I’ve still not been to the Derby, but did go to Ladies Day at Epsom this year. Not sure I’ll go again, and certainly not if they refuse me accreditation.
There were some ladies there.
and horses:
even a couple of unicorns:
but little of interest!
A few snaps here on My London Diary.
I would probably have gone to the Israeli Embassy to photograph the demonstration organised by the Zionist Federation UK to support the action of the Israeli armed forces in storming the Gaza flotilla and killing nine of the peace activists on board in any case. But hearing that the English Defence League (EDL) intended to add their support to the demonstration made me determined to go along to photograph it.
On its Facebook page, the English Defence League (EDL) Jewish Division shortly after commented “In a show of solidarity with Israel, EDL supporters did not fly any flags except the Israeli flag. The support of the EDL was noticed within the crowd – our flags flew high and proud” and elsewhere on the page a member asserts that 5 or 6 of them actually took part in the protest, while another small group of EDL sat and watched from the other side of the road “waiting incase anything kicked off” (sic) and that one of them was possibly arrested. Over 500 people have expressed that they ‘like’ the Facebook group
Although I was pleased to read that the Board of Deputies of British Jews has condemned the EDL’s supposed support for Israel, some of the statements reported from people in the Zionist Federation before and at the event appeared to welcome their support, although I think later they made clear their opposition.
According to the [not] english defence league jewish division blog, one of the supporters of the EDL Jewish Division, former CST (Community Security Trust) member, Mark Israel, claims Jews should back the EDL as an alternative to existing community groups. Later I was pleased to read it reported that the EDL’s “advances have been swiftly rebuffed by Jewish leaders”
There was an England flag along with the many Jewish ones, and a man with an explicitly anti-Muslim placards. And although I cannot positively confirm the EDL claims that there were a number of them among the demonstrators I have no reason to doubt it.
While responsible Jewish organisations around the world at least expressed regret at the loss of life during the boarding of the flotilla, I heard nothing of this from those demonstrating. Their mood seemed to be exultant, stressing their support for Squadron 13 who had carried out the killings. At one point a section of the crowd at least was chanting ‘dead Palestinian scum‘.
I know that many Jews do not share these feelings. Some indeed were a few yards down the street in a counter-demonstration together with Muslims and others. My own view is that peace can only be achieved through talking to people, not by blockades but by negotiations. And as history has shown in Ireland, South Africa and elsewhere around the world it means talking to people who you don’t like and who you call terrorists.
More text and pictures from the demonstrations opposite the Israeli Embassy on My London Diary.
Wednesday June 2 was a significant but largely ignored anniversary. Nine years earlier, on June 2 2001, peace protester Brian Haw began his protest in Parliament Square. Nine years later, despite an Act of Parliament and various raids and harassment by the police, he is still there. Still there because our government is still pursuing a war against the people of Iraq, and against the children of Iraq, with children still dying. He said he would stay for as long as it takes, and it’s taking far too long.
I’m not sure when I first photographed Brian Haw. It’s still hard for me to find work I took when I was still shooting on film. Certainly I photographed him when he spoke at an International Women’s Day peace event in Trafalgar Square in March 2004, and later that year at his protest in Parliament Square.
Brian Haw in Parliament Square in 2004 after more than 3 years of protest
His protest there has changed the face of London so far as protest is concerned. Before then I’d gone to Parliament Square only on fairly rare occasions, but now it has become a major venue for political protest.
Since then I’ve made numerous visits, sometimes taking pictures, on other visits simply talking to him and the others in the peace campaign.
I photographed his display along the length of the square shortly before the police made a night raid and trashed most of it in May 2006:
Parliament Square, Brian Haw in the centre of his display, May 2006
And I was there for the party a few days later on June 2 2006 when we celebrated five years of his protest:
Parliament Square, 2 June 2006 – 5 Years of Brian Haw’s protest
In March 2007 I took what is still my favourite picture of him:
and later in that year I was at another party to mark another year there:
and again in 2008:
I was there in 2009 when he was arrested and bundled into a police van (he was released by the court and back in the square the following day):
This year there were no celebrations on June 2, although a few people came by to give Brian their regards and note his achievement. The police came along too, and marked the day by issuing a summons to Brian’s fellow protester in the peace campaign there, Barbara Tucker, for using a megaphone, illegal under SOCPA – the Act that was meant to clear Brian out of the square.
More about my visit to see Brian and Barbara, and the Democracy Camp also now in Parliament Square, on My London Diary. There are far too many sets of pictures of my earlier visits to list them all here, but these are some of my earlier visits:
Reuters issue guidance to its photographers and journalists in A Brief Guide to Standards, Photoshop and Captions, which has probably become one of the most misunderstood documents on the web. As might be expected, it includes a great deal of very good sense, but although the principles set out in the document are useful and straightforward enough, most people have misinterpreted the intent of the guidelines.
