>Re-PHOTO

I thought about going to celebrate the new nation of South Sudan on Saturday, but felt too tired after photographing a couple of other events in London to go on to do so, and caught the train home instead.

Of course the real celebrations were going on a few thousand miles away in   Juba, the capital of this newest of countries, but as I’ve often noted, the whole world comes to London to protest, and also they celebrate here when there is anything to celebrate.

But three weeks ago there was a powerful reminder of some of the problems that Sudan and South Sudan face, with a protest by the London-based human rights movement Nuba Mountains Solidarity Abroad. You can read about it and see more pictures in Solidarity with Nuba in Sudan

The Nuba mountains lie more or less on the border between the two countries, but have not become part of South Sudan. One of the more balanced and informed comments I’ve read on the area puts it like this:

The Nuba, as has been the case for more than 20 years, are fighting for their land and their cultural survival. The fact that their southern allies left them in the lurch by choosing to secede doesn’t change that.

The roughly 1.5 million Nuba (not to be confused with Nubians) have a diversity of religion, including Christian, Muslim and traditional faiths (even at times within the same families) as well as around 50 different languages. The Sudanese government, as well as quelling all military opposition in the area aims to create an Islamic state, making Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language. Sudan’s president al-Bashir at the start of the month repeated his orders for the ‘cleaning’ of the area and its conversion into a loyal part of this Islamic state.

Photographically I found it difficult not to concentrate on one young man, with wide open eyes. Though when he was joined by a younger girl with a similar gaze there was strong competition.

The problem in photographing her was the police barriers in front of the protesters, the upper bar of which was just above her eye level. As you can see clearly from the shadow on her forehead and jacket, I was using flash. The SB800 was as usual in the hot-shoe and really needed because the light level was pretty low and things just looked rather dull without it. But I did try a few pictures, including this one:

Skin tone is often an issue, and many of those taking part in the protest had truly beautiful dark skin, and in processing the images rapidly to put on the web I’ve lightened it too much in some pictures.

I had a few exposure problems with some of these pictures, largely because I didn’t realise that I had the D300 set for spot metering. In a picture like the one below, this gives quite different results from the face or the poster the woman is holding, neither of which is appropriate. Of course there is a beautifully clear symbol at the bottom left of the viewfinder image to tell you the metering mode in use, but when you are absorbed in the subject, anything else is easy to miss. Spot (or more pedantically, semi-spot) metering like this is a great tool to have on a camera, but one that requires considered use.

This is also a picture where it was important to have the whole of the message on the poster legible, and I was pleased to find that in this and most of the other images I took at least the key placards were legible. At this event it was easy, as everyone was facing more or less the same way and holding the signs in that direction, and there were plenty of them, unlike some protests where there is little or nothing to tell the viewer what they are protesting about.

This was another London protest ignored by the mainstream media, and I seemed to be the only photographer covering it. Although it’s taken a long time for me to post here, my story and pictures were on Demotix later the same day (I’ve used more or less the same text in the My London Diary feature.)  When sometimes I think about taking things easy and stopping reporting on events, it is events like this that might otherwise go unrecorded that keep me going.

I first photographed Hizb ut-Tahrir in October 2004, when they held a rally in Hyde Park and marched to the Pakistan High Commission in a protest against Presdent Busharraf. Then, as at most later occasions involving them I was quickly approached by their press officer keen to know where I was from. Although they were polite, it always seemed to be more a reflection of a desire to control than to help, although usually they did give me a helpful press release .

Writing about that event, I noted that they separated the women from the men, and that the rally was held by the men – with all the speakers being men and the platform in the centre of the men, with the women all in a separate group around 50 metres away, where it was hard to hear what was being said and even harder to see. There were a few women on the edge of the group, closest to the men, holding up camcorders, with zoom lenses  doubtless giving them a better view.

During the march too, the women marched separately, with a large group of men leading the march, and a smaller group behind the women. It pleased me slightly that although the instructions were repeated again and again that the marchers must all line up and march in lines of six people, there were a few who defied the orders.

Of course, all the placards were the official ones with no individuality tolerated, and the marchers were issued with sheets of the slogans to chant (and I reprinted most of them in my piece on the event.)  Hizb ut-Tahrir seemed to me a slightly sinister organisation, and certainly not one I would want to see in power in any country, but it was hard to see any good reason why they should – as some people wanted – be banned.

Over the years and quite a few demonstrations, little seems to have changed, although I have photographed at least one of their demonstrations – against the French ban on Islamic face veils – which was almost a women-only event (there were just a few men around who seemed to be there to make sure they behaved.)

One of the points made by Hizb ut-Tahrir it was difficult to disagree with in many of their speeches in English I’ve listened to when taking pictures was about the corruption and despotism of many Arab rulers. But the Arab spring we’ve seen this year has nothing to do with the kind of revolution they preach, based on establishing a peculiarly fundamentalist version of  Islamic rule under a caliphate (khilifah.)

But last month they were protesting against the persecution of some Muslims in Russia, where Hizb ut-Tahrir is an illegal organisation. In researching the article I wrote I got the impression their complaints of violation of civil rights there were real and justified, although perhaps more directed against members of their organisation than Muslims in general. You can read more about what has been happening in Russians Told ‘Release Our Sister Sidikova’ on My London Diary.

The only real problems in covering this event opposite the Consular Section of the Russian Embassy in Kensington were the weather and the traffic. The embassy proper is hidden away in Kensington Palace Gardens, a private street where neither photography nor protests are permitted, but the consular section overlooks the busy Bayswater Road, and the protest was taking place on the opposite pavement, which is not particularly wide.

