London Transport


Paula Peters of DPAC speaking outside the Atos HQ in Triton Square, Euston

The only fast way to get around London is by bicycle. But a bike is something of a liability when actually taking pictures unless you can find somewhere truly safe to leave it, and such places are rare in the city. Lock one anywhere you can’t keep an eye on it and there is a fairly high chance it won’t be there – or won’t all be there – when you come back, especially if you ride a real thief magnet like a Brompton, relatively expensive and slips very easily into a car boot.

I get absorbed in what I’m doing when I’m taking pictures, often so absorbed with the images I don’t even notice important things on my camera like leaving the ISO on a silly setting. All I can think about is the rectangle in my viewfinder and the event that I’m viewing through it. Even if my bike was locked a few yards away I probably wouldn’t notice anyone taking an edge-grinder to the lock.

So although using a bike might have been the obvious solution to my travel problems on a busy Wednesday I didn’t think about it. It was a day with an unusually large number of protests – there were a dozen that I knew about, and others that I only found out about later. Most were part of a day of action around the country against Atos and the tests that it administers on disabled people to decide if they are fit for work. Thousands who they have said are fit die within a few weeks, and they have included people who are in comas or already deceased.

I wanted to cover at least one of these, and it seemed to make most sense to cover the main national protest in central London rather than the smaller events around the capital. And since this was to last from 10.00 am to 16:00 pm it didn’t seem to give me much chance of doing anything else.

But I knew that there wouldn’t be things going on all that time I would want to photograph and also my own union was organising another protest from 11.30 to 1.30 that I both wanted to attend and also felt some obligation to go to. There was also another event, a vigil I would like to photograph at 10.30 to 1pm and yet another from 11.30 until 1pm. It would have been tricky if they were all in more or less the same place, but there was over 3 miles between the two more distant of them.

It was a day that involved some fairly tricky planning with the Transport for London web site and the map. I ended up making use of six underground trains, one bus and several bits of walking, and in all I probably covered a dozen miles or so to get to the four events on top of my normal 20 mile each way train journey from home to London


Dennis Skinner, Labour MP for Bolsover since 1970, speaking at Atos, Triton Square, Euston

I started at the Atos National Day of Action, arriving in Triton Square outside Atos’s UK HQ around 10.20am shortly before things really started there. I recognised many of those there from earlier protests, including Dennis Skinner who had really torn into what he called the “heartless beast” of Atos during the parliamentary debate triggered by a petition against Atos and was at least as fierce in his denunciation of them and the inhuman DWP policies of Ian Duncan Smith that drive them on this occasion. It was one of the times when I wished I’d been recording sound, though fortunately there were others present making videos, so I could concentrate on my job – though having people making videos does make it a lot harder to move around.


Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye and her daughter Zeinab at the vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar at the Iraqi consulate

Things quietened down a little around 11 and I hurried the short distance back to Warren St station and took the tube, changing at Green Park and on to Gloucester Road. A quarter-mile walk took me to the Iraqi Consulate in Elvaston Place for the Solidarity vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar, where I apologised to his wife and daughter who I’d first met last May at the US Embassy for not being able to stay long, spent 5 minutes taking a few pictures then hurried back the quarter mile to the station, taking the tube to Hyde Park corner.

The Irish Embassy for the Free Margaretta D’Arcy picket was only a couple of hundred yards away, and again I apologised for rushing away after a little under 10 minutes, jumping on a bus to take me up Park Lane from the stop just a few yards down Grosvenor Place.

It  wasn’t a long way to the Egyptian Embassy, but the bus was faster, even though I had to walk a couple of hundred yards further than necessary as I couldn’t remember which was the nearest stop, the Hilton or the Dorchester. Both are slightly curiously named as going north neither is particularly close to the hotel, and probably few guests to either come by bus. NUJ demands Egypt release jailed journalists was a larger protest and I worked there for around 15 minutes, photographing the protest and a letter being taken in to the Embassy asking for the release of the imprisoned journalists, but decided not to stop for the speeches.

From there it was half a mile to walk to Green Park for the Victoria Line back to Warren St and the Atos protest in Triton Square. I’d hoped to be back in time for speeches at 12.30, but several minor hold-ups on the tube meant I was twenty minutes late, but I hadn’t really missed a great deal, and I stayed there until the event ended, rather earlier than planned. The finale was the release of a large net full of yellow balloons, and as usual I didn’t really manage to get a good picture, partly in this case because they were released before most of us were ready.

Some of the protesters were going on to protest elsewhere, but by then I felt I’d had enough. And I had a lot of post-processing to do, as well as writing stories about the four protests, so it was well after midnight before I finished work.

