The demonstration on Saturday against the closure of the A&E and Maternity departments at the Whittington Hospital in north London was in some respects a typical march along a couple of miles of street with couple of thousand people. On My London Diary you can see the pictures I took as well as reading a little more about why people were marching.
During the march most of the pictures were taken with the 16-35mm but sometimes I needed to work at a greater distance and the 18-200mm came in useful, often because it just wasn’t possible to get close enough to use the wider lens, but also to try and create a narrower background that included lots of placards and posters.
And there were times when I wanted to concentrate on just one person – particularly the speakers at the rally, but also sometimes people on the march.
Jeremy Corbyn MP
The start of the march
At one point on the march I had a rather disturbing encounter with one of the marchers, a man who seemed worried that I was taking pictures of people, and wanted to know why I was doing so. I think it was just another example of the kind of paranoia some people seem to have about photography.
When I’ve taken part in marches and protests, I done so because I want to put on record my support or opposition to a particular cause that is the point of the protest. Like most demonstrators I’ve welcomed any interest shown by others in the march and particularly people photographing or videoing the march, especially because it may need to greater publicity for the cause I’m demonstrating for.
Of course there are some protesters who intend to break the law and wish not to be recognised. But the way to do that is to wear a mask of some kind, not to try and evade cameras. These days you are in any case going to be recorded on CCTV – and it was interesting to see that the prosecutions in the Gaza demonstrations were based on CCTV evidence rather than the pictures of the many photographers at the demonstration (although the judge involved had also watched the coverage by Sky News.) Still photography, which simply captures an instant, seldom produces unequivocal evidence of an act in the same way as video and can often be extremely misleading.
This was however an entirely peaceful and lawful demonstration, so I find it hard to see any rational explanation for the attitude of suspicion which one man displayed. I suppose one madman in a couple of thousand is not too great a problem.
More pictures on My London Diary as noted above.