>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Do Bears?

First in London I think it was cows. Then elephants and doubtless other animals cluttering up the pavements of our city. In Berlin it’s bears, which at least are appropriate, as the bear has been adopted as the symbol of Berlin, probably because of the similarity between their names.

So Berlin is always full of bears, but there is an extra load of them at the moment. The first ‘Buddy Bears’ which populated Berlin in 2001 simply promoted these 2 metre high fibreglass animals as a little urban fun for the city. Then in 2002 came the ‘United Buddy Bears’, (UBB) a kind of united nations assembly of these figures designed to promote harmony, tolerance and understanding among different nations, cultures and religions.

It’s an idea that brings out the cynic and the realist in me, seeing it as yet another way for people and in particular large corporations that sponsor such things to feel good and look good to the people without actually doing anything to solve the very real problems that the world faces. Getting artists from countries around the world to decorate a few bears doesn’t do much for world peace, global warming and moving towards a new and sustainable global economy. It’s just a bright and happy little circus, though it has raised quite a considerable sum for UNICEF and childrens’ charities over the years.

Since Rome is burning we might as well enjoy the violin playing, and the bears are rather fun in a way, some rather cleverer than others. As well as being scattered around the city there is also for the next few months a complete set – one for each of over 140 countries and a few ‘specials’ – along the edges of the Kurfürstendamm. Earlier in the day that I photographed the UBB I’d strolled along with the crowds looking at the images in the display at the Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror) where images and text described the Nazi pogroms against Jewish shops and businesses culminating in the infamous Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass in 1938. Jewish owned businesses on the Ku’damm had been closed by the police three years earlier.

Now at night the Ku’damm is largely closed and dead in any case, the fashion stores (a kind of living death by day) shutting their doors early and the cafes and cinemas now largely gone after Berlin life moved back closer to the city centre when the wall came down. It’s wide, full of chestnut trees and poorly lit by London standards, and most of that light was coming from shop windows, shining from behind the bears making photography a little tricky.

I put away the Leica M8, a hopeless performer in poor light even with the f1.4 35mm lens and hardly usable in colour above ISO640, and relied solely on the Fuji FX100. Reviewers tell me it is slow to focus in low light, but the bears weren’t moving and I had few problems. Almost all the pictures were at full aperture (f2) and shutter speeds varied from1/13 to 1/80.

Generally even wide open there was enough depth of field and of course more than would be got on a full frame camera. With the actual 23mm lens (35mm equiv) on the FX100 focussed at 3.0 metres things should be sharp from 2.45 to 3.87 m according to the on-line DOFMaster calculator. With a true 35mm lens on full frame you have to stop down to f2.8 to get similar figures.

The Leitz 35mm f1.4 is a decent fast standard lens (45.5 mm equiv), but for similar DOF you need to stop down to f4, while a standard lens on full frame would have to be closed down to f6.4. Unfortunately the 21mm f4 Voigtlander lens I have (27mm equiv) although a very useful focal length is a little slow for low light.

So when working with smaller sensors you can take advantage of wider apertures, and the same is also true with wide-angle lenses. Put the two together and with the 23mm f2 of the FX100 you can work at full aperture should you wish to much of the time. There is however a slight improvement in sharpness on stopping down to F2.8 and probably f4, and of course there are times when you do want greater depth of field. But the point is you need to think about apertures rather differently than we used to when working with smaller sensors.

In fact the figures understate the difference in practice. This long line of bears (above) is actually acceptably sharp (at f2.0) from the closest bear more or less to the end of the line.

I was working at ISO 1600, though when the light got really low I should perhaps have switched to ISO3200 and possibly tried out . I was working without flash, and there was a great deal of light in the shop windows behind the bears and very little on their fronts and faces, which were underexposed by a stop or two (and most were taken with exposure compensation set at -1) and need some coaxing in Lightroom while the bright backgrounds have to be brought down considerably. There is quite a lot of noise in these images, but it isn’t unpleasant and there is still plenty of detail. It’s still quality we would have sold our souls for in the days of film, though Alamy QC might beg to differ.

The main problem I had was that once started it was seriously addictive and I had to photograph them all. Even though a few were lost to camera shake or incorrect focus I now have enough pictures of the beasts to make my Berlin holiday snaps a case of bear-dom boredom. Though there is a cow and an elephant too.