There were perhaps around 50 men and 20 women present when I arrived, behind a line of police barriers on the edge of the road. So to photograph them I could either go behind the barriers with them or stand on the edge of the road. Usually police put these barriers with their triangular base pointing out into the road, but here they had put the bases towards the curb, making them stick out eighteen inches of so further into the road.  It seems a small difference (and it is easy to trip over those bases) but it does expose photographers significantly less to traffic. On busy roads like this there is usually too a line of cones to warn traffic which also gives us another foot or so to work in safely. But there were none here, just a police van parked in the road immediately before the protest, obscuring oncoming motorist’s view of it and any photographers.

Of course in tight working areas like this the 16-35 mm on the D700 is very useful, and mainly at the wider end. But one or two cars and lorries did go past uncomfortably close to me as I photographed the men and a smaller group of women at one end of the protest.

It had started to rain slightly as I arrived, but fortunately after a few minutes during which I was working microfibre cloth in hand and wiping the UV filter before every shot it stopped for a few minutes and let me get on with taking pictures. But not for long. Possibly the umbrellas help in some of the pictures, but as well as stopping the rain they also fairly effectively stop light, especially if large and black.

I stuck it out for some time, perhaps rather longer than I would have done if any other photographers had been present (of course there were people from Hizb ut-Tahrir taking pictures with cameras, phones and camcorders too.)  Much as I like many of my colleagues, it’s good to occasionally photograph different things to them. But then we got a really torrential storm; I put up my umbrella and thought briefly that there might be some interesting pictures as people sheltered from the rain, but decided instead to make for the nearby underground station and go to my next location.

Although I’ve only used pictures of the women at the protest here – it was mainly a protest about women after all – I actually spent rather more time photographing the men, and perhaps got some slightly better pictures, as you can see on My London Diary.

This was the third protest outside the Triton Square offices of Atos Healthcare, the company that run computer-based fitness for work tests for the government, who have caused huge distress to many disabled people.

There is something of a Catch-22 about the whole situation. If you can get to the job centre to attend for the test, then clearly you could also get to work, and if you don’t manage to get there you will be penalised for not attending….  Never mind that it might have needed you to organise friends to help you to get there or that it may take you several days to recover.

The tests that Atos don’t really look at the capabilities of the individuals but use a series of stock questions and force the person conducting the test to choose a stock answer, when there may really be nothing that really matches the person in front of them. Rather than a proper medically based test it is a matter of ticking boxes on a computer screen, and although some kind of medical experience is demanded of those carrying them out it may not be in an appropriate area to the person being tested. Someone who has worked with sports injuries may well be assessing people with mental health problems.

You can read more about these tests and the drastic effects they have had on some of those who have been failed by them on My London Diary in Atos, Giz A Job!  and my earlier posts.

At one of the previous demonstrations here, one of those who spoke was the sister of a man who had committed suicide when the tests failed to recognise his mental health issues, and one of the protesters at this event carried a placard about a woman with terminal cancer who was given zero points – no disability – at an Atos test. 70% of those who appeal the decisions have their appeals upheld, an alarming failure rate.

The lighting outside the offices, with bright sun in  the canyon between tall glass-faced buildings was in places fairly dramatic, with patches of bright sun and reflected sunlight in otherwise quite deep shadow.

You get some idea of the problem in this picture, where fill flash and considerable Lightroom magic has managed to bring the RAW file down to the output range of an image, with just a little loss of highlight detail at top centre.  I quite like the challenges of tricky lighting, which tend to result in more interesting images, but at times it was difficult to avoid excessive flare.

As usual, some of this time I was shooting with my personal extended lens hood, otherwise known as my left hand, held above the lens. The built in hood on the 16-35 is as would be expected, almost useless, having to cope with such a wide angle of view, and that on the 18-105, although better is still not very effective.

It’s in this situation that you notice that the optical viewfinder has a slightly smaller view than the camera actually takes (I think according to the manual, which I can’t be bothered to find, showing around 95% of the images. So quite a few of the actual images taken in this way – looking through the viewfinder to see the increase in contrast when you are shading the lens from the sun – turn out to need a little cropping along the top edge where my fingers show in the image but not in the viewfinder.

As you can see there is still some flare in this and some other images. Occasionally things like this green spot can add to images, but usually they just look odd. I’ve toned this down to some extent, but perhaps might also have desaturated it a little more.  I wouldn’t want to remove it completely, as it and its less obvious near neighbour perhaps do give a little of the impression of the light conditions (along with the greatly toned down bright area of pavement at bottom right.)  But I would see no ethical problem in removing flare spots which are generally not apparent in the actual view you are photographing.

Most of the protest was taking place in the shadows, and there was little excitement about the event, though things became more interesting when the protesters decided to go for a ‘walk’, making their way around the barriers provided by the police into the passageway through the building past the office  reception area.  Light was lower here, provided by lighting in the ceiling and coming through the glass windows of the offices, and was also of varying colour, greener from the overhead lighting and rather orange from that indoors.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the pictures I was getting in this fairly confined space from the 16-35mm with the D700,  and when the protesters went back later I decided to try using the 10.5mm fisheye on the D300. As always it was a strange beast to use, but I think it did the job pretty well.

I got very close to Clare as she raised her camera at arms length in front of her to take this image, trying hard to keep the camera more or less upright. The picture is very slightly cropped at the right and top, and also I’ve corrected the curvature slightly – perhaps around 10-20% in Lightroom. The horizontal angle of view is around 140 degrees and I’ve managed to include both the faces of the group of demonstrators on the right and the police and security outside the revolving door at left.

It doesn’t include all the protesters – they continued in a rough circle behind me , and in a perfect world perhaps the placards at the right would have been about this event and not for other protests, but that’s how things were.  But there is something here about the curving lines that brings this image together for me, whereas the rectilinear distortion you get with the 16-35 at 16mm as in the image below seems to sweep things away at the edges.