>Re-PHOTO

I was reminded by reading the as yet published four parts of A D Coleman‘s There Will Be Ink (the series starts here – links to the others at the bottom of each page) that I had promised almost two years ago, at the end of a post on Blurb’s 2011 London Self-Publishing day – Blurb & 893 etc that I had mentioned my contribution to a chaired debate on self-publishing and made an as yet unfulfilled promise:

‘More about my ideas on the future in a later post.’

Coleman has yet to really engage in his series with photographic publishing, and I look forward to reading his views when he publishes part five.  I can’t recall exactly what I said in my unscripted contribution to the debate, but I do recall the gist, as well as the sceptical reception it aroused, though to me it seemed obvious and almost inevitable.

Everything that has happened since then only reinforces my views, both in my own small venture into self-publishing and in the outside world, where there are now more people sitting with e-readers than actual books on the trains I take to London.

Kindles and the other currently available e-book readers are generally not suitable devices to show photographs, with most only offering a limited number of grey shades at fairly low resolution. Although they perform excellently with text, they are very limited for photographs. The ‘Retina’ display introduced on the IPad 4, with 2,048 × 1,536 pixels at 264 ppi rather changed the game for small portable devices, and increasingly devices of all sizes will feature stable high-quality displays.

From ‘The Deserted Royals’

Almost a year ago in PDF Publishing on this site I announced that six of my books were now available in PDF format. Since then all my new volumes on Blurb (Thamesgate Panoramas, London dérives, City to Blackwall and The Deserted Royals) have also been avaialable as PDF.

I wanted to make that latest book, The Deserted Royals a PDF only publication, and the ISBN has been assigned to the PDF version, which is the real publication. But Blurb is a ‘print on demand‘ based company and it seems it isn’t possible to sell the PDF through them unless a hard-copy version is also available.

The images in these books look rather better on my 24″ widescreen monitor than in print, and are impressive too on my slim notebook. I’m sure they would look good on a iPad size retina display too.

For the great mass of photographic publishing, I’m convinced the future is electronic, with the advantage of simpler and cheaper production and improved image quality. We will also see a great explosion in the number and range of photographic books published as the cost falls, though as always more will not always be better, and much of the increase will be dross. But for someone like myself who feels that the existing gate-keeping mechanisms tend to favour the fashionable and discriminate against much good work, the increase will be welcome.

Digital also raises new possibilities. There are relatively few even of the greatest photographers whose work has been published in great depth, and print volumes such as Sarah Greenough’s large and heavy two volume catalogue raisonné, Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set – Volume I & II are rare. And digital publishing also can add to the experience, allowing the reader to zoom in to images as well as linking inside the volume and to outside sources, the addition of sound or video clips and more.

From ‘Buildings of London’ website

One possibility I’m again contemplating (and I first did it over 15 years ago in a CD-ROM of some of my London images of which I burnt half a dozen copies) is of publishing work not a conventional book but a searchable image database. That early CD-ROM wasn’t a great success for several reasons, but largely because the clients for whom it was intended – including a large government organisation – didn’t at that time have a single computer with a CD-ROM drive. But there were other problems, including the relatively poor image quality and low size of the scans on the disk, produced at a time when most computers had a display resolution of 640×480 pixels!

It was a disk before its time, and now is a disk after its time, with the software written for MSDOS no longer running even in a command window. Though the scans, in BMP format, are embarrassingly still readable.  But the sheer volume of my work on the Buildings of London (there is a small sample on a truly pre-historic web site – essentially from 1996, though with some later rewrites to keep it working) makes conventional publishing impossible.

I don’t think the photographic book will entirely disappear. We’ve already seen a little of what I think is its limited future, in high-price short run collectors editions, finely printed on expensive papers, perhaps signed and numbered by the photographer as a limited edition and often expensively bound and cased. Some may also be made available as cheap digital versions.

England (and presumably Wales) is in danger of losing a proper legal aid system, with the government intent of getting rid of all the specialist lawyers and bringing in a US-style system where those who can afford a decent lawyer get cut price representation, often by young and incompetent lawyers, some of whom don’t care whether their clients are convicted or not, working for companies like Eddie Stobart and Tesco.

The whole legal profession seems up in arms about the proposals, except for a few government stooges  who get rolled out onto the media to defend the proposed changes, though they seldom have much to say other than the usual nonsense that we need to cut costs – and to blame all our problems on the previous Labour government.

I spent most of my time at the event taking portraits of the speakers and of people in the crowd. Most of them were made with the 70-300mm, and for some I could only get a clear view from a little further than was ideal. but there were still quite a few I liked.

Sadiq Khan, the Labour shadow minister, spoke forcefully, but there was just one short moment where it really showed in his expression, and I was pleased to have caught it.

I was pleased too with this picture of Anne Hall speaking about how legal aid saved the life of her invalid son Daniel Roque Hall, which again I felt showed some of her fighting spirit – which was also vital in saving her son.

Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty is perhaps easier to photograph than most, though there was one image in which I think I caught a little more of her alertness. And I was pleased too that Zita Holbourne was speaking – I think this was the third event I’ve photographed her at in the last couple of weeks.

But perhaps my favourite image was of a woman who wasn’t speaking but standing in the crowd, and who has good reason to value the legal aid system.

Of course I didn’t just photograph portraits – you can see my coverage of the whole event at Save Legal Aid in My London Diary.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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If you don’t know the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, you are missing out. I first met him at Downing St on his 2009 UK Shopocalypse Tour, and later in the day he joined in the Demonstration against Police Violence.

Rev Billy conducting the BP Exorcism

But more incredible still was Rev Billy’s Tate BP Exorcism in July 2011, and as well as my pictures there is a fine video on Vimeo, by You and I Films.

I was keen to meet him again and to photograph his performance on climate change at the Victoria (or Belgravia as they call it) Branch of the bank which is one of the main funders backing climate change – as well as a major tax dodger through its huge use of offshore tax havens – Rev Billy at HSBC.

Golden Toads and a gorilla leaving HSBC

Rev Billy was rather less prominent in this action, with the jaguars, eagles and monkeys taking the leading roles, dancing around the branch in their various styles until dying from the effects of climate change, and then being rescued by the Golden Toads (a species already made extinct by the effect on their habitat of global warming.)

Eagles, monkeys and jaguars dance around HSBC, while a customer ignores them to get cash

Of course the Rev was there, preaching with a megaphone, explaining what was happening and why, and calling on HSBC to repent and cease its sinful practices.

Rev Billy preaching in HSBC

Photographically there were few problems, except on first entering the bank where we all had to try and be inconspicuous. The last thing I wanted was for one of the bank staff to tell me I couldn’t photograph in the bank (where cameras are normally not allowed to be used) though I would have almost certainly have decided I had a public interest defence to ignore such as request.  But it was important not to interfere or prejudice the performance (and it was conducted as a performance rather than protest.) Fortunately the bank had very large glass windows and light levels were fairly high, though had I been thinking more sensibly I would have increased the ISO setting on my cameras, as when the dancing started some of the images were blurred in the wrong places. Blur can sometimes be creative and useful – as in the top picture, where I think I’ve deliberately zoomed the lens during exposure, but usually it just makes images unusable.

You can see the whole thing from the planning and rehearsing before hand to the finale outside the bank on Rev Billy at HSBC.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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