Mike Russell (1953-2011)

I was sorry to hear the news of the death of photographer Mike Russell who I know both as ‘Mike’ and as ‘Minimouse’ although I never knew why he had adopted this alias as there was nothing ‘mini’ about him, except perhaps his ego. In a profession where there are too many prima donnas, Mike stood out as a guy who was always concerned about others, always had a smile on his face and a welcome, someone it was always a pleasure to meet when photographing events on the streets.

Mike persuaded me to overcome my opposition to the ridiculously authoritarian ‘media policy’ of the Climate Camp and spend a day on site as one of the media team at Blackheath, and it was largely due to his efforts that despite the anti-media hysteria of some campers that there is such a good photographic record of what were some of the most significant environmental protests in the UK – and I should really have listened to him earlier.

Our last exchange only three months ago was a minor argument and ended in a typical suggestion from him “let’s get together over a beer and talk about it”, but sadly we never did. I and others will miss him on the streets.

More about his career in photography and aspects that I was unaware of, particularly his early adoption and pioneering of digital photography on the EPUK site, and his pictures on his website, including some from Climate Camp – in what he described as “An unashamedly self-indulgent collection of photographs that I’ve enjoyed taking” – are certainly worth a look.

Picture Police?

Would your pictures pass the picture police?

When police aren’t busy arresting people for posting slightly tendentious Facebook status updates, killing people with those ‘non-lethal’ tazers, or indeed doing their very useful job of protecting the public, they are apparently busy making aesthetic judgements, at least in Long Beach Los Angeles, according to an article in the Long Beach Post (LBP) which was picked up by APhotoEditor a couple of days ago.

Sander Roscoe Wolf, a LBP columnist and photographer whose brief detention and questioning by an officer while photographing decaying paintwork of chemical tanks at a refinery led to the story, apparently passed, as according to the first report on this story in the LBP, after the officer had checked his driving licence and looked through the pictures on his camera, he was told he was welcome to remain and continue to take pictures.

Local police chief Jim McDonnell gave the LBP statement about the affair, saying that that “detaining photographers for taking pictures ‘with no apparent esthetic value’ is within Long Beach Police Department policy.” But he went on to contradict himself, explaining that while police have no specific training in judging whether “a photographer’s subject has ‘apparent esthetic value,’ officers make such judgments ‘based on their overall training and experience’ and will generally approach photographers not engaging in ‘regular tourist behavior’.”

Surely taking photographs ‘with no apparent esthetic value’ is exactly ‘regular tourist behavior‘? Followed of course by uploading them by the bucket-load on to Flickr.

The case and it’s report has aroused a very lengthy series of comments on the LBP, hard to read for the incredible pig-headedness and bigotry displayed by many.

Taking photographs is not in itself a suspicious activity – as the NPPA are reported to have written to the police department to stress, and it is in any case not one that many potential terrorists are likely to indulge openly. With so much satellite imagery on-line as well as StreetView there is little need, and most likely terrorist targets are now festooned with CCTV cameras, making any loitering in their vicinity a risk terrorists are likely to take pains to avoid.

Police – even in Long Beach as the LBP reports – are required to have a “reasonable suspicion of criminal activity” before they make a Suspicious Activity Report on non-criminal activities – such as using camera or binoculars, asking questions or taking notes, and it seems unlikely that the officer who approached Mr Wolf would really have been able to sustain a claim to this. It isn’t enough to suggest – as the police department and their attorney do – that it is all in the mind of the officer; paranoia or gut feeling is not enough and there have to be grounds that would lead a reasonable person (like me!) to suspect the actions, and any officer should be prepared to justify this.

There are the usual discrepancies in this case between the officer’s and the photographer’s account of exactly what happened, with the officer’s story perhaps reflecting more about what should have happened if he had followed correct procedures. It’s a pity that the use of helmet cameras by police is not more widespread, although as an article in The Register commented, “Police thus far seem torn between being able to show their side of a story when they’re in the right and perhaps stitching themselves up in other situations.”

