August 2013 at last

At last all of my August events are on My London Diary – here is the list:

Counihans Celebrate Anniversary
Obama Don’t Attack Syria


It rained very hard in Thirsk, though fortunately not all the time we where there!
More Holiday Snaps
SDL and UAF in Edinburgh


Theatre not protest – and I didn’t go to see the show

Edinburgh & the Festival
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

Putin, ‘Hands Off Queers!’
Against Live Animal Exports
Also in Trafalgar Square
Frack Off


Hetty Bower, a remarkable woman born on October 3, 1905 spoke briefly at the event

Hiroshima Day
Stop MI6 Lies About Shaker Aamer


Westfield security tells me I’ve taken enough pictures. I couldn’t agree.

Cleaners in John Lewis Westfield
End Zero Hours Contracts – Sports Direct
Roma Genocide Commemorated


Al Quds Day March
Victory Celebration at Vedanta AGM

Shut Down Guantanamo

It seemed a busy month, and despite having a couple of weeks away I felt I still needed a holiday at the end of it.

It was also an opportunity to evaluate the Fuji EX-1 camera, but I ended still not convinced if it will really work for me. Perhaps I’ll try it again when the promised wide zoom finally appears.

Now its time to catch up with September, which is almost over.
Continue reading August 2013 at last

Counihans Fight for Housing for All


Isabel Counihan Sanchez pours out squash on the first ‘birthday’ of their campaign

There are just so many political campaigns in London that it’s often difficult for me to decide which to go and photograph. Although I support most of the campaigns that I photograph, there are some causes that are closer to my heart than others for various reasons, and that I’ll always try to photograph if I possibly can.

There is also sometimes a matter of news value, a rather subjective term, and one that I usually interpret rather differently from the commercial media, not least because I have a healthy disrespect for the kind of celebrity nonsense that sometimes seems to monopolise their pages. Sometimes I think it’s important to cover events particularly because I know that they are unlikely to. And personal factors come into it too, I am more likely to photograph events organised by people I know and warm too, though I do photograph some by people I actively dislike.

But it is also a matter of logistics and timing as well as priorities. Next Saturday I know of two protests which both start at noon in different parts of London, and I can’t easily photograph both. Had one started an hour earlier I might have tried, leaving one after around 40 minutes to jump on the tube to get to the second, but it depends on the protest whether I would want to leave after only 40 minutes, or risk missing the start of the other.

On the last day in August, there was a march and rally against military intervention in Syria that I wanted to attend, which met at noon at Temple station, and also a celebration of the first birthday of the Counihan Family Campaign starting at 3pm in Kilburn. I expected the Syria march to actually start at 1pm, so and had to work out how to cover that, and at least some of the rally afterwards in Trafalgar Square before getting to Kilburn for 3pm.

Normally in London I travel by bus – you get a better view than on the Underground and I get free bus travel, but that would be too slow for this, taking around an hour, perhaps longer as the protest and any others would disrupt bus services.

The fastest way to get across London is almost always on a bike, but unfortunately that is seldom practical when photographing protests. I would have to lock it at Temple, then go back to collect it, and the chances of finding it still there would be on the low side, as folding bikes like mine are highly prized by the thieves. Boris bikes don’t get out as far as Kilburn, and are in any case heavy and a slowish ride.

So it was the Underground, and while there are always some lines closed for maintenance at the weekend, my luck was in and on that day the Bakerloo line was working normally, taking me direct from Charing Cross to Kilburn Park station, a few minutes walk from Kilburn Square, perhaps a 25 minute journey.

There were two other protests in my diary for the day, but one clashed with the Syria march and I ruled out. The other was later in the day, but looking at who had called the protest I decided that it was quite likely not to happen, or if it did, not likely to be of great interest. There was also the fact it would mean staying in London after I was tired and wanting to be home and editing pictures and writing up the two stories from earlier – and also it would be nice to get home for some dinner!

Usually before I go out to take pictures, I’ve planned the activities for the day, looked up the travel possibilities on the Transport for London web site and made a note to remind me what I’m doing. If possible I’ll also have done some web research on the protests and started to write the articles, with possible headlines, summaries, keywords and some other information. Often I’ll write some more after the event on the train home in a paper notebook that I use at events to write down names and other key information.