You can read the stories and see the other pictures I took on My London Diary:
Atos National Day of Action
NUJ demands Egypt release jailed journalists
Free Margaretta D’Arcy picket
Solidarity vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar

Continue reading London Transport

Bugsby’s Under Threat


Looking across Bugsby’s Reach in 1982

Here is an e-mail I sent yesterday:

================================================

To: alistair.gale@pla.co.uk

Dear Alistair Gale,

I write to register my opposition to the proposed name change.

As someone who has known Bugsby’s Reach since the late 1970s, often walking the riverside path I feel that the name Bugsby’s Reach should be retained. I state some reasons below

1. Bugsby’s is a name that is genuinely a part of our heritage, both through oral tradition dating back several probably several hundred years and recorded in a multitude of written sources including may maps, charts and literature of all kinds since 1735 as ‘Bugsby’s Hole.’

2. Bugsby’s is a locationally specific name, linked to a past usage of a specific part of the river as an anchorage, whereas the suggested replacement is generic with no real connection to this particular stretch of river.

3. Your suggestion about the historical basis of the name is contested by local historians – and the name Bugsby’s Hole indicates that this was an anchorage from the 18th century or earlier.  I  have yet to see evidence that Bugsby was a person, let alone that he was a market gardener. – see the article by Mary Mills at http://onthethames.net/2014/02/14/platform-defence-bugsbys-reach/ in ‘On the Thames’. You appear to be attempting to mislead respondents in your statement on this consultation.

4. I think the current name has much more character than the proposed replacement which seems bland in comparison.

5. Waterman’s Reach sounds like the kind of name property developers would give to some generic waterside development (and they have done so.)

6. There are other stretches of the Thames which would seem to me to have a greater claim to the name Waterman’s Reach, and I think if any stretch is to bear that name it should be on the course of the ‘Doggett’s Coat and Badge’  and most obviously close to Watermen’s Hall. There isn’t even a Waterman’s Pub on this stretch!  Brentford could also make a good case with a Watermans Arts Centre and a pub.

7. Surely it should in any case be Watermen’s Reach and not Waterman’s  Reach – which I’m afraid makes me think of fountain pens not watermen.

8. There appears to be no particular reason why Bugsby’s Reach should have been selected for oblivion. There are other reaches with names with far less character that could have been selected, for example those that are simply geographic in nature – such as Woolwich Reach. I’m not against change, but want changes that give the river greater character not reduce it.

I would like to make a positive suggestion. On my PLA map of the River Thames, Woolwich Reach is shown as extending from the PLA radio station at Charlton through the Thames Barrier to Gallions Reach. I would suggest that while Bugsby’s Reach be maintained, the short section of Woolwich Reach from Charlton to the Thames Barrier could be renamed as Watermen’s Reach. There is no need to ditch our history to commemorate “watermen, wherrymen and bargemen.”

 

Yours sincerely

Peter Marshall

—
Thamesgate Panoramas: http://is.gd/BASbSi
London’s May Queens: http://is.gd/Ece8v1
In Search of Atget: Paris 1984 http://is.gd/v6D4hE
Still Occupied: A View of Hull 1977-85 http://is.gd/0v2YAg
Before the Olympics: The Lea Valley 1981-2010 http://is.gd/qBQGtl

Peter Marshall    –    Photographer, Writer: NUJ
_________________________________________________________________
>Re:PHOTO                       http://re-photo.co.uk
My London Diary                 http://mylondondiary.co.uk/
London’s Industrial Heritage:   http://petermarshallphotos.co.uk/
The Buildings of London etc:    http://londonphotographs.co.uk/
River Lea/Lee Valley 1980-2010  http://river-lea.co.uk/
and elsewhere……

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Bugsby’s Reach from the cable car, 2013

The Port of London Authority (PLA) is currently consulting over its intention to change one of the old established names for the reaches on the River Thames, Bugsby’s Reach, which extends from the tip of the Greenwich Peninsula at the Millennium Dome (O2) to Charlton.

In a document online, they state:

In commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of the 1514 Act of Parliament for regulating watermen, wherrymen and bargemen when King Henry VlIl granted Royal Assent, the Port of London Authority intends to rename Bugsby’s Reach as ‘Waterman’s Reach’ at a ceremony
on 18 September 2014.

and they invite observations/representations on this to be sent by Monday, 21 April 2014 either by letter or by email to: alistair.gale@pla.co.uk

I’ve sent my comments – but if you have an opinion why not tell the PLA too.