Of course this case is just one of many – and a few others add their experiences in the comments. Here in the UK we are continuing to see similar things happening, and various organisations have been formed to protect the rights of photographers. I’ve posted several times about the activities of I’m A Photographer Not A Terrorist, and Facebook users may like to look at the Amateur Photographer Rights Watch page set up on 2 Aug by “the world’s oldest consumer weekly photographic magazine” which launched its Rights Watch campaign in 2005 after an innocent AP reader was accused of helping to plan a missile attack on Canary Wharf in London by taking ‘reconnaissance’ photographs.

PLUS Makes Progress

I’m pleased to see that “PLUS, the Picture Licensing Universal System, which will provide a single world-wide system for describing licences and to embed licensing information as metadata in images” which I mentioned here on my post More on Metadata in June 2008 is still making progress and has now reached the stage when I think all of us who sell (or try to sell) our photos should be signing up, at least for a free account. But becoming a supporting member will I think soon be an essential business expense.

I registered my interest back in 2008 and in April this year was invited to sign up for the registry and some of my details are among those of 5000 rights holders on the registry that is now online for beta testing.

There is an excellent long article by Tony Sleep on the EPUK web site – five pages starting here – which every photographer should read. Some of the comments also help to understand what PLUS is and what it can do for us, although others are less helpful and perhaps more about protecting certain commercial interests.

PLUS has been set up as a non-profit body, a co-op existing on funding from those who use its services. You can register for free membership – as I’ve done so far – and this will put your name and contact details into it’s database permanently. In itself this is worthwhile, but to get the full benefits of PLUS once it is fully up and running will require an annual fee; most individual users will get a reduction through belonging to one of its supporter organisations (or as a student/educator) bringing this down to $75.

I haven’t paid up to become a supporting member yet, but there are definite advantages, in particular in getting a unique PLUS ID (particularly for me, when there are just so many Peter Marshalls.) More, you can chose your own Custom Member IDs, featuring your business name or any phrase, which will be linked to your PLUS Member ID and can be used as a more memorable alternative. These are being issued on a first-come basis, so if you want a popular name or phrase you should join at once. Soon you will also get access to the digital asset management features of the PLUS Registry allowing registration, identification and management of images and licenses. Supporting membership also lets you add to your member profile for example allowing you to display a description and web address to your basic contact details.

Your registration is persistent: in other words PLUS will keep the information after you leave membership – perhaps because of retirement, change of career or death (when the record may be of interest to your heirs.) Of course you will no longer be able to add further images once you leave.

There are two great strengths to PLUS. One is the wide range of support it has across the industry and secondly that it really does (or rather will) cover the whole field of image supply and use including contracts. Sleep describes it as “a grand design for a sustainable photographic ecology adapted to the internet age, evolved and refined over a decade of bridge-building and dialogue with thousands of companies, publishers, agencies, industry groups, lawyers, conservators, museums, art buyers, academics, creators and representative organisations from around the world.”

To make the most of PLUS you do need to join up, and to keep paying your annual fee for as long as you are creating new images. Photographers will also probably want the Lightroom plugin which costs £35 and enables you to embed PLUS information in your images (you can get a free trial version, but this only lets you export a single image at a time.) However it seems possible that later versions of Lightroom (and other software that some photographers use) may incorporate this natively, or that free plugins may become available.

PLUS is still a work in progress. It has the support of many if not most of the big players, including many photographers’ organisations, but it also needs to attract large numbers of image creators.

A shorter article on the BJP site by David Hoffman makes the advantages to photographers more clear. PLUS offers a way to guard against your images becoming “orphans.”

It now seems virtually inevitable that governments around the world will make it free (or very cheap) and easy to make use of images where “reasonable diligence” is unable to locate the copyright holder. PLUS is I think our only real hope of protection against this.

Blogs & Copyright

Two weeks ago I wrote a post Arbus: 40 Years Gone which was prompted by a post by another blogger, James Pomerantz, who blogs as A Photo Student, and I started that post by mentioning this fact, then went on to say something about its content, which included a reproduction of the obit written for Village Voice by A D Coleman. And in the rest of the post I mentioned and commented briefly on a recent feature by Coleman himself on his blog.

I hadn’t expected the post to cause any particular controversy, but my piece brought Pomerantz’s post to the attention of Coleman, who had previously been unaware of the use of his work in this way. Naturally he took objection and demanded the removal of his piece from Pomerantz’s pages, as well as posting a comment on the blog there. You can read the rest of the story in Coleman’s own words in Night of the Living Infringers and a follow-up in Dog Days: News & Notes.

