Tibetans protest in London

Looking at the work by some of the great Magnum war photographers makes me realise more strongly than ever that I’m not cut out to be a war photographer. Cowardice is one reason, though anyone who doesn’t have a healthy dose of this in their make-up is perhaps unlikely to survive long. But I think that perhaps I’m rather to timid a guy for the job, and, as I got a reminder on Monday, too ready to panic under pressure.

I was photographing the Tibetan protest opposite the Chinese Embassy, timed to coincide with the Chinese government ultimatum to Lhasa protesters to give themselves up or face serious reprisals (whereas one suspects that anyone who did give themselves up would simply be beaten up, tortured, imprisoned and quite likely shot.)

I’d arrived rather late, having been taking pictures at Willesden Green and suffering a slight delay on the underground, so had missed the silence at 4pm but it probably wouldn’t have made a good photograph. It was certainly a very noisy even by the time I arrived, and I spent quite a while mingling with the demonstrators shouting at the embassy across the road, photographing with both a semi-fisheye and the ultra-wide end of the 12-24mm.

Where I wanted to be – and along with other photographers really needed to be was in the empty area just in front of the line of barriers in front of the protest. But that nice empty traffic-free area was being guarded by 3 policemen with orders not to let the press in, though I did sneak a couple of images from close to both ends.

Police like to keep things simple. Nice neat lines, two sides – cops and robbers , or in this case, cops and protesters. Despite those nice “agreed guidelines”, photographers are just a nuisance. I was just wondering whether to make a complaint to the officer in charge or just go home (it was around 5pm, the light was beginning to fail, and I’d had a long day, so the latter seemed preferable as although I think we should complain on principle, in practice it never gets you anywhere) when a Tibetan guy with a flag rushed across the road in front of me and made across the road for the door of the Chinese Embassy.

So of course I rushed after him, and got a shot – if from a little too far away – of him waving the flag as he was stopped by the four officers on duty. ISO 800, 1/125 at f4.8 – wide open – at 60mm (90mm equiv) on the 18-200. Almost sharp too.

Behind me I were other Tibetan youths who had knocked down the barriers and followed him, and I was able to get into better position as police and stewards tried to stop them.

This is wide open at 18mm (27mm equiv), and 1/125 again, and sharp enough to read both officers’ shoulder numbers, and the little motion blur probably improves it.

There were a few decent frames in the chaos that followed, but looking back though the whole shoot I seem to have made too many exposures at the wrong time, got far too much camera shake (though of course some caused by being pushed in the crowd) and taken far too little thought. In a word, panic.

Fortunately there was enough left to make a decent story, or at least I think so – you can see it in My London Diary.

Of course other photographers also panic and get things wrong, though they may have considerably better reason to do so. Robert Capa on that D-Day beach had an incredible hail of unfriendly kinetic activity inches above his head, and its hardly surprising he didn’t raise it too much. I often wonder quite how much of the distress that lifts those images out of the norms of photojournalistic syntax into their powerful expressionism was the result of a quaking photographer rather than of the melting admiration of the unfortunate darkroom technician. When ‘LIFE‘ ran them in 1944 with a caption about the ‘immense excitement‘ of the moment making ‘photographer Capa move his camera and blur‘ it quite likely told a little of the story, although ‘excitement’ was probably not the most appropriate word. Capa after all was human, and like most of the rest of us would have been shit scared.