Protesters met outside Holborn Station
Saturday morning I arrived at Holborn Underground station to find almost every other photographer in London was there. We’d all come for the start of what the press release had described as “group of disabled, sick and elderly people … going to engage in a daring and disruptive act of civil disobedience” at a “secret location” in protest against the benefit cuts of the Welfare Reform Bill, currently going through our parliament.
It didn’t look too hopeful, as there were only a few protesters, perhaps around 20 and probably around a hundred photographers, videographers and reporters. But as I was there, I got down to taking a few pictures, taking care to get the station name in at least some of them. As well as photographing some of the half-dozen or so in wheelchairs I also took a picture of two guys with the banner of one of the organising groups.
We were all hanging around, waiting to be directed to the “secret location”, when I saw the banner being rolled up and the two carrying it hurrying into the station. I started to follow them, then stopped, deciding wrongly it would be a better story to stick with the wheelchairs.
Protesters make their way to Oxford Circus from the taxi drop-off point
We were all still hanging around being told nothing, and then I saw that the people in wheelchairs were beginning to get into taxis. I can’t afford taxis – and generally they are a slow way to get around London – but I did overhear where the taxis were taking them, so decided to take the tube to Oxford Circus and walk the short distance to that point, getting there more than five minutes before the taxi. Unfortunately by the time they had arrived and we had walked to the protest I had just missed the start.
Protesters on the road with the chain across them
Most of the protesters had obviously met elsewhere and together with the press who by then had been taken to Oxford Circus where the protest was. Sometimes using a little initiative doesn’t really pay off!
I don’t think I had missed much, and the main problem now was that there were still probably more photographers etc than protesters, and it was hard to take photographs without getting in other people’s way and them getting in yours. What really annoys me are those people – mainly not the pros – who keep pushing their cameras out at arms length directly in front of your lens.
I’m always trying to think in terms of the story as well as the picture, perhaps a slightly different perspective to many of the press and agency photographers. They know that probably at best only one or two of their photographs from any event will get used, while I know that I’ll put a whole story both on Demotix and also in greater depth on My London Diary, and also hope I may get a picture published elsewhere.
Woman leads the ‘human microphone’ against the Welfare Reform Bill
One of many people who spoke at the protest
Police officer in charge warns protesters they are committing an offence
Protesters confront police officer
Other than photographers getting in the way (and of course they have the same right to be there as me, though there are a few who really need to learn manners) my other main problem was Nikon’s lousy lenshoods, a subject I’ve mentioned before.
The dark area at bottom left is my lens hood
Working in crowds, lenshoods get knocked – and the main reason I use one is often as protection – they get knocked rather than the lens. Cheap substitutes from e-bay can be a little better than the Nikon originals, and the one that cost me around a tenth of the genuine Nikon is a little firmer and gets knocked completely off rather less often (and eventually after I’d picked the original up a few dozen times from the ground it was cracked) but they still have the same fairly useless bayonet mount which makes them easily turned round, and it’s easy to miss that this has happened for a while when taking pictures. I’m someone who usually frames tightly, and it is seldom possible to rescue the situation by cropping the images. But here is one where I could crop at top right, and the lens hood at bottom left isn’t a great problem – it could easily be someone’s shoulder, and if I didn’t tell you you wouldn’t know what had happened.
It was also a fairly large intrusion into the image, which in a way was fortunate because I fairly quickly noticed it and twisted it back into position. But a well-designed lens hood would have a much more positive lock.
The other problem I had was down to a little of my own finger-twiddling (probably also a design fault, but not one I can blame Nikon for.) At some point I managed to move one of the sliders on the 16-35 lens barrel from Auto to Manual focus. Working at 16mm, images didn’t look particularly un-sharp in the viewfinder when slightly out of focus, and rather oddly the camera still occasionally makes little focusing noises even when it isn’t! However it soon became obvious something was wrong when I zoomed out to 35mm, but not before I’d taken a few rather soft pictures.
The slider on the barrel is sensibly quite difficult to move accidentally, but somehow I managed it though I can’t quite understand how. It was a cold day and I was wearing thin synthetic woolly gloves which make handling the camera a little less positive. More often I wear thinner silk gloves that retain a little more feel.
The story and more pictures are now on My London Diary .
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