It was kind of by accident that I found myself photographing a protest by the IWGB cleaners and RMT drivers actually inside John Lewis’s flagship store in London’s Oxford St. I’d had a phone call earlier in the week telling me there was going to be a protest, but there were few details, and I’d expected it to be on the pavement outside.
I wasn’t surprised when I turned up on time and there was no sign of anything happening. Some protests seldom start on time and I’ve often been the first to arrive, so I hung around on the corner outside the store where I thought I’d be likely to see them and waited, keeping my eyes open.
Oxford St is pretty busy on a Saturday afternoon even two months before Christmas (the decorations were up in the shops), and a lot of people walked past, but still no protest. But finally I saw a familiar figure approaching and walked up behind him. “Fifth floor” he told me out of the side of his mouth and I followed, a few paces behind, up the series of elevators, as he made his way to the restaurant area. It did rather feel like something out of a spy movie. I lost him again there, looking away for a couple of seconds as a group of people came between us, and spent a rather frantic half minute or so searching the whole eating area until I came upon him again, now with a group of cleaners, and getting out flags and banners for the protest.
Until now I’d been trying hard to look inconspicuous, as if that large black bag on my shoulder wasn’t a camera bag and I wasn’t a photographer, but now it was time to get out a camera. I decided that working inside the store I would only need the wide-angle 16-35mm on the D700, and set that to ISO 3200. There would be quite a lot of movement and the light levels in parts are quite low – the first pictures I made were around 1/60 f4, but the lighting got better when we moved out into the main part of the store, and there exposures around 1/125 at f5.6 were typical.
Apart from their lack of support for the cleaners and the victimisation of staff who have supported them, the John Lewis Partnership are in many ways an admirable organisation, generally treating their direct employees – or rather ‘partners’ – well, and they get a share of the profits as a considerable annual bonus. But the low paid workers in the store such as the cleaners are not employed by JLP, but come in on a contract from another employer who cuts costs by low pay and poor conditions. Somehow the JLP management think it isn’t appropriate for them to insist that people who work for them in the same shop – or in the lorries that make their deliveries are treated fairly. ‘Never knowingly undersold‘ is the JLP slogan but they can add to that ‘Never caring about how the low paid workers we depend on are treated.’
But JLP staff handled the protest very professionally and simply stood back and let it take its course, applying a little persuasion to the protesters to leave, encouraging them to make their way down the escalators. One person who tried to physically object to the protesters was quickly moved away by security. I wasn’t hassled in any way, and my main problem was avoiding knocking into any of the shop displays as I took pictures. At times I did think of myself as an elephant in a china store.
It was on the escalators that I took some of my favourite images, including one of the protesters making their way down and the people looking up at them, in the foreground a woman blowing a red vuvuzela. At first I was a little disappointed that this horn wasn’t in focus, but I don’t think it matters, and may even be preferable – and at 1/100 f4 it wasn’t possible in any case. Even at 16mm focal length depth of field has its limits. The ‘hyperfocal distance’ is around 7 ft, so to get the figures on the ground floor sharp it was impossible to have anything less than 3’6″ sharp too. Of course I didn’t have time to look it up on the spot, things were moving far too fast. That I got it about right can probably be put down to the camera’s autofocus system and a bit of luck. But I was pleased I was using the D700.
Nikon changed the way you control focus between the D700 and the D800, and I think rather for the worse. With the D700 you have a three-position switch at the left of the lens for focus mode – C, S, M (continuous, single and manual) and another 3 position switch on the camera back for autofocus area mode – single point, dynamic area and auto area.
For fast changing situations like this I generally use S mode and auto area. On shutter half-press, this puts little red rectangles briefly on the areas chosen for focus, allowing you to decide if the camera has got it right. If not I try again, possibly with a slight movement of the camera. Usually it works, though it can sometimes get too fixated on near objects in the frame. Its easy and fast then to use to rear of camera switch to change to dynamic area or single point (which both work the same in S mode.) You don’t need to think about it and can do it pretty well without looking. And change back equally easily.
On the D800/D800E, forget about changing focus mode in a hurry. The switch on the front of the camera only switches between auto and manual. There is no switch on the back of the camera. To change from C to S or between area modes you have to press the little button in the centre of the AF/M switch, look at the LCD screen and use the control dials. Probably you will need to read the manual too! Why, Nikon, Why? I think the change was to enable Nikon to give the user more control over exactly how the autofocus works, but it does so at the expense of usability. Surely the most important thing in a camera. Stick the more fancy focus bits on a menu – we don’t really need them when we are working.
I don’t think the protesters actually intended to go down into the basement, but its always hard to know which floor you have got to. I think some stores deliberately hide the ground floor to stop shoppers escaping. We wandered around there, eventually finding the up escalator and make our way to the ground floor, where there was time for a short rally before the police arrived around 20 minutes after the protest started and told the protesters that the management had requested them to leave and they would be committing an offence unless they did so. And so, rather slowly, they did, and I photographed them coming out of the store and continuing their protest on the crowded pavement outside.
By now it was around 5.30pm and getting dark, and in most areas darker than inside the store (it looks lighter in the photographs than it actually was.) I took a few pictures using flash, but wasn’t happy with them, and went back to working by available light, still at ISO 3200.
A couple of weeks later I met some of the protesters again, this time in a protest outside John Lewis on Oxford St. One of them had earlier gone inside with a small child, intent on buying a toy for them and had been recognised and asked to leave. It seemed rather petty.
More pictures – and more about the protest – at Cleaners Invade John Lewis Oxford Street.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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