Copyright is vital to both photographers and writers and we should all take care to respect it, especially at a time when our government is making proposals that may damage it (see for example this article on the BJP site.

Regular readers of this blog will doubtless have realised that almost all of the pictures I post here were taken by me. On the few occasions I have posted images by others, I think I have always had at least their verbal permission to do so. Similar considerations apply to the use of text, although I often quote from other articles on the web or in print I always try to be careful to only quote small portions of them and to give a link to the original. I still follow the very clear rules which applied to me working for a major publishing organisation writing ‘About Photography’, which were both editorial policy and also accorded with my own respect for the intellectual property rights of others.

That doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to share my work. Everyone is welcome to view the more than 50,000 images I’ve put on line and to read the millions of words I’ve written. You can even print them out for your own personal, private use if you want. But if you want to publish them in any way – electronic or otherwise – and thus distribute them to others you need my permission, and certainly if you are being paid to do so or you or anyone else is in any way profiting from that publication then I would normally expect my fair share of that profit. Because it is my work you are using.

‘Fair Use’ is often cited by bloggers, but it has very strict limits, both geographical and in what it allows. I should make it clear that I’m not a lawyer, but there is a very clear discussion of the US law on this on Wikipedia. In the UK, as Wikipedia also states, the concept is known as ‘fair dealing’, and is limited “research and private study (both must be non-commercial), criticism, review, and news reporting.” Most educational establishments pay licences which allow their students and staff to copy work in ways that fall outside these restrictions for images in books and magazines, and like most photographers I submit a ‘Payback’ claim every year to DACS stating the number of my works that have been published, and receive an annual payment for this use. If you haven’t done a return yet, this year’s Payback deadline is Friday 9 September 2011.

Bloggers have to respect copyright just like anyone else. Failing to do so is unfair to the creators of the work and also unfair to other bloggers who play by the rules. Back when I blogged and posted for a living I often had e-mail from readers asking why I didn’t always display the images I was writing about in my posts rather than simply linking to somewhere where they could be viewed. Just like many other web sites did without permission.

Covering Tottenham

An article by Jason N. Parkinson and Jess Hurd, No Refuge Between Bricks and Batons, on the DART website gives a real insight into what it was like to be there (and why I’m glad I wasn’t.) Don’t miss the link to Jason’s video on the Guardian site, and also Jess’s pictures which I mentioned a couple of days ago in my piece about why I wasn’t there. The Guardian also ran a piece about covering the events on Tuesday, London riots: photographers targeted by looters, by Lisa O’Carroll and Caroline Davies.

Our Prime Minister, spurred on by mad Liberal Democrat MP for Wells Tessa Munt, is calling for the press and TV to hand over their images to the police. Neil Young in Keeping photographers and reporters safe in riots on the Up To Speed Journalism site clearly makes the case both on the grounds of the safety of journalists but perhaps more importantly on the safety of democracy for keeping to the procedures established by parliament in the 1984 Police & Criminal Evidence Act, (PACE) which defined our pictures and reports as “special procedure material” which to access police need to go to court and show is necessary for a specific case involving a serious crime. It truly is a valuable defence of a free society against our becoming a police state.

Usually I try to stick more or less to photography, but I’m finding much of the political comment about these events sickening. I’m not condoning what happened, certainly not in favour of lawlessness on our streets. But I think it is important to try and understand why it happened, and in particular why it happened now. The most interesting interview of all those I saw was by Darcus Howe on the BBC, notable not just for what he said and his attitude, but also for the ‘establishment’ response from the interviewer, which you can see dissected on a YouTube clip by Cenk Uygur from ‘The Young Turks, ‘the largest online news show in the world.’

These are not the first riots (or insurrections) we have seen in the UK. It’s a matter of record that they have all occurred when the Conservatives are in power and at a time when cuts were being made. Academic research confirms that such policies increase the chances of various events of this type, so ignore the writers and politicians who deny any such link. They are ignorant or lying or in some cases both.