Unless you work for Reuters (or a similar agency) and have the luxury of leaving working on your pictures to the picture desk, they are really nothing to do with how or how much you should work on your own images.
I don’t have anyone to do my work and I don’t like the idea of leaving others to work on my pictures. Back when I used film I preferred to make almost all my prints myself, regarding my input into that as a part of my work as a photographer. I learnt to be a good printer, and certainly a far better printer than anyone I could ever afford to print my work for me; good enough to be asked quite a few times by other photographers if I would print their work, though I always said no.
The Reuters guidelines are there so that photographers who have not been granted greater “Photoshop privileges” don’t mess up their pictures but leave the real jobs to the trained guys on the desk, who photographers are encouraged to ask to do things like “lighten the face, darken the left side, lift the shadows etc.” Too many of those who have commented on them or recommended them simply have failed to realise this (and it’s an easy trap I’ve to some extent fallen in in the past.)
It isn’t in any case sensible to try to lay down rules about exactly how much of this or that tool is permissible, not least because many photographers will use different software and hardware. Trying for example to set down limits for sharpening ignores the very different approaches to in-camera sharpening (even of RAW files) adopted by different camera manufacturers. Even using the Nikon D300 and D700 I find different levels of ‘capture sharpening’ appropriate when importing images into Lightroom.
The key to what is or is not acceptable is always intention, both when taking pictures and when processing them. The three rules that Reuter’s give boil down to respecting the content and journalistic integrity of the image and not doing anything that would mislead the viewer. This is basically all we need to keep in mind and apply.
Photography – at least in the areas of documentary, photojournalism and news – should be about the accuracy and clarity of transmitting information and ideas. Adjustments made to images which are essentially to correct the defects and limitations of lighting conditions, the photographic equipment, photographic skills and process are generally acceptable, while those that seek to alter the scene as perceived by the photographer or to produce graphic derivatives are generally inappropriate for documentary, photo-journalistic or news photography.
Traditionally in black and white photography, printing involved burning and dodging of areas to create an image that expressed more clearly the photographer’s intentions. Some of the best known photographers – Gene Smith being a prime example – at times pushed this perhaps beyond acceptable limits, but it is a degree of control over our work that few photographers would want to relinquish.
One area where it often becomes important is when using direct flash, where the lighting in various areas of a picture can be very unbalanced and some differential correction is often necessary.
What I think might help is to try and lay down some guidelines for photographers, and I’ve made a start on this below by trying to put various things we may do on a kind of spectrum of acceptability – between those things we should always attend to and those that we should never do. Of course there are problems, and sometimes its a matter of degree – almost anything can be taken too far and become unacceptable.
Although some of the vocabulary may be taken from Photoshop, I now see little reason for photographers to use this software other than for one or two very specialised tasks. Lightroom 3 now does more than 99% of what I need that I used to use Photoshop for.
Always appropriate (as necessary)
Often appropriate
Sometimes appropriate
Seldom appropriate
Never appropriate
I’m sure there is much I’ve missed out, and this is intended as an initial attempt at a rational discussion of the issues. It does reflect my own practice as a documentary photographer who has worked with both film and digital.
There are some difficult questions to which I have no answer. For example the use of slow shutter speeds to produce blur, sometimes with the addition of flash to produce visually powerful effects has long been accepted as legitimate in these areas of photography, and continues to be so in the digital age. But similar if not identical results can be achieved using suitable software. Personally I find this unacceptable, but find it hard to justify my opinion as to why it matters at which stage of the process this is done.
There are also some – relatively few – special cases where some extreme graphical techniques are appropriate. These generally are so obvious that it is hardly necessary to label them as such.
The first week of June was the European Week of Action to Stop the Deportation Machine and there were two demonstrations planned on Tuesday afternoon as a part of this, both at immigration reporting centres in London. Both are ordinary looking office blocks, and you have to look very closely to find the small brass plates that tell you anything about what goes on inside. But if you are a refugee or asylum seeker a visit to either of them can be a very stressful occasion – and one that could end with you being put into a holding cell en route to forcible deportation to a country where you may face persecution, torture and even death if an official decides not to believe what you tell them.
Photographing demonstrations like this presents some problems. Firstly there usually isn’t a great deal to photograph – a rather anonymous building, a fairly small number of demonstrators and not a lot happening. Occasionally there are also people present who do not want to be photographed, at times because their own position as asylum seekers remains unresolved. And on this occasion things were not improved by some rather persistent light rain.
Communications House, more or less next to Old St tube station just north of the centre of the City of London is a place I’ve photographed several times, as there are regular monthly demonstrations here as well as the occasional special event.
