesting outside the University of London’s Senate House where Founders Day is being celebrated has become something of a tradition, and the IWGB (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) were there again this November.

Banners and placards make the workers’ demands clear. They work for the university, keeping it running, and demand to be employed by the university, and not, as at present, by contracting companies that offer rock-bottom conditions of service and wages. They work in the university under conditions so poor that the university itself would not dream of being seen to impose – but is happy to turn its back when soemone else does it on the university’s behalf. There is no moral justification for London University’s position.

This is a dispute that has been going on for some years, both in various constituents of London University and in the central university administration, based on the Senate House, which is responsible for the Senate House, Halls of Residence and other aspects of the university. Among the workers who work for them but are employed by other are cleaners, catering staff, porters, receptionists and security staff.

It took over ten years of campaigning by SOAS Unison, along with staff at all levels and students, under the banner ‘One Workplace, One workforce’ to get the cleaners at SOAS University, next to the Senate House to be brought back in house. The campaign at the LSE, led there by the United Voices of the World was much shorter, and more recently, staff and Kings College (also in Unison) have also gained victory and are being brought in-house.

Even the University of London sees that it current position is untenable, but “continues to drag its feet over bringing workers into direct employment. They have announced that although recommending that workers be brought in-house this will be subject to “in-house comparator bids” and that it will not happen until 2020 or 2021. As the IWGB point out this is in great contrast to the response of Kings College and the LSE who have agreed to take their workers back in house.”

The IWGB brought with them a very long red banner – just a roll of red cloth – which they stretched out in front of the heavily guarded entrance to the Senate House. Police ensured it was possible for guests to walk around behind it to enter, but some iinsisted on a more direct route. There was a little pushing and shoving by security and police, with a little resistance by the protesters, but generally the atmosphere remained fairly calm.

But it was extremely noisy, with a sound system, and rather variable amounts of light, but always fairly low. After a handful of exposures at ISO3200, I change both Nikons to work at ISO 6400. Though this was reasonably satisfactory, with both lenses at full aperture and shutter speeds from 1/20s to 1/80s and mainly around 1/30th, quite a few images were blurred by subject movement even though most of the protest was fairly static. I made sure I took enough to get a reasonable number sharp. But I had to switched to flash when people began to try and get past the red banner and things became a little more active. I kept the camera at ISO6400, working with the camera set at 1/60s and still at full aperture to get a reasonable exposure of the background where the flash didn’t reach.

More at IWGB at London University Founders Day.

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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

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Sardines?

Monday, January 21st, 2019

Recently I published the image above of the Grand Union Canal (Paddington Branch) I took in 1981 on Facebook, one of a series of posts I’ve been making most days over the past year or so from my early days of photographing London, and as usual wrote a few sentences about it – as follows:

Grand Union Canal, Willesden, 1981
26w-63: canal, bridge, reflection, towpath

The building at left is I think still there beside the canal, set some way back from Hythe Road in an area now all occupied by Cargiant, “officially the world’s largest used car dealership”. The bridge in the distance is Mitre Bridge, also known as Scrubs Lane Bridge, which carries the Overground line from Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction, as well as goods traffic onto the main West Coast line. The bridge gets its name from the angle at which it crosses the canal.

Just beyond the bridge on the north bank is now a small memorial garden to Mary Seacole, where I’ve sat to eat my lunch in the sun on several occasions, though it wasn’t there when I took this picture, as it was only opened around 2003.

Over the long wall to the right of the canal is a vast area of railway land to the north of Wormwood Scrubs.

I couldn’t at the time remember when I had been to that garden, but by coincidence I found out when thinking about writing a post here.  Checking through recent posts on some other photography sites, a new (and silly) comment to a post by A D Coleman led me to read a piece he had posted on the death of John Berger in 2017, On John Berger on Photography, earlier printed in Hotshoe in 2012. In it Coleman reveals how Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti managed to get dogs where he wanted them in his remarkable photographs.

I remember still how, when I first found this out (probably from reading the Hotshoe article, though I
have a memory of it happening when talking about the pictures hung in a corner of Paris Photo, and someone mentioning the two words “sardine oil”, perhaps someone else who had read Coleman rather than the photographer. It doesn’t of course change the photographs, but what had before seemed some magical power did become rather more prosaic.