Perhaps the most stupid comment I’ve read was that these events can’t be linked to the cuts, because government spending has actually gone up in the past year. Statistically it is inept, as the overall figure hides the cuts that have already been made because of extra spending in other areas, but surely even these commentators should have noticed the protests that have already taken place. Most important for the current events have been those over the loss of EMA from September for 16-18 year olds in full-time schooling, and over the increases in university fees. The protests at the end of last year were full of young people – and importantly in the earlier demonstrations they were subject to kettling, charges by police horses and often fairly random violence by some police.

I’ve photographed protest on the streets for many years, and in particular worked on the streets of Tottenham, Brixton, Peckham and most of the other areas of London that have been in the news. For what it’s worth (and certainly it’s worth rather more than the ignorant opinions of many of our MPs) the underlying issue is one of justice, or rather injustice.

The flashpoint this time appears to have been riot police attacking a 15 year old girl who asked them questions about justice outside a police station in Tottenham and was answered with batons. Behind that was the shooting of a man in a taxi, who we now know had not fired a shot – as police at the time told the press. Behind that were many, many deaths in police stations, in prisons, in a protest, in a police panic over terrorism and more; hundreds if not thousands of deaths where police and our legal establishment have hidden the truth, stretched out investigation for years and finally failed to deliver justice.

Of course that isn’t all. There are companies who pressure employees to work in hazardous situations or without proper equipment or training, leading to injury and death at work, with seldom any justice. Bankers who have been bailed out by the taxpayers and gone on to get bonuses greater than most of us earn in a lifetime. Property developers with doubtful deals and links to politicians. People getting honours who deserve jail.

Or looking at the other side of things. Silly prosecutions against peaceful protesters – such as those involved in the UK Uncut occupation of Fortnum & Mason. Protesters who get sentences out of all proportion to their minor offences – and now the same thing happening in courts to rioters, with magistrates using remand in custody for minor offences, as well as some ridiculous sentences.

People should be fined, or imprisoned or given appropriate jail sentences on the basis of what crime they have actually committed, not because courts want to make a statement. There have been some serious crimes – such as the burning of shops – and these deserve serious punishment, but most of the arrests have been for much more minor offences. Young people, particularly when drunk and led on by others in the heat of the moment often do pretty stupid things (like setting fire to cacti) and we should not be over-hard on them. Justice and not revenge needs to be the basis of how people are dealt with – and what is happening at the moment is likely simply to increase people’s feeling that they live under an unjust system, and to increase the likelihood of another Tottenham.

No Justice, No Peace is a popular chant at some protests, and one which I think we need to take seriously.

These are views that have very much been influenced by the events that I’ve photographed over the past years and the people that I’ve met doing so. Tomorrow I’ll get back to the photography.

No Sharia Zones

People in inner East London boroughs last month began to see bright yellow stickers appearing on lamp posts and other street furniture announcing ‘You are entering a Sharia Controlled Zone – Islamic Rules Enforced’ and a number of symbols banning alcohol, gambling, music concerts, prostitution, drugs and smoking.

The authorities in these areas have been working hard to remove these stickers, posted by a small fringe Muslim group, but many are worried by this attempt to replace our normal British rule of law by an unofficial and illiberal regime which it would be illegal to attempt to enforce.

There is very little support for Dr Anjem Choudary’s Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) in the Muslim Community, and a few minutes research soon reveals that the other organisations that were listed as backing the march for Sharia Zones and the ‘Islamic Emirate Project’ are the same few people under different names.

It was noticeable as we went through the streets of Leyton and Walthamstow that although many stopped to watch the noisy protest, hardly a single person – Muslim or non-Muslim – showed any expression of support.

Several right-wing groups had been rumoured to be intending to demonstrate against the MAC march, although many on their forums had suggested it made more sense to stay away and ignore it, and there was a strong police presence – certainly involving more police that the 70 or so protesters. A mile or so from the start two men were sitting on a seat on the opposite side of the road to the march, one holding the old ‘red hand’ Ulster flag still used by Unionists. Two police officers were talking to them, apparently preventing them from making a protest as the march went by.

Another group of people were being held in a pub, the door blocked by several police and a line of officers along both sides of the building. It was not clear to me why police did not allow them to protest outside the building, as there were clearly more than enough police around to prevent any disorder.