It was a pleasant event at Kilburn, partly because the Counihans had something to celebrate, but also because of the solidarity shown by everyone present, many of whom I knew from there and other protests. But their story is I think an important one, and one that should encourage and inspire others to fight for justice.


Ian Hodson

Another good reason for going was that one of the speakers was Ian Hodson, President of the BFAWU, one of the oldest trade unions around, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, which has taken a stand against zero hours contracts, bringing Hovis bakery workers in Wigan out on a series of strikes. It’s an issue that have come into the news recently, and for good reason, with these contracts being used increasingly to deny workers proper conditions of employment.

Photographically the only problems were high contrast lighting and messy backgrounds. Most but not quite all of the protest was in the shade – always good, as people screw up their eyes in the sun – but this meant that in pictures like that above, parts of the image  were very bright.  Areas like the table cloth would only too easily burn out, and the exposure needed to be set carefully to avoid this, leaving faces rather dark. In Lightroom I had to burn down the light areas and add a little brightness and contrast into the shadows.

In this picture of Sarah Counihan speaking (and wearing the ‘You Can’t Keep the Counihans out of Brent’ song t-shirt) the background was just too bright, and although I’ve brought it down a lot, you can see there are some empty white (or near-white) areas. I’ve also slightly darkened her father at left, and the balloon he is holding, while adding contrast and lightening her face.

I could have used flash to get a better balance, but had decided against using it earlier as I think it would have altered the feeling of this relatively small event.  But although overall I think it was the correct decision, I think I could have used a little fill on this and some of the other portraits.

More about the Counihans and their struggle for housing against Brent Council in Counihans Celebrate Anniversary.
Continue reading Counihans Fight for Housing for All

Hands off Syria

Finally I was back in London on the last day of August, sorry that I’d missed several events, including an ’emergency’ protest called at short notice when US military action against Syria seemed imminent. But action in the UK parliament, or at least a misjudgement by the prime minister, had lost our government a vote on the issue, causing Obama to have to rethink.

Speakers at Saturday’s rally suggested it was a great victory for those who protested against military intervention, but the facts don’t bear that out. If Cameron had agreed to the Labour amendment, our parliament would have voted overwhelmingly in favour – if with a little more caution than the PM would have liked. But Cameron appears to have thought he had the chance of a Falklands moment and went for it, only to fall at the first fence.

It was perhaps the protests that made Milliband urge caution and to wait until the UN report was available – despite knowing that the UN report would throw little light on the matter, as it was not charged with determining who was responsible.

I’m not a supporter of the Syrian regime and Stop the War finds itself with some strange bed-fellows in its protests – as it did over Libya. But military intervention now would certainly not be right or useful.

Its also difficult for me to sort out some of the various groups involved. The Alevi are quite distinct from the Alawites though it it is easy to confuse the two, both sects of Shia Islam. But to find Alevis with a placard ‘Al-Qaeda is Murdering Alevis in Syria’ confuses me. Although Al-Qaeda doubtless would see Alevis as heretical and so to be killed, I understood few if any lived in Syria, though there are plenty of others who they are killing.

I try hard to show the different points of view at events such as this, taking care (usually) to frame at least some images so that placards and banners are legible. One problem at this protest was than the main banner was just too long, and very difficult to get it all in a single picture, even with the 16-35mm more or less as wide as it goes, and then only by going back so far that the composition became rather boring and the figures holding it too small.

It makes a better picture from rather closer – and the iron grip of more cooperative Stop the War Stewards relaxed just a little for a few seconds to let me take this – but you have to supply your own ‘NO’.  I was able to place the clock tower of Big Ben between the placard and the banner and the figures holding the banner are larger, and the whole image more dynamic. It was taken with the 10.5mm and verticals were straightened with the Fisheye-Hemi plugin.

