Light rain was a minor problem as the May Day marchers were arriving at Trafalgar Square for the rally there. Apart from the occasional frame spoilt by a drop on the lens filter between my wiping with a microfibre cloth and taking the picture, it was also making the plinth around Nelson’s Column a little slippery. And while a few years ago it was easy for me to put my camera bag up and bound up onto the plinth, now it is at best something of a struggle, though often someone already on it will give me a hand up. But I decided to walk around to the official way up, a small stairway provided for the event, and waved my press card at the stewards.
They were trying without a great deal of success to keep the plinth clear, but rather grudgingly seeing my union logo on the card let me up; I’m not sure I would have made it at this event if I still got my card – part of the same national press card scheme – through the employers!
I wanted to be there mainly to photograph all those people the stewards were trying hard to keep off, spirited young protesters with banners who do so much to give the event a little life and colour, but also to get pictures of the marchers arriving from a higher viewpoint. But as soon as the rally started with speakers on the platform it was not a good place to be and I made my way down into the area below.
With the microphones being close to the front of the plinth there is little room to photograph the speakers from the same level, though I’ve occasionally managed to do so, and today I didn’t want to stand right on the edge and risk slipping. It isn’t a huge drop, perhaps around 5ft, but enough to cause injury and damage to equipment, and I have increasing problems with vertigo. Even standing on a wall a foot high can give me the shakes.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady
Working from ground level isn’t ideal. You need a longish lens and to be able to stand back some way. The long end of the 18-105mm DX is generally OK, but I need the 75-300mm to get tight head shots. Its good to use the 75-300mm as a DX lens, as this lets you see outside the frame, which is good for following the speaker’s gestures and allowing you to zoom to re-frame appropriately. But here I mainly used the long zoom as an FX lens on the Nikon D700, where the DX images are a little small (around 5 Mp) and kept the 18-105mm DX on the D800, as there wasn’t a great deal I might need a wider lens for at that point.
Much of the time I will in any case watch the speaker through my left eye with my right at the viewfinder. Getting decent pictures of people speaking takes a lot of concentration, watching the expression and the eyes in particular. Many speakers move enough to throw a long lens out of focus, but the autofocus normally handles that, but the movements often enable you to find a moment when the microphone is less in the way.
This rally was different to most in that the first part of it very much centred around the two great men whose lives were being celebrated, Tony Benn and Bob Crow, with short videos of selected clips from each of them.
But as the rally wore on, my attention began to lapse, and I was feeling the strain of having been on my feet and working for some hours. I’d come intending to go on with the Occupy London group to photograph their protest against loan sharks Wonga, but in the end only photographed a group of them getting ready to leave from Trafalgar Square before making my own exit for the train home and the lengthy business of editing my work from the day and writing a couple of stories. And of course you can now see the results of this at May Day Rally.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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