A demonstration was allowed a few yards from the end of the march in Walthamstow, where a thin line of police stood along the roadway as the march went by on the other side. This protest, by the English Nationalist Alliance, led by Bill Baker, had a few placards with lengthy text that the marchers would have needed very good eyesight to read. Their message and tone was rather different to some of the insults and gestures made by the protesters as the Muslim march was passing.

I had few difficulties photographing the event, except for the length of the march, which seemed excessive, partly because it was taken very slowly. There really was not a great deal happening most of the time. I was greeted with a few jibes by the ENA, who accused me of being biased against them. The comment originally came when they confused me with another photographer who had also written an article for Demotix on one of their marches; I had reported the event accurately, but he had not, and Mr Baker quoted from his report but attributed it to me.

I don’t share many of the attitudes of the ENA or other English nationalist groups, but like them I think there is no place for Sharia law in this country. It’s perhaps a shame that other groups such as ‘One Law For All’ which oppose Sharia have not been more active on the streets, and that the great majority of moderate Muslims are also not more visible in their opposition to people like Dr Choudary.

More pictures and text: Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones

Photocall and Protest

I’m not a great fan of organised photo-calls for several reasons, not least that they are usually rather boring. Of course it’s always useful when people have material that visually represents their protest in some way – so the Murdoch face masks produced by Avaaz were welcome (and for once quite nicely produced, although rather over-saturated, tending to photograph rather too beetroot.)

The people who devise such things, doubtless well trained in PR, seldom seem to have a great visual sensitivity. Their idea of a good photograph would appear to be something like this one.

For me it’s the weakest of all those I took, and the challenge is to try and find something just a little different in these occasions.

The banner was a problem, with so much empty monochrome blue space, and it was difficult to crop it and still retain anything of use. So the obvious thing was to avoid it, and I more or less did so throughout the pictures I took.

The sameness imposed on the image by the identical faces and t-shirts was also a problem, and one I tried to lessen in several ways; it was made easier when a rather different and larger Murdoch puppet headed figure joined the protest. But before that I’d tried various other things, such as finding an actual face among the masks:

adding some wonderful curly blonde hair (and in the background the curly red interloper poster of Rebekah, but I didn’t quite get enough depth of field:)

and I think most successfully finding a viewpoint and grouping that had a clear caption on a placard at the left of the image and a lively grouping of those Murdochs at different scales.

A couple of hundred yards away a real protest was taking place, and I followed the man with the Rebekah poster (who had not been at all welcome with Avaaz) to this, hoping perhaps to see an opporturnity of a picture on the way, but it didn’t happen.

But as you possibly see form the pictures, I was rather happier in the middle of a real protest,

and made use of that Rebekah poster a little more legibly there.

Though there too it seemed that the rather more political protesters didn’t much like the sense of humour it showed.

Coalition of Resistance Picket Murdoch
Avaaz Protest Murdoch At Parliament

Rev Billy Triumphs

One of the performances of the year was surely the exorcism of BP in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall by the Reverend Billy and his Church of Earthalujah, and I was pleased to be able to photograph and write about it.

There was quite a lot of light inside the Turbine Hall, and I could have chosen to use a higher shutter speed, but as usual I wanted to work a little on the edge, and most of the pictures were taken at 1/30 to 1/60 despite there being considerable movement. Combining flash with ambient meant that there was a reasonable chance of people closest to the camera getting a sharp flash image, and I used an aperture around f8 to give me reasonable depth of field.

This image of Rev Billy advancing on the BP sponsorship logo is a good example, taken with a very wide angle and tightly framed (it is more or less uncropped) was one that worked, although as always there were plenty that were just too blurred because of the slow shutter speed. But although it was the image that I selected for the ‘front page’ of my piece on Demotix it was the picture two frames earlier that I actually like most, and is on the front page for Rev Billy’s Tate BP Exorcism on My London Diary. The hands are not quite as good, but I like the radial blur in the background.

Again this is more or less uncropped, and the only thing I’ve done in post-processing is a certain amount of burning in, mainly on the hands and windows, and I think a little ‘dodging’ on those white trousers. The rest of the effect was in camera, where the 16-35mm has a zoom ring that can be conveniently spun during exposure, with not entirely predictable results. The flash exposure is short, so hardly if at all affected by the zoom.