The attraction of the young women with Syrian flags and slogans on their faces was obvious from the start of the protest (not least by the crowd of photographers I found pressing on both my shoulders after I moved in close to photograph them) and I made a few attempts to take their pictures later in the event. My favourite image when I viewed them on the camera back turned out to me not quite sharp enough. Stupidly I was working at ISO 640 and the 1/125 second wasn’t fast enough as I was walking backwards close in front of her – taken with the lens at 38mm (57mm equiv.) It was a bright sunny day, but this image was taken in shadow, and I could well have given myself a couple of stops more to play with. But perhaps it wasn’t really the best picture – those little images on the back of the camera are usually misleading, but the fish that gets away is always larger.

There were plenty of other images of her and her friends that I took that were usable. Some at least are probably better. Others are certainly not so good, and at Downing St there was such a mob of photographers than it was impossible to get good pictures. I particularly like another of the same woman, taken a few seconds earlier. I like the tight framing of the second woman, and the kind of visual tension between the two. This is full frame as I took the picture, and possibly I might trim a fraction at the right, where the wide-angle (18/27mm) makes that hand close to the camera just a little too much.

Story and more pictures at Obama Don’t Attack Syria.

Continue reading Hands off Syria

Fuji on a Scottish Protest

Among the hundreds or thousands handing out postcards on Edinburgh High St for their various performances, one small group stood out. They had a rather different demeanour and what they were promoting was not themselves as a part of the festival but a political demonstration, or rather a counter-demonstration.

They were appalled that at a time when Edinburgh was bursting with people it had welcomed from all around the world, the ‘Scottish Defence League’ (SDL) had been given permission to march through its centre. Having photographed the EDL on many occasions I had no doubt about the kind of organisation and views that their Scots counterpart would have, and decided to cover the event.

Fortunately the play we had tickets for on Saturday morning was only a short walk from where the anti-racist counter-demonstration was forming up. It was a good performance, and one of the few we went to where every seat was occupied, and it took a little while to get out along a narrow corridor (I did worry about the fire risk at some of the venues we attended) but finally we got out and rushed to the protest.

It felt a little strange walking across the street to the front of the march. The policing seemed a little more vague at this point than it might have been in London (though later it became more impressive) but the big difference for me was that I saw no faces I recognised, either among the protesters or the few photographers around. And also that instead of having a heavy camera bag with a couple of Nikons, flash and several heavy lenses, all I had to cover the protest was the Fuji EX-1 with its 18-55mm zoom and the 15mm Voigtlander.

On holiday too I’d not managed to do the kind of research that is a part of my normal routine, looking up the planned routes of the two protests and working out where I might go to cover them. In London I would have normally tried to follow the EDL from their meet up point, but I’ve no idea even now where the SDL were marching from.  Later I did meet a few photographers I recognised by sight, who had doubtless been with the SDL at the start.

The counter-protest did seem a little less organised than I expected, and though there were a few speeches (I’d come late and probably missed more) the crowd seemed just to be standing around waiting for the march to start. I got down to taking a few pictures, and the slower focus of the Fuji with the zoom was very noticeable, and I very much missed the longer reach of the 18-105mm Nikon.

It was a dull morning with the occasional sunny spell and the odd spit of rain. There isn’t much reason to use low ISOs with the Fuji and I was working at ISO 1250.  There is a choice of Spot, Average and Multi metering modes on the Fuji, and I had the camera on spot for the first few frames, which predictably gave some exposure problems, and things got better when I changed to multi.

Spot is the best option when you have time to think carefully about what you are doing and place your exposure carefully, metering from a suitable mid-tone, but not when you have to grab pictures quickly. I don’t think Fuji’s Multi metering mode works as well as Nikon’s Matrix, but it does a reasonable job. I’m not sure when if ever I would want to use Average.

The slower reaction of the Fuji did mean I missed some pictures, and the lens perhaps showed a little more flare from bright skies than the Nikon, but I was reasonably happy with the pictures.

I left the march shortly before the end and went looking for the SDL, who hadn’t yet arrived. I found them coming down Canongate, surrounded by a fairly tight ring of police and was able to get a few pictures before they reached their pen. Again I missed a longer focal length, and it was rather trickier to get focus on the moving subjects.

