The 10.5mm again came to my aid at the next protest venue in the continuing ‘day of action’ against the DSEi arms fair organised by the ‘Stop the Arms Fair Coalition‘, outside the offices of BAE Systems in Carlton House Terrace, a very posh street tucked away above the Mall, and generally rather deserted, with just the odd French tourist coming to view or possibly deface the statue of De Gaulle who had his reduced empire in a large house here during WW2.
After a little fairly disorganised chanting and a few short addresses, the main event here was a mass die-in, with most of the protesters prone on the roadway. There were a few small points of interest:
and earlier I’d photographed some of the placards, banners and protesters who stood out a little from the rest, such as this guy in rather striking glasses:
but getting good overall pictures of the event was a little tricky. My two favourites are these:
As you can see I’ve chosen not to correct the curvature of the fisheye in either, because it seemed to me to work well and not overpower the images as sometimes happens. In the upper image it enhances the sprawl of the dominant figure at the right. When I was taking it I liked the contrast in shapes with the almost straight yellow road-mark line a little to the left of centre splitting the near-circle the lens produces from the banner and target sheet of the UK Drone protesters.
In the lower picture I used the lens to concentrate on the peace flag and Christian peace banner, but to put them in the overall view. It was tricky to get the exact framing that I wanted as I couldn’t stand on people and wouldn’t on principle ask them to move, but I was fairly happy with the result.
More pictures at DSEi Protest at BAE Systems.