Bugsby’s Reach, 1982
You can read more about the proposed name change for this stretch of rive in Bugsby’s holed? Why a bit of Greenwich’s history is under threat on the 853 blog.

I’ve known Mary Mills who I mention in the e-mail above for a long time and have both her books on Greenwich. She also has her own blog, When she was de-selected as a councillor by the local Labour party last year, the Greenwich Phantom blogger – who says “I rarely – almost never – talk about political issues in Greenwich” was moved to post:

“Greenwich’s finest councillor by a country mile, Mary Mills, was deselected in what has to be the biggest own-goal the local Labour Party has scored in some time, and believe me there have been some pearlers… I am utterly gobsmacked that they have been so shortsighted in getting rid of the only personality that actual, real humans on the doorstep recognise and like.”

Dr Mills is also one of our leading industrial archaeologists and almost certainly has researched more about the history of the area than anyone else. If the PLA had done any local consultation about Bugsby’s Reach they would certainly have approached her. You can read her views on the change here.


Angerstein Wharf, 1982

I can only speculate (as I often do!) why the PLA has it in for poor Bugsby’s rather than choosing any other named stretch of the river to obliterate.

Could it be because it is a name that sits uncomfortably with the property developers who want to cover every riverside plot with unsightly luxury flats to sell to overseas speculators? It has an unattractive sound – bugs, bogs, bogeys, bogles, bugbears, buggers, boggarts… none very pleasant, though perhaps related to the history of the area, which certainly was boggy and full of bugs (the land is Greenwich Marshes) and it was also a place where the bodies of executed criminals were formerly hung in chains, so doubtless a haunting ground for malevolent spirits.


The Pilot, Ceylon Place, 1982

The Pilot, built (according to Mary Mills) in 1804 on Ceylon Place, New East Greenwich is still there, though the interior was apparently refurbished last year, and it is now a Fullers pub. It and the adjoining cottages were built on the causeway leading to Bugsby’s Hole which was given approval in 1801, the date recorded on the stone at the left of the sign. It’s name is not directly related to the river, but to Prime Minister William Pitt, described by George Canning as ‘The pilot who weathered the storm’ for his negotiation of the 1802 Treaty of Amiens which ceded Ceylon to Britain. It is no longer a Whitbread pub – and Whitbreads are no longer brewers.
Continue reading Bugsby’s Under Threat

The Place We Live

At a quick count I appear to have ten books by Robert Adams already on my shelves, though I’d be surprised if there were not another one or two lurking somewhere. A few of the ten were review copies, but most I paid good money for; I expect I thought both Denver and The New West were rather expensive when I bought them; the cover price for each was $15, though in a London bookshop at the time they probably cost £15. And of course there are portfolios  by him in various magazines on my shelves too.

Which kind of suggests that I am something of a fan of this work – and I have been since I first saw it in the 1970s. It also reminds me that he has published quite a few books, because there are certainly some that I know I don’t own. At a little over £100, his The Place We Live seems almost certain to fall into that latter category, though as a three volume set with a total of 640 pages it could well represent good value for money.

The Place We Live is a show as well as a book, and is currently at the Jeu de Paume in Paris until May 18, 2014. Although the show was originally scheduled to have a showing in London at the Media Space, this seems now to be the closest it will get to us. But you can view the show on-line at the Yale University Art Gallery. I’m wondering whether to take a trip on Eurostar, but that would cost me about as much as the book, and given the choice I’d probably go for the book.

Forty or so years ago when I first started in photography, it was important to see original prints, partly because there were relatively few books, but mainly because the quality of the reproduction in almost all of them was, by today’s standards, abysmal.  Now it possible to get fairly decent quality in even cheap publications – and even from print on demand companies like Blurb, while some of the best (and most expensively) printed photographic books are superb.  I remember back around 1980 rather insensitively telling a well-known photographer when we compared his print with the page proof from his latest book that the printed page actually reproduced the highlights rather better than his darkroom print. True, but it upset him to be told so. A few years later and this would be almost commonplace, and we began to see duo-tones and tri-tones that did things that were impossible in the darkroom.

Now it is also possible to view images on large high quality displays, and certainly looking at my own images, I often find I can see them better in any print. Images on the web are generally a poor substitute, but the high quality pdfs I’ve made of my books are often better than any print I can make. Of course there are some ways in which a real object is preferable to a digital image (and I have many real prints framed on my walls, along with a few less real), but perhaps the days when you had to see the ‘real thing’ are largely gone. Except for print fetishists.

There is also an article about the show by Aaron Gertler in OUT OF ORDER Magazine and Alexander Strecker blogs about it at Lensculture.