At Hollyrood where the two marches both ended, police did a very good job and keeping the two sides apart, but it wasn’t too great for photography, as we were unable to work from the front for either group. I took a few pictures of the SDL (and there were quite a few EDL among them, a few whose faces I recognised.) With people penned in and relatively static the Fuji worked reasonably well, though I still missed the better optical viewfinders of the Nikons.  There were a few what seemed rather pointless arrests I could photograph, but access to the actual protest was poor (the 300mm would perhaps have helped.) Nothing much was happening and it started to rain a bit more and it seemed a good time to leave.

It wasn’t really a fair test of the Fuji – I had only one body and a limited lens range – and the results weren’t bad. But given the choice I’d still pick up the heavier bag.

You can see the story and the rest of the pictures at SDL and UAF in Edinburgh.

Continue reading Fuji on a Scottish Protest

Tony Ray-Jones Discovered Yet Again

Good though it is to see the attention currently being given to the work of Tony Ray-Jones with the show at the new at Media Space in London, it is perhaps surprising to see a video about him and the show that fails to mention Alexey Brodovitch, whose classes Ray-Jones attended and which were a key turning point in his development as a photographer. Wikipedia lists among the photographers who attended Brodovitch’s classes Diane Arbus, Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, Lisette Model, and Garry Winogrand – and there were quite a few other well-known names.

Among the ‘Brodovitch boys’ (and most were male)  peculiarly relevant to us in Britain, two names stand out: Tony Ray-Jones and John Benton-Harris, both of whom came to the UK in the mid to late 1960s soon after their studies with Brodovitch, Ray Jones in New Haven and Benton-Harris in his native New York.

The two only met up after both came to the UK in the mid 1960s, Ray-Jones probably returning home because of visa problems, and Benton-Harris staying on after meeting his future wife at a party when he came here from Italy on his military discharge to photograph Churchill’s funeral. They found they had similar and strongly felt views on photography, and both became involved in bringing the ideas and photographic work they had got to know in the USA to this country.

The best place to find out more about Ray-Jones is on Weeping Ash, a photography web site run by Roy Hammans, which has a whole section about him, including the introduction from ‘A Day Off: an English Journal’, the book published in the year following his death, which reinforced his reputation among photographers. Also there are some other essays worth reading, and one by me, from a lecture delivered in Poland in 2005, where I found his work was previously almost completely unknown. Here is one paragraph from that lecture which I think captures something of his personality:

Ray-Jones did more than take photographs in England, he gave the whole of British photographic culture a much-needed boot up the backside. He brought back from New York a brashness and an enthusiasm for the photography that was unknown in England. In 1968, having completed much of the English project, he introduced himself to the editor of Britain’s only really serious photographic magazine by announcing “Your magazine’s shit, but I can see you are trying. You just don’t know enough, so I am here to help you.” But it was his photographs rather than what he said that convinced Bill Jay that he was worth listening to, and Creative Camera published them.

His enterprise, both behind the camera and in cultural terms, was shared by Benton-Harris, who printed many of Ray-Jones’s pictures both while he was alive and afterwards. Contrary to what has been written, Benton-Harris says he was not fond of the darkroom and never a a great printer, and he suggests few of the ‘vintage prints’ were actually made by the photographer. The one print I own that was unequivocally by him is adequate but not expired.  Unfortunately the prints for  ‘A Day Off‘, the posthumous publication that established his reputation more widely, were made from the negatives by a commercial darkroom, who produced images in a then fashionable heavy style: too contrasty with empty highlights and blocked shadows, giving a distorted view of how the photographer would have wanted and printed his work.

Bill Jay comments in an interview in Russell Roberts’ encyclopaedic book ‘Tony Ray-Jones’, published on the previous occasion when the photographer was re-discovered for the major show at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford in 2004, that the 120 pictures in ‘A Day Off‘ “had lots of photographs from the same shoot, and Tony would not have tolerated that...”, but it does contain those pictures which the photographer himself thought were his best work and were included in earlier book dummies he produced.  Jay’s criticism has some validity, but perhaps only for half a dozen or so of the 120 images.

