The decision by the UK Borders Agency to withdraw the licence from London Metropolitan University to have overseas students seems to be particularly spiteful, obnoxious and counter-productive. It will cause great and entirely unnecessary disruption to the lives of those students who were following their courses assiduously, with many personally disastrous effects, while those who made use of London Met without being genuine students – assuming they exist – will have already melted away.
Financially it may be ruinous to one of the UK’s largest universities, possibly effecting the futures of many home students. But the biggest financial damage is likely to be to the UK economy. Overseas students studying here make a large contribution to our economy, both directly and indirectly, and the cavalier treatment those at London Met have received at the hands of the UKBA is likely to result in the loss of many millions – if not billions – as future overseas students decide to study where they are made welcome and promises are kept. This senseless action will cost the country dearly at a time when it can least afford it.
Given that the protest outside the Home Office was outside of student terms, most of the students at the protest were postgraduates, and the protest was surprisingly large. Police had provided a rather smaller pen than was necessary, and photographing the protesters was hampered by them keeping the pavement in front of it clear, moving on anyone who stopped to take pictures. We were made to stand a couple of yards back on a small grass covered bank, though I did slip down and take a few pictures occasionally before getting moved on.
The speakers too were standing on that same bank, and it was difficult to work in front of them – there was really little or no space that the police would allow – except from inside the crowded pen which was a little far away, and also sometimes difficult to find a space. Most of the time I was having to work very close from on the steeply down sloping edge of the grassed bank or even closer to one side.
Then there was the lighting. It was a sunny day with quite a bit of cloud, but when the sun wasn’t behind a cloud I often found myself working into it; sometimes dramatic but almost always giving problems with flare. In the image above I’ve made the two large greenish circles above and to the left of the head almost invisible by darkening and desaturating them so they almost match the greyish background, but some frames were ruined.
Photographing people in the crowd was also rendered tricky by the extremes of sun and shade. In the top picture I’ve done considerable ‘dodging’ and ‘burning’ in Lightroom to reduce the contrast, particularly in the face at top right, which started with probably even greater contrast than that at bottom left – where I liked the dramatic poster-like effect.
The Home Office is an interesting modern building with a jutting out roof with large horizontal areas of colour glass, through which the sun was shining, giving large patches of coloured light on the pavement and people. Again the effect can sometimes be interesting – as in this picture of one of the speakers:
where the orange-red on his hair, shoulders and hand adds something to the image, but on some other subjects it just creates an unpleasant colour cast – the blue in particular is difficult to work with. I’m not quite sure about the bright orange fingers of the woman below, caught in one of these patches of strongly coloured light, though it would probably be possible to reduce the effect by a little local painting with a suitable complementary colour – although this would go beyond what some would consider acceptable for news images.
Those fingers make her look as if she is wearing some curious rubber gloves with nails on them. I used another frame where the effect was less obvious.
The protest got a little more active after the speeches were over and the petition handed in and the employees from London Met had left for their afternoon’s work, as the students decided to head for Downing St. Police halted their impromptu march after a few hundred yards, but after some discussion and negotiation and being held for around a quarter of an hour they were allowed to continue to their destination.
This is a picture taken between a row of police stopping the front of the march toward the long end of the 18-105mm, and so depth of field was a little limited. I didn’t quite get the focus right on this one, it seems to have been on one of the hands rather than on the face in the middle and I didn’t notice. The D800 can actually spot faces in images and automatically focus on these at least in some modes which should have made this image a little better, but I probably wasn’t using the right mode. There are just too many things to remember, too many things I still have to learn about this camera, but I’ve been too busy using it!
You can see the pictures from there and more from the Home Office, as well as more information about the story in Don’t Deport London Met Students on My London Diary.
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