They are more or less uncropped, but quite a few of the images I took I did crop, because there was another camera which often moved into my frame, and I didn’t want it. You can see it in quite a few of the rather too many images from this event I’ve put on line. Usually video cameras don’t come with very wide lenses, but this was someone using a still camera with a very wide lens and shooting video. I’ve seen a clip of the film that he shot, which also includes some footage from a second camera on the balcony, and it is really very good and I feature rather prominently in it.

The problem with using wide-angles for video is that you need to get really close to the action and to stay there, and that means you are likely to get in the way not just of photographers, but also of the performers and the audience. Ultra-wides are much less of a problem with still photography as you move in, take a few frames and then move out. Even with just one guy doing it, I felt he was too obtrusive, and if others take it up then we are in danger of never actually seeing an event again except on film. Everything will get to look like those walls of players lining up in front of the guy taking the free kick.

I’d had problems with the D300 taking pictures of swans earlier in the day, and hadn’t sorted out what was going wrong, so I’d left it at home and was working with only one camera, and very much feeling the limitations. Changing lenses is really too slow, and there were points when I would have loved to have had a second camera with the 10.5 fisheye, and others where I just didn’t have time to change to something longer than the 16-35mm. Here’s an example:

I think it’s a good picture but I found myself reaching down for the D300 which wasn’t there. If it had been I would have made another picture as well, something like this:

Reproduced small it has a big advantage in letting you clearly read the banner on the balcony. Of course you can crop, but I’d much rather have taken what I wanted in camera.

Out Of Touch

I don’t have a smartphone and I live 20 miles out from the centre of London. I only heard that things were kicking off in Tottenham when there was a short (and it turned out later rather misleading) item on the radio news as I was thinking of bed. By that time my quickest way to get there would have been a couple of hours on my old bike and apart from the fact that it would have exhausted me to ride around 25 miles in the middle of the night, I thought everything would be over even if I did make it. I was tired, had drunk a few glasses of wine and bed was the only option.

I’d been sorry to miss the vigil at the police station earlier in the day, but again I’d only found out about it at the last minute. I’ve photographed community demonstrations against the police at Tottenham before. But if I had gone doubtless I would have taken my pictures and gone home after an hour or so, several hours before that peaceful event ended and well before the trouble flared.

Sunday morning the news was all over the Internet, with even some decent coverage on Sky, though it took the BBC a while to really catch up with what had happened. Friends of mine had posted on Facebook in the early morning that they had got home safe (if some were rather bruised) after a busy night, and I saw some of their pictures.

Everyone was expecting further trouble and I wondered vaguely about going to see what was happening. Earlier in the week I’d asked a friend if he’d like to come with me to photograph a couple of events that day, one not far from Tottenham, but he was busy with other things and I’d decided not to go on my own but to do other things. I thought briefly about changing my mind, looked at the weather forecast and decided there were things I could more usefully do at home.

It was almost certainly a sensible decision. When things get a little tricky on the streets you need to be in touch and to be with other photographers. A smartphone really becomes as essential as a camera, and at times if it can take a halfway decent picture you would be better off using a phone than a camera. Possibly it won’t be too long before DSLRs are relegated to history and the standard kit for photojournalists and press will be a videophone. And I did get some essential work I’d been putting off for a while completed.

Of course I knew that many of my colleagues – particularly those in the London Photographers Branch of the NUJ would be out there on the streets covering the events which were rightly a matter of great media interest. I’ve always seen my own particular niche on My London Diary as covering the events that don’t make the news, and to try and make them into news, or if not news to write them into our history. One of my pictures from an earlier demonstration against police in that area, when I was one of the few (if not the only) photographers present on a bleak winter’s day became part of a national museum display.

The best set of pictures I’ve yet seen from the events were by the Chair of the NUJ London Photographers’ Branch, Jess Hurd, working for Report Digital, remarkable both for their drama and their clarity. Apart from everything else they do show the remarkable capability of current DSLRs in low light; phones still have a long way to go.

These pictures came as no surprise, as so often her work does stand out from the crowd (and there are plenty of other good photographers in the crowd.) Until 28 August you can see her show of “10 years of intrepid work”… involved in people’s struggles for dignity and freedom around the world”, ‘Taking the Streets – Global Protest‘ at the Usurp Art Gallery in Harrow (close to West Harrow Underground, open Thursday to Sunday 2-7 Free admission.)