It was a book that reflected the style in photographic publishing at the time, with rather heavy and contrasty images, which perhaps helped it make the impact it did on many young photographers, myself included. But it was never a look that I liked much, though it suited a few of the pictures well. But the print I have on my wall of the Bacup Coconut Dancers in 1968, made by Ray-Jones himself for his 1969 ICA show is far more subtle. Sadly it was omitted from the Roberts book, perhaps under the influence of Jay’s comments, for this was one day that the photographer made two fine images of the same group – and is perhaps the better of the two.

The printing for the NMPFT show (and the book) was I think state of the art, squeezing everything possible out of some often very difficult negatives and generally impeccable. Excellent inkjet prints, often rather superior to the original vintage prints, were also made available at very reasonable prices (I bought several), and every photographer could afford to have a Tony Ray-Jones on their wall.

Ray-Jones was, as Jay commented “a very, very, careful editor.” He looked very carefully at all of his images. I’m not yet convinced that having another photographer – Martin Parr – going through his contact sheets and apparently picking out another 55 images for the current show is a good idea. For better or worse, these previously unseen images (assuming they are so – and not as in some other shows just hyped as such) are ones that the photographer rejected.  I’ve yet to see the show, but those I’ve seen so far look to me more like near misses than more of his very best.  The show at the Media Space also includes work by Parr, black and white images made in the 1970s when he was very much influenced by Ray-Jones, and which for many photographers remains his best work.

There is also a new book published of colour work by Tony Ray-Jones, American Colour 1962–1965 . Again I’ve only seen what is available on the web, but on the basis of this, I think it does nothing to enhance his reputation. There is perhaps a reason why after he came back to England he used only black and white for his personal work, although commissioned work was often in colour.

Benton-Harris sometimes went out working with Ray-Jones, and they shared a similar point of view.  He printed much of the photographers work both before and after his death, and wrote the obituary which appeared in Creative Camera. His work too appeared in Creative Camera, with a fine portfolio in the final Creative Camera Annual (which also contained three of my pictures in a rather different style.) Later he was the main organiser behind American Images: Photography (1945-80) at the Barbican in 1985, a show which introduced many in the UK to a whole new world and also curated other shows.

His web site includes some of his better images, and includes work from recent years as well as his Looking at the English and St Patrick’s People.  He is currently working on a book containing some of his work on the English, Mad Hatters – a diary of a secret people.

Solomon-Godeau on Maier

Thanks to (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography for the post Abigail Solomon-Godeau on Vivian Maier which links to “Inventing Vivian Maier” by Abigail Solomon-Godeau on the Jeu du Paume ‘le magazine’ web site (also available in French.)

It is, as one would expect, a penetrating analysis of the Maier phenomenon,  and reflects on the whole ‘fabrication’ of an art-historical model of photographic history.  It contains a number of insights both into the industry around her work since its ‘discovery’ and into her motivations and practice, some of which I think are truly novel and others which although obvious have been deliberately obscured, for example the clear influences on her images of photographic work by many others, including contemporary imagery.

There are also some interesting comments about what she calls “the dubious generic category of “street photography,” a category so capacious as to be effectively meaningless” which I look forward to reading more about in her forthcoming book. I’ve long thought that it was a term that could only be rescued by some much tighter and less inclusive re-definition – and a concept that has led to much vacuous and shallow photography.

In her final section, Solomon-Godeau brings up the question that has recently emerged about the ownership of the copyright of Maier’s work. Since she died intestate, and without any known living relatives, the state of Illinois might have claims on the sale of her prints and reprints of her photographs.  The intellectual property of copyright in her images, the largest aspect of her estate was at the time unknown to the state and is not mentioned in the probate paperwork. But neither was it purchased by those people who bought her effects from the storage company before her death. It could be an interesting question for the lawyers, though it seems most likely to this layman that Illinois could make a valid claim for the copyright as the existence of this property was not known at the time of probate.

Moises Saman

Don’t miss the interview with Moises Saman by Pete Brook on Wired.com’s Raw File blog. Some fine pictures and an interesting discussion. Here’s just one sentence which I hope will make you click the link above to read the rest.

‘In my opinion “professional distance” and “objectivity” are vague terms, because in my work I search for the intimacy and trust that requires me to be close to the subject, to be accepted.’