Reclaim Love Returns


Dancing at Reclaim Love, 2006

I was very pleased to get a message on Facebook on the Friday evening that contrary to expectations there was going to be another Reclaim Love Valentine’s party at Piccadilly Circus the following afternoon.

I should have heard about it a week or so earlier, when messages began to be posted on the Reclaim Love Facebook group, but Facebook is now terribly broken. What used to be a good way of keeping in touch with people now systematically hides most of the messages and updates that your ‘friends’ post (and most of yours from most of your friends) unless you pay to have them promoted – as well as sending you stuff from people you have no connection with who have paid for the distribution.

Facebook has commercialised the ideas of friendship and community, and it was probably inevitable it should do so. I suspect too that it would now be impossible because of copyrights and other intellectual property rights for an open-source competitor to set up a competing service that really worked, as has happened in some other areas of computing such as Linux or Firefox web browser.


Joining hands at Picadilly Circus for the ‘Celebratory-Collective-Consciousness-Shifting-Love-Circle’

I mention this because Reclaim Love was also set up to oppose commercial degradation, in this case of love into the massive industry of exploitation which reaches its annual peak at St Valentine’s day.

It was started from the inspiration of Irish poet and Love activist, Venus CuMara (quoted in Resurgence in 2010) to “create a balance for all those like me who are disenchanted by the idea that chocolate and flowers could be a greater gift than the gift of love itself” and she persuaded others to join with her in creating a free festival in 2003.

I missed this first event as I was in hospital waiting for an operation, was in Paris for Valentines Day 2004, but was present the next year in Piccadilly Circus, where the party took place around the statue of Eros. (Which of course isn’t Eros, but we all call it that.) And since then I’ve not missed a year – and there are pictures every February on My London Diary – links to them all here in Reclaim Love 10th Anniversary.)


Venus dancing at Reclaim Love, 2014

For Venus, it was also “an experiment to see if we can create a shift in the collective consciousness of our people. If this experiment works we will shift from the common, fear based way of thinking, to a more fearless-generous-sharing-Love-centred way of thinking. In order to do this we need enough people,( a critical mass ) to focus on the same thing at the same time World Wide.”  And at 3.30 pm GMT at various places around the world people joined hands in what she called a Celebratory-Collective-Consciousness-Shifting-Love-Circle and recited together as a mantra her translation of an old Sanscrit prayer:

“MAY ALL THE BEINGS IN ALL THE WORLDS BE HAPPY AND AT PEACE”.

And it really was free, and taking place without any notice or permission to the city authorities or police, just taking over this small area of the streets of London for a party, with music, dancing, giving away free t-shirts and sharing food. And although it might not have a great influence on world peace, it has created a little magic in an otherwise rather dreary area of tourist London for a few hours every year.

Last year was Venus’s 10th Reclaim Love (one year she was out of the country and passed the organisation to others) and she had decided it would be her last.  But as the time of year came close, friends of hers who had taken part in the event decided it had to happen again, and rushed around inviting people bands and poets to come and perform. Venus herself came back from Ireland to come. Perhaps because of the last minute nature (and the perfidy of Facebook) there were fewer people than in previous years, though I’m told that word got around on Twitter during the event and things got rather livelier after I’d left around two hours after it started as the light was fading.

I think I’ve taken better pictures in previous years, though there are some that work quite well. The circle with people holding hands is perhaps difficult to photograph with everyone spread out around the area. The picture taken from the steps around Eros to gain a little height gives some idea of the scene, but doesn’t work as well as those from inside the circle.

Both this and the second picture from the top were taken with the Nikon 16mm full-frame fisheye, a lens I’m really enjoying using, mainly on the D700. It works well on the D800E too which I used for these, but the files really get too huge as to use the Fisheye-Hemi converter I output them as 16 bit Tiff files – which with the 32Mp sensor gives around 200Mb file size. As high quality jpegs they are a rather more manageable 9 or 10 Mb, and at 7360 x 4912 pixels would serve if I ever needed to print at high quality at 300 dpi around 2 foot wide. Of course they could actually be blown up much larger as the files are sharp and detailed. And they would certainly look fine on those illuminated billboards at Piccadilly Circus.

End the Zero Hours Scam


John McDonnell MP speaking outside a McDonald’s in Oxford St

Zero hours contracts are not contracts of employment, but contracts of unemployment. They prevent workers from taking on other work as they have to be available should the employer need them, but without guaranteeing them any employment. It’s perhaps surprising that they are legal, because there is no ‘consideration’ received by the employee. They are essentially unfair, and I hope a future Labour government will have outlawing them high on its list of measures to be enacted. But then I hoped the last Labour government would do quite a few things and ended up very disappointed with both Blair and Brown. More so with Blair, who turned out to be both a liar and a war criminal as well as a Thatcherite, continuing the attacks on trade unions and workers rights that she began.