A little light relief was provided by the security men who came out and told the protesters that they had to remove the banners which they had taped to the wall of the building. One of them tried to tell me I couldn’t take his picture, but since I already had taken quite a few frames I didn’t really bother to put him right. I left a little before the protest ended to have a coffee at one of my favourite cafes a short walk away, the Juggler, which has a gallery space where I’ve organised a number of shows in the past, most recently ‘Taken in London‘ last year.
There were rather more demonstrators later in the afternoon at Beckett House, next to London Bridge Station, and for a while it did stop raining, but remained dull and dreary. I’d got there around the time the protest was supposed to be starting and there was nobody there, and instead of waiting as I should have done I took a short walk around the area. More than 20 years ago I did a little research and wrote an self-published an A4 leaflet with an industrial archaeology walk of the West Bermondsey area just to the south (I printed and sold between 500 and a thousand copies – later made available on-line here) with a couple of photos and a bad photo-derived drawing, and I still like to have a look now and then to see how things have changed (and quite a lot has.) The last time I paid a visit was for Zandra Rhodes’s birthday and a fashion show on Bermondsey St.
As such diversions tend to, it took me a little longer than I expected and by the time I got back to Beckett House (named I suspect for Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, killed in December 1170 and made a saint rather than the Labour politician and one-time Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett) things were in full swing and I had missed some of the action, with a possible sighting there of one of the new Home Office ministers. After our new election came up with the Lib-Con government, few of us can recognise any of those involved.
This second ‘Against the Deportation Machine‘ demonstration was a slightly larger event, with around 30 people taking part, and became just a little lively when most of them decided to take a walk around the building and demonstrate in the car park at the back, so that those working on that side of it could see what was going on. The security men got a little worried at this, and came out and made the demonstrators leave, one lifting the gate barrier to make our exit easier.
You can read more about the two demonstrations and the reasons why people were demonstrating as well as see a few more pictures from Communications House and Beckett House on My London Diary.
The relationship between editors and photographers can sometimes be somewhat fraught – and the stories of the battles between Gene Smith and the guys at Life Magazine is one of the great enduring (and largely true) legends of photography. Of course it was a relationship that produced some of the classic photo essays, and although Smith was certainly not the greatest editor of his own work, without these battles I think we can be pretty sure his work would have been less well presented.
Balance wasn’t a concept Smith had a lot of time for, at least when it came to publishing his work, and he almost single-handedly brought Magnum to its knees during his relatively short time with them when he was photographing Pittsburgh, having started the job with one of the most illustrious of photo-editors, Stefan Lorant, who wanted 100 pictures to illustrate a book, while Smith had his own idea.
Although my essay on Smith is digitally “out of print” you can read a few comments about him and editing in a post here, Editing Your Work. Smith spent at least two years trying to edit the 17,000 images he made in Pittsburgh, but eventually gave up and around 45 years later (and some twenty years after Smith’s death) it took five years for Sam Stephenson of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University to produce the exhibition and book Dream Street, possibly the greatest testament to Smith’s photography and a book that should be on the bookshelf of anyone with an interest in documentary, but also a warning to photographers.
Like many photographers, I think I’m both the best and the worst editor of my own work. Best because I know it better than others and usually have some idea of what I was intending. Worst because I have a strong emotional involvement and am often distracted by things that are not actually in the picture but are more about the situation and process of making the image.
This train of thought was prompted by a piece on the Photoshelter Blog, written for photo-editors, Top 10 Ways To Make A Photographer Fall In Love With You. It’s the third in a series by Photoshelter co-founder Grover Sanschagrin which started with Top 13 Ways to Piss Off a Photo Editor and continued with Top 10 Ways To Piss Off A Photographer. All three pieces were based on asking a selection of either working photographers or editors and contain a great deal of sometimes obvious common sense.
On NPR you can see a short piece with 11 images about the re-issue by the J. Paul Getty Museum of the book Black In White America, by photojournalist Leonard Freed. He is one of nine photographers featured in their Los Angeles show from opening June 29 (until November 14, 2010) “Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since The Sixties” which also includes work by Lauren Greenfield, Philip Jones Griffiths, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, James Nachtwey, Sebastião Salgado, W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith, and Larry Towell. As yet there is little about it on their site.
You can see more about Freed (1929-2006) on the Magnum site, where as well as his photographer pages there is also a Magnum in Motion tribute. Looking through the 171 images from Black in White America there shows a really impressive body of work.
You can also of course see many of his other pictures, with some of the strongest coming from his book ‘Police Work’. There are altogether 16 of his features on the Magnum site, the earliest pictures from New York in the 1950s and the latest on Liberian refugees in the Ivory Coast in 1995. A truly remarkable career.
It was three years later that I had the privilege of attending a photographic workshop with him at Duckspool. You can hear him talking about his pictures in a couple of videos on You Tube, Part 1 and Part 2. Although I admired his work, he wasn’t a person I really warmed to, but he had some interesting stories to tell both with his camera and about his life. Though it was the work with the camera that was of real importance.