You can see more about Saman on his Magnum Photographer page, which as well as pictures has a profile and his blog, although there are few recent entries – events are presumably taking up too much of his time to allow blogging.

I’ve never thought that I would be good at photographing in the kind of dangerous situations that Saman has often been in.  I think I panic too readily and now I’m sure I’m far too old for that kind of thing. But if you have an interest in Working in Hostile Environments, the presentation on that subject at the NUJ London Photographers Branch next Tuesday (24 Sept 2013) at 6pm may interest you. The two speakers, Laura El-Tantawy a British/Egyptian photographer living in Cairo and London,  represented by VII Mentor and Guy Smallman who has worked in Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq and Latin America, and regularly in Afghanistan since 2008 will give some practical advice and answer questions, as well as explaining why it “is NUJ policy for members to undertake Hostile Environment Training, and the value of such courses in preparing journalists for the challenges faced in such situations.”

Non-members are welcome at these meetings which are free, though if you are working professionally you should join the union. Particularly if you want to work in potentially dangerous situations. And if you are not working professionally it is a very good idea as a photographer to keep well away from them.

Edinburgh & the Festival

I know Scotland isn’t London, but I’ve got into the habit of including my occasional absences from the capital on My London Diary, and so there are pictures from my week in Edinburgh now there on the web. It was only my second visit to the Scottish capital, and although I’ve enjoyed both of my times there, given the choice I prefer Glasgow, despite the language problems. It seems a rather warmer place. But Edinburgh certainly has its delights.


A view of the castle across the free links on the route from our flat to the city centre

Our first visit for a week’s holiday ten years ago was in the week before the Edinburgh festival, and if you want to see Edinburgh it’s a good idea to avoid the festival. But this year we had been invited to share a large flat close to the city centre during its busiest week to go to the festival, though we did also manage to do a few other things. And it was mostly those other things that I photographed – along with some of the festival stuff that happens along the High St, mainly groups trying to get an audience for their many shows by looking silly and handing out postcards with the details.

We were very selective in what we went to. With over a thousand events on most days you have to be, and we didn’t have the stamina of true festival-goers who can cram in a dozen different performances in a day, starting around 10am and finishing in the early hours. Its easy to spend a small fortune too, with the average ticket costing around a tenner, though some of the best things we went to were part of the Free Fringe, where you contribute what you like when you’ve actually seen the show, and may be offered a CD or book for relatively small donation. And perhaps the most satisfying event I went to (twice) during the week was entirely free, although I did buy the small catalogue of the Nam June Paik exhibition that I’ve already written about here. I’d taken my notebook computer with me to Edinburgh, hoping to blog ‘live’ from there, but there just wasn’t time, and I was too tired by the time we gave up for the day to do so.


The splendid ceiling of a bank in the New Town – taken on a walk that was a Festival event.

We did go to several events after meeting people on the streets and taking their postcards, and it’s perhaps a better way to find things on the Fringe than the vast programme – available free in print or as a download or searchable on the web site, though there is a useful daily breakdown in The Scotsman.

Probably the best thing about Edinburgh are its cemeteries, and I’d highly recommend the City of the Dead tours, listed as festival events but also running outside of it (beware pale imitations – we heard a little of one and it sounded appalling tourist nonsense.) We only went on it by accident, buying the tickets from others in the flat who had booked them and were called away to a funeral, but you need to go back in daylight too. They do have a certain photographic connection, as they made useful open-air studios for Edinburgh’s most famed photographers, Hill and Adamson back in the days of Calotype.


On the to of Calton Hill

Their studio was on the lower slopes of Calton Hill, Edinburgh’s free version of the London Eye, with splendid views across the city. Feeling energetic we also trekked up Arthur’s Seat, though this time we took the easy path – on our first visit I’d got fed up and decided on a more direct route – as I put it in a feature at the time: ‘I led our team up the north face of Arthur’s Seat, the extinct volcano overlooking the city.’ It turned out to be a little challenging, and could have become our final visit.