So I was eager to photograph the launch of the Fast Food Rights Campaign which aims to put an end to zero hours contracts and abysmal pay for workers in fast food outlets. And the way it is trying to do so is by getting them to join a union.

Not any union but the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union, BFAWU, an old-estabished union founded in 1847 that has retained its independence and unlike some large and bureaucratic unions still fights for its members. And one of those fights is against zero hours contracts, and its strike action at the Hovis factory in Wigan recently gained a victory against the extended use of these contracts there.


Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union National President Ian Hodson

I’d met the BFAWU National President Ian Hodson last August and been impressed by his speech against zero hours contracts at the Counihan family’s anniversary party. He was one of the speakers at this campaign launch, along with a number of others including Labour MP John McDonnell, one of a handful of Labour MPs who I admire for sticking to their principles when so many seem to have sold out.


John McDonnell MP speaking outside a McDonald’s in Oxford St

I’d met with the protesters just around the corner from where I’d expected to see them, holding a brief rally outside a Burger King, but soon they moved off to a McDonald’s at the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford St.  This is one of their lower key establishments with dark green paint and little to really on the outside to indicate what lies within.


Security stopped people with placards going in to McDonalds, but a man takes more leaflets to give out inside

So although I was pleased with some of the pictures, there was little in them to indicate exactly where the protest was taking place. The second McDonald’s we called at, some way along Oxford St had that ugly big M, yellow on red, which made it rather easier to show in photographs.


The brasher McDonald’s look is more obvious
I’d positioned myself here to line up the sign behind the speakers and took some pictures, crouching down a little to get the angle I wanted. Things were going well until I straightened up to my normal height, only to be assaulted by another photographer who had come up behind me and now felt I was getting in the way of his shot. That kind of behaviour just isn’t on. I was there first and if you come up later behind me you’ll have to work over my shoulder; ask me politely and I might crouch for a few seconds, but I certainly don’t expect a colleague to roughly try and push me out of the way. Neither of us got the picture we wanted where with a little sensible cooperation we could both have done.


High contrast inside Costa Coffee
Our next stop was a Costa Coffee just off Oxford St, and while McDonald’s had obviously known we were coming and brought in extra security staff, they seemed to me unaware of what was happening, and the protesters were able to walk inside and hand out leaflets to the workers and customers.

Photographically there was a big problem of contrast, with bright sunlight coming through the large windows. I didn’t want to use flash, at least not when we first went inside as this would have quickly alerted the manager to what was happening and got the protesters asked more quickly to leave, so quite a lot of post-processing was needed to burn down sunlit areas and bring up some of the shadow detail.

Most of the staff and customers seemed interested and not disturbed by the protest, and some were obviously sympathetic, but of course it wasn’t long before the manager asked us all to leave, and we did so, though I had a few seconds to work with flash on my way out. There was a short rally outside before moving off for a repeat performance at a second Costa Coffee on the other side of Oxford St.


The manager argues with a TV cameraman who is just inside the shop doorway
Here again I went inside with the protesters and took some pictures, leaving when asked by the manager. Most of the pictures I took there were with the manager having an argument with a TV reporter who was standing a few inches inside the doorway with a large video camera. By then I was just outside the shop working through the open door, and the argument seemed a little pointless on both sides, other than giving me something to photograph.

After a short rally outside, the protesters decided they had done enough and left very pleased with how the launch of the campaign had gone.

More pictures and text at Hungry for Justice For Fast Food Workers.

Continue reading End the Zero Hours Scam

MI6 Valentine

I’m always a little worried about photographing the MI6 building. Architecturally I think at least in visual terms it’s rather a mess; not quite ‘Legoland’ (apparently one of names its agents use for it, though another, Babylon is in several ways more appropriate), but more one of those silly children’s toys, ‘Transformers’, but unlike the Hasbro/Takara Tomy versions it just sits there and doesn’t change into anything else. But I suppose I’m also worried that someone is going to run out and arrest me for breaking the Official Secrets Act, though I know it isn’t likely to happen. Though I probably would get questioned if I started to photograph people entering and leaving the building.

Of course, if we really wanted to keep the existence and location of MI6 a secret, we wouldn’t have put it in such a distinctive building and location, overlooking the River Thames (it’s also on top of the Effra.) It is a real sore thumb, and London is certainly not short of faceless office buildings that could have housed it equally well (and it does have one such just a few yards away in Kennington Lane.)  Though it is perhaps not co-incidental that the existence of MI6 was only officially acknowledged in 1994, the year before it moved into its flashy new HQ.

