Last Sunday saw another nationwide demonstration by UK Uncut, this time targeting Boots stores across the country. Boots have relocated their corporate HQ to a PO Box in Switzerland, and according to UK Uncut this tax loophole has reduced their annual tax bill from £100 million to just £14 million.
The money that isn’t now coming in as UK tax would, according to UK Uncut, pay the salaries of over 4,000 NHS nurses, now under threat from government changes in the way hospitals are funded. UK Uncut, in their role as the ‘Big Society Revenue & Customs’ dressed up as doctors and nurses for a protest to make their point that the government are making savage cuts in public services to reduce the deficit while making no attempt to close the tax loopholes through which the super-rich and large corporations dodge £25 billion in taxes every year.
The protest started inside Boots main shop in the middle of Oxford St, but I didn’t arrive early enough to enter unnoticed and was carrying two cameras and a large bag, having been covering another event half a mile down the road, so failed to sneak in past the security guards. Some other photographers had got inside, but were soon escorted out by security and police when they started taking pictures, although the protesters and some shoppers were taking pictures on their mobile phones without being stopped.
Fortunately the shop has large glass windows, and although these are rather blocked with showcases, there were gaps through which we could take pictures – though each had a crowd of photographers around it. Reflections in the glass were a problem, and where possible we worked with the lens as close as possible to the glass to avoid them. If possible right up on the glass, but that does limit you to photographing at right angles to it. Back in the old days when I took a lot of pictures on film through windows I used to use wide-angle lenses with rubber lens hoods which gave a little more flexibility, but I no longer have these.
Here is one of the pictures I took through one of the side windows:
After post-processing in Lightroom
and you can see some reflections but they don’t really cause a problem.
Out of interest, I also exported a jpeg from the same image after automatic processing in Lightroom 3 and before I had done any of my usual post-processing on it – perhaps you can see some differences:
Imported with my Lightroom defaults
The differences are perhaps a little subtle at this scale, though rather more obvious on the high res versions. At a pinch I could live with the lower version – on which Lightroom has applied both my default curve settings and its auto exposure – but to me at least there are clear improvements in the processed version.
I started thinking a bit more about Lightroom and raw processing again last week, after I’d had a request for a few pictures from 2005. I had the jpegs on my hard disk, but thought I would go back and reprocess them from the raw files; surely six years later I could do a better job.
So I worked away as I now normally do on these .NEF raw files in Lightroom until I was happy with them and then exported the files and compared them with those I had produced in 2005. The differences were not that huge but were noticeable, and in every case the 2005 images I had produced using Pixmantec RawShooter, the software that was bought up and closed down by Adobe were the ones I chose in a ‘blind’ test.
Lightroom is a great programme, and it does more than RawShooter ever did, and it may be that these results are not typical. It might be the particular subject matter or the lighting, or (and very likely) the user having a bad day.
After around half an hour protesting inside Boots, the UK Uncut protesters decided it was time to leave and made their way to the front of the shop – where the security men promptly closed and locked the doors, so again I was shooting through glass. This time I was kneeling on the ground very close to the glass with a mass of photographers behind and above me blocking most of the reflections, so technically at least things were easier.
Some of the time I was having to take pictures between the legs of the security men though the policeman outside had kindly moved out of our way. When the protesters were finally let out of the shop they continued their protest on the pavement and I stayed until shortly before they were due to leave.
The protesters had thanked the police for the way they had behaved during the protest – and everything seemed very calm and orderly and there seemed little point in staying until the bitter end, and I wanted to return to the other event I was covering. You can read more about the protest and see my pictures in UK Uncut Protest Boots Tax Scam on My London Diary.
But the end turned out to be very bitter, and provided the main story from the event – which I missed. As UK Uncut were getting up to leave, one of the women protesters pushed a leaflet through the gap between the glass doors of the shop, and was promptly arrested for alleged “criminal damage.” An argument between police and protesters ensued, in the course of which one officer used a CS spray on twelve of the demonstrators (and himself.) Boots staff apparently rushed to give first aid to those who had been sprayed using eye wash bottles from their shelves, but three required hospital treatment.
I was shocked when I heard about this later in the day. It seemed completely out of keeping with the atmosphere of the event. The arrest seemed ridiculous, and the use of CS spray totally inappropriate.