In 2003 I’d taken the D100, along with what was then the only Nikon lens I owned, a 24-85mm (36-127mm equiv.) One other limiting factor was that I only two 1 GB and a 512 Mb compact flash card, letting me take a maximum of around 250 raw images in a day, and had then to copy them over into a rather temperamental ‘Image Tank’ portable drive. The 24-85mm was a nice lens (and I’ve been sorry at times that I gave it away) but didn’t allow me to take any real wide-angle images, and looking at the pictures the difference between then and this year is obvious.

This August I had with me the Fuji X-E1 with the 18-55mm (27-82mm equiv) giving me a wider angle, but not going to a real telephoto. And if that 27mm equiv wasn’t wide enough, I also had a Voigtlander 15mm (22mm equiv) and wider still the Samyang 8mm fisheye.


City of the Dead Tour in Greyfriars Kirkyard

So there is a different look to my pictures, with the earlier set concentrating more on details, but also being rather less sharp and less detailed. The Nikon lens wasn’t bad, but the 6Mp sensor doesn’t quite compete. Fuji is one of the best lens makers around, and the 18-55mm is fine, but its zoom range is a little limited. It was good to have a small light camera, and there isn’t perhaps a lot to choose between its digital viewfinder and the poky optical one in the D100, but recent FX format Nikons have far better viewfinders, and the cameras are so much more responsive than the Fuji. Usually it was fine for a holiday camera, but there were times, particularly in the cemetery at dead of night – when I wished I was holding my D800E.

The pictures from 2003 are no longer on line, but you can see a good selection from this year at Edinburgh & the Festival
Continue reading Edinburgh & the Festival

Fracking, Dead Lambs and Putin

One of the things I like about going to photograph protests in London is that you are never quite sure what you will find. Though sometimes it can be a disappointment, and I was a little dissapointed not to find more people in Trafalgar Square to protest against fracking, as were the organisers of the Frack Off protest. I took a few pictures, and then was interrupted by perhaps around 200 people with banners and placards marching in to the square, and rushed to see what was happening.

It turned out to be Compassion in World Farming who had marched from Covent Garden to Trafalgar Square Against Live Animal Exports from the UK.  It seems an unnecessary cruelty to crowd them into lorries and drive them long distances before shipping them to the continent for slaughter, but the UK government claims it cannot stop the trade under EU laws on free movement of goods. The protesters say that the EU’s recognition in 1999 of animals as sentient beings rather than “goods” means that this is no longer true.

It was mildly amusing to see a couple of ‘Heritage Wardens’ try to stop several hundred angry animal welfare protesters from coming down the steps from the North Terrace into the square – which the Mayor of London seems to think is his own private demesne and where permission is needed to protest.

But although the protesters were not about to take any notice, they did tell the wardens they would not be there long, and the body of protesters kept on the steps for the short address at the end of the protest before dispersing, not in any way interfering with a church group that was slowly setting up with a gospel choir around the plinth of Nelson’s Column (and I took a few pictures of them too.)

As the protesters against live exports left, I went back to the anti-fracking protest, and was told they would be moving to protest at Downing St in half an hour or so. As I was on my way there to photograph another protest, I promised them I’d try to photograph them there later. Unfortunately I got so involved with photographing that over event that although I looked out for them at times I completely missed them.

The main event I’d come to photograph was a protest against President Putin for his homophobic policies, and to support gay rights in Russia. As might be expected this was a colourful event, and well attended, but it seemed to lack any real focus, with no speeches and little organised chanting. I was just walking around photographing people with interesting placards or dress, and some of those are fine, but I felt something was lacking.

There was also a slight problem that some of the posters were probably not suitable for publication in most media – such as the image above, which was perhaps my favourite from the set. I didn’t include it the the group I sent to Demotix.

There were many images of Putin on display other than that, and many of my pictures show him, as you can see in  Putin, ‘Hands Off Queers!’.  Among them of course was Peter Tatchell with a poster ‘Vladimir Putin – Czar of homophobia’, but I think I photographed that better on an earlier occasion.


Peter Tatchell at Pride, June 2013

Later in the protest there was some street theatre about Putin and Pussy Riot, and I was lucky to be there as it was being set up, and stood shoulder to shoulder with the TV cameraman who was recording it, rather to the annoyance of another photographer who came too late (others were already by my side and pointing their lenses over my shoulder) and wanted me to move back “so we could all get the picture”. If I’d moved back I would have got a good picture of the back of the cameraman, but not a good view of the players – and other photographers, probably including the complainant – would have moved in front of me.

