The trouble with photographing pickets at strikes is that they tend to happen rather early in the day and often leave once other workers have arrived and either gone to work or refused to cross the picket line. Of course I could get up early, and occasionally I do, though I don’t like it. But pickets sometimes happen at silly times like 6.30am, and for me that would mean probably mean leaving home more than an hour earlier, and some days I’m hardly in bed by then, and I feel too old to work without sleep. Early morning travel is also rather expensive, and unless I’m actually commissioned I seldom do anything in central London much before 10.30, so I was pleased to find when I arrived at Tate Britain around that time on the morning of the one day strike against pensions and service cuts by public sector workers that there was still a picket outside the building and I could take some pictures.
Perhaps the best was the image above, where I carefully lined up the placard in front of the Tate’s portico (and the wording TATE at top right) and the poster for its current Picasso show. There was too a certain artistic quality about the placard, and I rather liked its text, ‘Oi Posh Boys Nah!’
Later, when I walked past the Houses of Parliament around midday I was suprised to find another picket I could photograph, though I didn’t stay long as I was late for a march which was starting around a quarter of a mile away on the other side of Westminster Bridge.
I met the march just a few yards after its start, marching over the bridge towards Parliament. It’s always a little frustrating when people march across the bridge towards parliament because it’s very difficult to think of a way that works to take a picture with the very recognisable buildings in the background. The building just visible in the above image is actually relevant, since it’s a part of St Thomas’ Hospital – but it is neither memorable nor recognisable.
Taken with the 10.5mm semi-fisheye and converted.
Of course, once the marched moved past Big Ben along Bridge St, it was easy to include Big Ben behind the protest, and there was the usual scrum of photographers competing to do so. The 10.5mm semi-fisheye does give a little advantage in terms of being able to do so from a closer viewpoint, but you have to work very close to the march, which isn’t popular with other photographers as you tend get in their way. I usually work from the side of the march most of the time to avoid this.
But this time, I think the best images I made were with a rather longer lens, using the 28-105mm at roughly a standard lens setting (35mm on the D300.)
I was using the same lens for the final set of pictures that I made of the march, looking down from on top of a wall a few feet above street level as the march came to its destination, Methodist Central Hall. The image above, centred around a placard reading ‘Corporate Greed Does Not Make A Democracy’ was, rather to my surprise, chosen by Demotix for their front page.
More at: Public Sector Pensions Strike and March
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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