The Free Shaker Aamer Campaign had also been worried that there might be problems with protesting outside the building, but they checked with the police and found them pretty relaxed about it, and this is the second protest the group have staged there.

This time it was gloomy and wet, with steady rain as I arrived and the protesters were getting changed into the orange jumpsuits and going out to protest at the roadside. Vauxhall Cross certainly has no shortage of passing traffic, and from that point of view is a very good place to protest. It’s also very convenient to get to, with a large bus station, overground and underground rail stations just across the road.


‘End the torture and abuse’

So I went and took the obvious pictures, particularly those with the MI6 (officially called the Secret Intelligence Service) building in the background, with several variations. The protesters had also brought a couple of different sets of slogans


’12 years Shaker unjustly held in Gitmo’ – he was illegally rendered there on 14 Feb 2002

I took these trying to keep the verticals of the building upright in the background, but it’s certainly good to be able to tidy them up a little in Lightroom where necessary, though I hadn’t always quite left enough space around the essential parts of the image to do so. I don’t always try for correct verticals in images, but here I felt that convergence would detract attention from the protesters – the vertical building seems to provide a more neutral background.

I’ve generally also stopped using distortion correction on the images from the 16-35mm, as when you crop precisely in the viewfinder you can find the image correction actually removes whatever you very carefully placed at the extreme edge.  But it sometimes shows at the wide end as here where the building has a distinct curve at the left. But probably you wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t told you. Correcting it would lose a little of the figure at the edge who I wanted to keep.

The rain was a problem for me as well as the protesters, and there are a few areas in some of the images where a little post-processing was needed to reduce the effects of rain drops on the filter. But it also meant that I was unable to take as long as I would have liked photographing the Valentine Card for the head of MI6, Sir John Sawer, as it was starting to get wet.

When the rain turned from heavy to torrential, the protesters (and photographers) were able to retreat into one of the long tunnels under the main line to Waterloo, where they had earlier set up their base and there they held a rally. The lighting there was by now almost as bright as outside and working at ISO 3200 wasn’t a problem.

For the first time after over an hour of protest the police turned up and took and interest in what what going on, perhaps because the tunnel was rather congested, especially when some of the walkers and cyclists passing through stopped to find out what the protest was about.

By the time the speeches were over the rain had slackened off just a little, and the protesters came out mainly in single file as the organisers had requested and made their way across the road in a procession to the entrance of the MI6 building to try to deliver the Valentine card. The rain really was too much to work easily, and quite a few images were ruined, but I was able to get some. The man on the gate refused to take the card, citing security reasons, but the protesters persevered, and eventually just pushed it through the wide gap between the gate and the wall before leaving.

While I appreciate the need for security, there is also a good place for common sense, and no real risk would have been involved in taking the card.

By now I – and the protesters – was cold and wet, and I was very pleased to make the short walk to the station for my train home.

The protest was taking place at MI6, because they are thought to have secretly lobbied for Shaker Aamer not to be allowed back into the UK as his evidence about their collusion in torture would be extremely embarrassing. You can read more about this and see the other pictures from the event in ‘Justice Demands the Truth’ Vigil.

Continue reading MI6 Valentine

A Wet Valentine

Feb 14th was a busy day for me, and a very wet one, not good news for those of us in Staines, where the Thames was still running very high, with water flowing slowly across the road in front of our house, and the sewage blocked for five days. Though we were fortunate that the ditch on the edge of the garden was still taking the flood water away. (It’s rising again as I write, almost 3 weeks later, despite a few nice dry days – another 8 inches and we will have significant flooding again in the area.)

It was a relief to get onto a train up to London and get away from it all for a few hours working, but I could have done without the rain reminding me of it and adding to my worries.

I’d only intended to pay a brief call to ‘One Billion Rising‘ in Trafalgar Square, part of an international day of protest over violence against women. I don’t usually bother with ‘photocalls’, often finding them rather boring, as this one was, but I did enjoy – despite the rain – meeting and photographing some of the women who had come to take part in the event.

It was only raining lightly when I arrived, but was it obvious from the start that umbrellas were going to be a major theme in my images. The only pictures that don’t feature them are a few of the dancers on the stage under cover, though even there, parts of the stage were wet and those dancing in front at ground level were doing so in shallow puddles.

Umbrellas, particularly coloured or patterned ones, do offer some potential to make pictures, but I was concentrating more on the people beneath them.