Double-click to open the image twice the size – backspace to return

I thought of writing a post about this, but couldn’t remember if I had mentioned it before, so searched my posts for the word ‘sardine’, and got as the only result the post ‘Up Willesden Junction‘, written about a walk in February 2014, in which I wrote:

I sat on a bench to eat my sandwiches in the sun (it was surprisingly mild for London in February) in a small memorial park to Mary Seacole, a remarkable Jamaican woman who used the profits from her general store and boarding house in Jamaica to nurse wounded British soldiers in the Crimean war, as well as medical work in Jamaica, Cuba and Panama. The memorial park was created around the time of the bicentenary of her birth a few years ago here, close to where she was buried in St Mary’s Catholic cemetery in 1881. She has become a controversial figure in the debates over the construction and teaching of British history, with many feeling she was largely sidelined because she was black.

The picture above shows the Mary Seacole Garden, and there are more in the linked article on My London Diary, including this one:

The sardines weren’t in my sandwiches – unlike Sammallahti I stick mainly to cheese – Stilton, Camembert, Jarlsburg, Cheddar, sometimes with a little pickle or chutney, often with raw onions and always with tomato, with just occasionally ham or other cold meat we have in the house, and all I’ve ever managed to attract has been pigeons.

Sardines came into my post only about travelling on rush-hour trains, something I now try hard to avoid as my ageing legs obect painfully to standing, and the trains on my line have got even more packed, less reliable and the fares more expensive. Though the service from Richmond to Willesden Junction has improved greatly since it was taken from private operator Silverlink and became a part of London Overground in 2010.

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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

________________________________________________________

Sodden London

Sunday, January 20th, 2019

Monday 19th November was a night when rain almost stopped play, at least for me. I’ve seldom been as cold and wet when taking pictures.  Although rain had been forecast it came earlier than expected and was  heavier as I stood with a small group of protesters on a poorly lit central London street.

We were outside an office building which houses the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange where former Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales now works and was speaking at a housing conference. I was with half a dozen supporters of Focus E15, the Newham-based housing protest group which waged a long battle with the Mayor and his housing policies.

What began with his decision to stop supporting a hostel for single mothers and children, forcing the housing association to give them notice of eviction, when they decided to stand together and fight to get themselves rehoused in London rather than dispersed to far-flung areas of the country in private lettings later turned into a much more widespread campaign for an end to social cleansing and decent treatment for those in social housing and others needing it.

Their fight gained national attention, newpaper articles were written about it, plays were written around it and the young women who led it invited to speak at conferences. The campaign continues, though now with a new Mayor in place and some slight changes in council policy, with its street stall every week in the centre of Stratford, a small community centre for meetings, films etc and occasional protests such as this, along with support for those with housing problems or threatened, as they were, with eviction.

As the pictures show, the protesters looked pretty bedraggled, and like them I was getting wet and cold. For once I put up my umbrella for some of the time while taking pictures, though it really needs a third hand. Though I now rely on autofocus almost all of the time, altering the focal length using the zoom ring really does need two hands and perhaps my framing was a little less good than usual. Because I was able to work close to the protesters, I didn’t feel any need to use a longer lens than the 18-35mm which I had on the D750, and all the pictures were taken with this. It’s also a lot easier to keep one camera dry than two. AL pictures were taken at ISO 6400.

It really was too dark to work without extra lighting, mainly supplied by using my cheap LED light, a 216 LED Neewer unit. It seems to now have a rather lower light output than it should and the AA batteries seem to lose power very fast. I’m wondering whether it just needs a better set of batteries or I should look at a more expensive replacement unit. It’s more flexible than the flash in that I hold it in one hand (on this occasion I had to put the umbrella down to do so) and so have some limited control over the light direction. Flash was more convenient as the Nikon SB800 fits into the hot shoe and I could keep the umbrella up. But it isn’t a great idea to use flash in the rain as it is at its most powerful on raindrops falling close to the camera, and some frames were unusable. About half the pictures were made using the LED and the rest with flash.

The people in the office took pity on us, and a man came out with a tray of hot tea, though a couple of the protesters refused on principle to accept any gifts from them, but I found it very welcome.

Focus E15 protest former Newham Mayor

As I left the protesters and made my way the short distance to Downing St the rain eased off, and photographing the Stop Brexit protest there was considerably more pleasant. There was also rather more light, and I was able to take some pictures without any additional lighting uysing the D810.


For the staged performance by Boris impersonator Drew Galdron and EU Supergirl Madelina Kay and a three person chorus, I mainly worked without flash, though subject movement and slow shutter speeds meant rather many were too blurred. I did make just a few exposures with flash to be sure of getting a sharp image, but felt a lot of flashing would have been rather annoying for both audience and performers.

The performance came to an abrupt end when we were told that people were about to leave Downing St after partying about Brexit with Theresa May, and everyone rushed across to protest. It was rather darker in front of the gates, so nearly all the pictures I made there were taken with flash as I rather liked the way it isolated the EU flags and berets against a darker background.

No10 Vigil says stop Brexit
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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