It would have been better if there had been more space – I was really too close to the action, even with the 16mm, but the performers had chosen to work in the middle of the crowd, and it wasn’t possible to move back.

I took too many pictures of the playlet – and have included too many on My London Diary, it was rather more dramatic than the rest of the event, but it did make me think that this was something that would have been better on video than as still images.

Putin, ‘Hands Off Queers!’
Against Live Animal Exports
Also in Trafalgar Square
Frack Off

Continue reading Fracking, Dead Lambs and Putin

Space Hijackers £100,000 Police Payout

I was pleased to see in the Mirror newspaper that the Space Hijackers, who I described in 2009 on one of the many times I’ve photographed them as “a group who call themselves ‘Anarchitects’ whose various projects over the last ten years given a new creative face to protest” have got a payout from the Met Police over their arrest at the G20 protests in April 2009.

It’s perhaps a little unfair on the Met, as it was the City of London Police who actually arrested them on clearly spurious grounds for ‘impersonating police officers‘, but the Met were in charge, and presumably pressed the Crown Prosecution Service  to proceed with the ridiculous case against them. It was almost certainly simply as an attempt to deflect criticism away from the police handling of the event, which they had spent days in the media talking up into a riot, and where they then engaged in riot against the protesters. Unfortunately for their plans, one of those who got caught up in the police riot, a newspaper seller on his way home, was killed by a police officer. Even more unfortunately for them, the unprovoked attack was caught on video, and a few days later the story of Ian Tomlinson hit the news headlines.

I didn’t do a great job at the G20 protests, though I started reasonably photographing the street theatre and carnival in Meltdown – Financial Fools Day, and managed (with some difficulty) to be on the spot for the start of the Climate Camp in the City, I left the area early to cover a protest march in the West End, managing to evade the police containment by walking out as they moved in force to deal with the protesters.

Other photographers who were trapped inside the huge police cordon around the area (it was one of those days when police just laughed at press cards) got some rather better pictures – and some colleagues had arms broken or lost teeth when police attacked them.  Finally the press did manage to get out through the police lines – and when most had gone, the police stormed the peaceful Climate Camp in Bishopsgate, batoning down protesters who stood facing them simply raising their hands and chanting “This is not a riot!”. The protesters were wrong, it was a riot, but a riot by the police. Later it got worse still.

Police had arrested the Space Hijackers on their way to join the Climate Camp protest, so I didn’t manage to photograph them in their ‘police uniforms’ there, though I got that opportunity a few weeks later in May 2009, when they organised ‘Guilty‘, a party at Bank, the centre of the G20 protests, inviting people to come dressed either as guilty criminals or as police, and for the guilty to give themselves in.

The Space Hijackers have also been very generous in giving support to the police during the two protest marches by police in London, on each occasion setting up a stall on the route providing free advice on how to protest and suggesting suitable slogans and placards. So it’s good to see them getting a little payment from the Met.

As well as being motivated by police politics, the CPS decision to prosecute was also clearly a political one on wider grounds. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were prosecuted because they were anti-capitalist protesters. Others get away with similar or much more serious breaches of impersonation all the time.

If the Space Hijackers were guilty of impersonating police officers, then every tourist who comes to London and buys a plastic police helmet should be charged too.


No, those aren’t police on the left, though they look awfully like them, and are meant to deceive you.

Of course there are others on the streets of London every day who do impersonate police officers, but if you are a large commercial organisation (and probably giving big handouts to the Tory Party or jobs to former cabinet ministers etc, along with the odd brown envelope here and there) they don’t bother you.

Some council employees too, for example in Newham, wear uniforms that seem more like police than many of the police – and giving them titles such as ‘Law Enforcement officers’ surely are designed to confuse the public into thinking they are police. Its perhaps time the Met took a serious look at some of those who are clearly ‘impersonating police officers’ and threatened them with action under section 90 of the Police Act 1996.

Continue reading Space Hijackers £100,000 Police Payout