Also of course concentrating on trying to keep the front filter on my lens free from raindrops. I wasn’t 100% successful, but there were enough pictures were either there were none or they had the impact in the less essential areas of the images. In the top image, there is some slight blur and diffusion in a few areas on the right of the image, still visible at web size, but these don’t detract from the image.

They are less noticeable than when I first saw the image enlarged on my screen in Lightroom thanks to a little post-processing. Using the the local Adjustment Brush tool can reduce the effect. Increasing both the contrast and clarity in the area cuts down the effect of diffusion, and then the highlights and exposure can also be adjusted to bring the diffused area to more closely match its surroundings. The treatment needs a little tweaking for each area you use it on, but it’s convenient to set up a preset as a starting point – and mine has values:

Contrast  +22
Highlights -22
Clarity  +32
with all other settings at zero.

It’s just another reason why I don’t take a notebook computer out with me and send off files from location (or in this case the rather dryer setting of a nearby bar or coffee shop.) I need a good screen and plenty of time to get things at least approximately how they should be.

Of course it would help at least to some extent if I used an umbrella to keep drier while taking pictures. But I just don’t have enough hands and it also restricts mobility – and using a wide angle I just would not have been able to get close enough for some of these pictures holding a brolly. Using a wide angle – especially one with a large glass filter like the 77mm on the Nikon 16-35mm – also greatly increases the rain gathering power, and with wide-angles the lens hoods are of very limited use in protecting them from rain.

I did deliberately photograph one of the celebrities at the event, Bianca Jagger, of course holding an umbrella, and certainly it is a rather different image of her than some. But there were few others that I recognised (or recognised me.)

Story and more pictures at One Billion Rising – End Violence Against Women.

I didn’t really have time to stop and send off pictures in any case, as I needed to be away and doing other things. The first of which was just a few hundred yards down the road at Downing St. I wasn’t there to photography David Cameron, but someone far more famous (or at least Charlie X posing as someone more famous) Charlie Chaplin, who I’ve met and photographed at a few protests.

Charlie Chaplin against Climate Chaos was a one-man performance, and possibly because of the by now heavy rain, I was the only photographer in sight. And it was very much a performance, with Charlie keeping to his character in mime, which made it just a little difficult to communicate with each other.

Of course most photographers also do a little bit of mime, especially useful when abroad when you don’t speak the local language, or when working in noisy situations. I occasionally use gestures to ask if I may photograph someone, but much more often to thank someone whose picture I have taken.

There were really only a couple of pictures that I could think of to take in the situation, and you can see them with a few minor variations on My London Diary.  I would have liked a few more people on the street to use in the background for some images, but apart from the police on the other side of the gates, there were only two other people on the pavement in this part of Whitehall in the five minutes or so I was there (one in red is almost entirely and deliberately behind the Climate Chaos poster) – I’ve never before seen it so empty.

One of these pictures has proved more popular than anything else I too on the day, though I think I was only making the best of a bad job. It certainly was a fine example of Climate Chaos, with a storm lashing London that would normally have hit the north of Scotland, but I don’t think I managed to capture this.

But I was very pleased having taken a few pictures to wave my goodbye and dash across the road for the bus to take me to my next appointment, for which I was already a few minutes late.

Continue reading A Wet Valentine

Heresy?

It knew it was heresy. So I kept it to myself. Drank the white wine and kept quiet.

I was there in the temple of silver, the Print Room of London’s Photographers’ Gallery, in the rather subdued if not hushed darkness of the opening of ‘Eternal London‘, worshipping with others both Giacomo Brunelli‘s undoubted talent (as I said in my initial post – – this is a show to see and, perhaps more importantly, a book to buy.)  And I found myself thinking the unthinkable.

There is a particular mystique about Giacomo’s work, which goes with it’s mysterious quality. He uses the old Miranda SLR and lens given him by his father for all his pictures. It has a removable pentaprism, enabling you to hold the camera close to the ground and see them image on a ground glass screen on the top of the camera body. I thought to myself, just like you can with the tilt-able screens on many digital cameras, or even with a little less elegance using Live View on the back of digital cameras without this feature.

The wall text also had a reference to the printing, comparing it to the wet plate images of the Victorian era in its qualities. I found myself thinking of those fine large, highly detailed prints by Samuel Bourne and others from what is arguably the greatest era of photographic printmaking and finding no similarities. Perhaps there were a few empty skies that were reminiscent of images made when photographic materials were only sensitive to blue light and the ultraviolet, but the wet plate process enabled incredibly detailed images, limited only by the lens as the light-sensitive material was not an emulsion.

