Sometimes its a problem trying to find a different picture when you are photographing a protest. Although the protesters themselves sometimes seem happy with just a lot of people behind a banner or holding up placards, pictures like that seldom have a great interest for those who weren’t there.
It helps if there are some interesting placards, whether because of the words or images on them, and a little animation in the people taking part often helps. People shouting or blowing horns or whistles often attracts attention and gets passers-by to look, but although it tends to attract photographers too, it often adds little to a still photograph – unless you are careful to ensure you capture it at a suitable moment. But protests where people just stand and talk to each other are often tricky to cover. Even worse if they turn away from the cameras when they do so.
Protesters tape up a poster of Arafat Jaradat
I don’t set things up to photograph, though if others set things up it sometimes provides opportunities, though I still try to take different photographs. But more often I’m looking out for things that are happening – like these two people putting up a poster on the wall.
The poster shows Arafat Jaradat, a Palestinian who died after being tortured in an Israeli jail, and whose death was the reason for the protest, outside the main London office of the security firm G4S who provide the security systems for the jail and interrogation centre – you can read about it and see more pictures in Tortured to Death in Israeli G4S Prison on My London Diary.
The placard and its message were a powerful graphic black and white statement, and I tried to present it a little differently by taking an image of one woman holding it, with intensely coloured blue headscarf and purple gloves. I thought it worked well with the dull orange of the office foyer behind (a very different colour temperature and less bright than the pavement outside.)
Posters and a banner outside the G4S offices in London
I tried to improve on the simple row of people holding up posters and the banner by including at left the face on the poster. With the 16mm there was perhaps an awkward empty area of pavement at the right, and the best picture came when one of the protesters – dressed in black and white to echo the poster – walked into frame. She apologised for getting in the way of my picture.
Uncorrected view from the 10.5mm semi-fisheye
The protesters were actually scattered over quite a wide area and it was hard to include more than a fraction of the over 20 people there in any one image. When I made a picture from a similar position with the 10.5mm fisheye I was careful to crop so as not to include the whole of the banner at right. I knew that I would get a curved arch above the line of protesters, which I think helps the image.
On My London Diary you can see several other pictures made with the 10.5mm, which often provides a different view. In most of them I’ve corrected the images to cylindrical perspective – as in this example. Particularly when there are people close to the edge of the frame they otherwise look distorted.
10.5mm image corrected – otherwise the woman at right would look very distorted.
But my main problems covering the event were to do with temperature, and this seemed to be one of the coldest places in London, with large buildings around perhaps channeling the bitter east wind through the area. Even though I’d dressed for the weather it was still too cold for me to stand around in one place for very long; I’d been outside taking pictures for several hours and I had to leave halfway through the protest.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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