December was a busy month for me, not just for photography, and of course there was Christmas and all that. Although I enjoy the food and the presents and family events etc it does get in the way a bit, particularly as most of this country now seems to close down for around ten days from Christmas eve to a couple of days after the New Year.
That week when most of the country seemed to be either dozing at home or fighting at the sales I was taking pictures most days, though some of them family images that I don’t normally make public. But here are a couple of very different images from between Christmas and the New Year.
One of many pictures that I took in Kensington High St, as close as protesters can get to the Israeli embassy down a private side-street, at a protest on the anniversary of the Israeli attack on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, in which 13 Israeli soldiers and between 1000 and 1500 Palestinians, mainly civilians were killed. It’s an asymmetry that I think needs to be kept in mind when Israel talks about self-defence.
A day later I was in Whitechapel and photographing the Royal London Hospital. Like the above image it was taken with the D700, but while the demonstration image was a single exposure with the 16-35mm f4, this is stitched together from around a dozen, all made at the wide end. I’ll probably retake it at some time, as I would have liked just a little more foreground, and there are just a few minor stitching issues.
One of the problems is that there is no way to lock focus on the lens, which was manually focussed at infinity, and it is very easy to knock the focus ring which is close to the nodal point near the front of the lens. And this was taken hand-held without a tripod (I hadn’t expected to need one), which in any case makes it tricky to keep that nodal point in a fixed position between exposures.
The easier way to work would be to use a semi-fisheye lens to get a similar angle of view, although this results in rather smaller files than the 36Mp from which the small version above was produced.
More pictures and stories from last month are on My London Diary – and here are some links.
December 2011
Surrey Hills Walk
End The Siege Of Gaza
Staines & Stanwell Moor
Syrians Protest at London Embassy
Egyptians Protest At Embassy
Bradley Manning Birthday Demo
Iraqis and Syrians Protest At US
Congolese Protests Continue
Kurds Call For A Stop To Syrian Massacres
UK Uncut Xmas Protest At Vodaphone
UK Uncut Xmas Protest At Topshop
UK Uncut Santa Calls on Dave Hartnett
Congolese Election Protests Continue
London Night
10 Years Stop The War Book
Mumia Abu-Jamal 30th Anniversary Protest
USA Climate Treaty Wrecker
London Wandering
Congolese Protest Against Kabila Vote-Rigging
Stand Up For Climate Justice
Occupy LSX Climate Justice Workshops
City Xmas Celebrations
Britain First Support Emma West