Looking at the images on display, I think what they resemble more are prints made from paper negatives, such as those produced in the even earlier calotype process – and also those that I used years ago to make prints by alternative processes, enlarging my images onto resin-coated photographic paper and then contact printing onto another sheet of the same material to give a negative – which was then again contact printed, in my case onto hand coated and sensitised ‘salted paper’ or albumen. Exposures through the paper were much longer than when using sheet film – I put the printing frame in the garden when I went to work and take it in when I came home – and the prints had something of a similar quality to those made by Brunelli in a more conventional manner, though it was more the highlights than the shadows that seemed to diffuse.

And I thought again about what had caused me to lose much of my interest in those alternative processes. In a word, Piezography. Jon Cone‘s four shade black inks and software that I bought into when it first came out, enabling me to make prints on matt papers that had a richness that I’d never managed in the silver darkroom (though it was to be another ten years or so before this became possible on glossy surfaces.)  Now, things are even better with seven shades of grey, though I now make do with Epson’s rather inferior ABW offering (3 greys and the odd spot of colour) as I no longer print enough black and white to keep a dedicated printer running. But even with the Epson inks I can produce prints that are in almost all respects a match for silver.

Soon after I started using the Cone inks (BJP published a review, which half paid for my first set), I had someone visit me who wanted some enlarged negatives using these inks. He’d photographed on 4×5 and printed from this as a platinum print, but wanted to make a larger print – and so needed a larger negative. I scanned his 4×5″ negative, and printed it out as an 8×10″ negative, and before he left I printed out the scanned file as a positive print on a Hahnemühle paper. He looked carefully at it and went rather quiet. It was clearly (at least to me) a rather better print than the platinum, but I made no comment.

Brunelli gets a particular look about his prints that comes from his exposure and work in the darkroom, but it is one that could also be readily applied to a digital file, either by some clever footwork in Photoshop or perhaps even by applying a suitable filter in that or some other software.

Of course it doesn’t really matter whether we work on film or digital or print using silver or carbon pigment inks. I probably wouldn’t have bothered to think about it or to write about it if there didn’t appear, at least from the gallery, some odd kind of mystification over the process. What matters is the end product, the pictures.

And of course these have been printed digitally, and very well indeed, not for the show, but for the book, ‘Eternal London‘ printed by Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei (EBS) in Verona.

Swiss Camera Paris Version

Somewhere hidden at the back of the rack of shelves behind me are a pile of issues of a very special magazine that was published in Lucerne, Switzerland, Camera. I only subscribed to it shortly before it ceased publication in 1981, but bought a number of the back issues that were still available when I signed up. We called it ‘Swiss Camera’ because there were also US magazines that shared the name.

The reputation of this magazine, at least for photographers here, was made only in its last 16 years, when Allan Porter was editor-in-chief from 1965 to 1981.  A new Camera magazine was launched last year in a bilingual English/French version, published in Paris and aiming to take over the mantle of the former publication, and in issue 5, out this week it looks at the work of Allan Porter.

There are a series of articles in L’Oeil de la Photographie related to Allan Porter and the magazine, starting with Camera #5: In search of a mythical magazine, and continuing with Allan Porter: Editor of Camera, Allan Porter: His personal Pictures, Allan Porter: His Photographer Portraits, Allan Porter: His Favorite Covers, perhaps the least interesting for me as his choice of the best 12 from the 162 covers is rather different to mine, and finally, Allan Porter
“I was a go-between” with a short audio-visual in which he talks about his work and the photographic context of the era, and welcomes the new publication.

At the end of the first article it states: ‘Vintage issues of the magazine are collector’s items today.’ But many can still be picked up cheaply – I found quite a few on offer on the web for $5 an issue, less than half the cost of the new magazine. I haven’t yet looked at the new ‘Camera’ in print, though it is available at half a dozen outlets in London including the Photographers’ Gallery and selected newsagents – details can be found on the website.

 

Diana Markosian

Thanks to Pete Brook on Wired’s Raw File for a post Fantastic Photos of Chechen Culture From a Young Phenom about the work of 24 year old documentary photographer Diana Markosian.  The interview with her is worth reading and talks about several other projects.

You can also see her work on her web site.

It took me a little time to work out how to see more than a single picture for any of the projects, though this could be a peculiarity of my browser, Firefox or its settings. The only way I could find to see more was to use the button with four arrows at the extreme bottom right of the page to go to full-screen view. Clicking anywhere on the screen then moves on to the next image. It’s mildly annoying to have to do this (and rather frustrating until you work out how to) but it does let you see large and detailed versions of her pictures.

I’m very impressed by her work and many others have been too. I’ve seen some of the images published before, in Lens, Foto8 etc, but never taken a good look at her work as a whole.