The review that I wrote about that workshop is still on line on the Duckspool site, although Peter Goldfield who ran the workshops is sadly no longer with us. This is one of the pictures from it that I took on the workshop (though now I might make a better scan!)
Peter Marshall – taken on a Freed workshop
My copy of ‘Aperture 199′ arrived a while back, and while I glanced through it, the review by Andy Grundberg of the work of Robert Bergman didn’t greatly attract my attention, largely because I thought the photographs printed with it were not of any great interest. But a piece by Joerg Colberg in Conscientious has (as so often) attracted my attention, and he links to a feature on Aperture’s Exposures blog, Right on Time by David Levi Strauss in which he attacks Grundberg – and gets a reply – now with a link to the review.
It’s a spat that perhaps doesn’t interest me too greatly, but has led me to think more about Bergman. Perhaps the best place to start is with this piece on Real Clear Arts by Judith H. Dobrzynski which links to her piece in Wall St Journal with 11 photographs. There are also a few different images on Dazed. You can also see these pictures possibly a little larger at the US National Gallery of Art, which also has a 15 minute conversation between senior curator Sarah Greenough and Bergman, as well as a singularly uninformative list of pictures in their collection which are not available on line!
I’d actually love it if I thought that someone who had photographed for almost 60 of his 65 years before being ‘discovered’ was a great unsung genius – hope for the rest of us ageing photographers – but unfortunately I don’t think so on the evidence I’ve seen.
And do take a look at Aperture magazine. I can assure you there are more interesting things in it than this review.
The last Sunday in May I was photographing the annual Pagan Pride Parade in central London. It’s an event I’ve photographed several times before, certainly in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008 where you can see pictures on My London Diary, and possibly in early years, when I was still using film. It’s an event that has being going for I think around ten years and has changed a little over that time but is still basically similar.
Jack in the Green gets into the fountain
This year I remembered the one vital piece of equipment for the day, a pair of decently waterproof shoes, as one of the more important parts of the event is dancing around and through the fountains in Russell Square, a circle containing computer controlled jets which rise and fall, sometimes rather unpredictably.
For most of the pictures in this pool I used the D700 with the 16-35mm lens, both reasonably shower-proof, working with my a microfibre cloth clutched inside my left hand to wipe the splashed off the UV filter on its front. Nikon do make a very nice 14-24mm lens, but it has a bulbous front element which means you can’t use a filter – just like the Sigma 12-24 which I used in some previous years in this situation. I’m rather less happy keeping wiping a curved lens surface than a disposable filter.
Eventually the front element of that 12-24mm did get scratched and pitted, making it unusable, and although I was able to get it replaced, it did cost around £90 and take two months to get the job done. A replacement filter from Hong Kong would have been around a fiver with postage.
It isn’t easy to photograph the dancing, because the main thing about it is simply chaos, and it’s the kind of event where you just have to keep on working and hope to get what you want, but you are very dependent on the event itself, and perhaps this year it didn’t quite develop as much as it has on previous occasions.
From the pool the parade led on through Bedford Square and into the courtyard of the British Museum – an addition to its route which apparently began last year. It makes for some good backgrounds for pictures. I left the parade there as it headed back to carry on with its private events inside Conway Hall where photographers are not welcome and instead went to one of my favourite London pubs, recently restored to its Victorian splendour, the Princess Louise.
Quite a lot of pictures from this year’s event on My London Diary.
Lightroom 3 is now officially out, although I’ve not yet bought it but I certainly will. The upgrade price (from version 1.x or 2.x) in the UK is around £75 (the cheapest I’ve yet seen is £72.99 on Amazon with free delivery) and if you are a teacher or student you can get the full version for around the same price. It seems to cost a couple of pounds more to download, which seems odd to me.
You can watch some Adobe videos about it which as well as showing off the product do also give some useful advice. As yet there don’t seem to be any reviews of the final product that go further than the press release.
As well as the much improved noise reduction that we’ve seen in the beta versions, it now also has several new features I’ve long been asking for, though of course I’m still waiting to see how well they work. Chief among them is lens correction, allowing you to set up single-click profiles for automatically reducing geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. It should ship with profiles for some common Nikon, Canon and Sigma lenses, but Adobe will also offer a free tool for creating your own profiles for any camera/lens combination. You can also manually alter the corrections.
Also very useful is perspective correction, one of the few other remaining reasons why I sometimes need to export images to Photoshop. I can also see myself making use of the new image watermarking tool, though other features such as the film grain simulation and Flickr integration I’ll probably give a miss – unless it’s so easy I change my mind on Flickr (and watermarking might well help there.)
I was less than convinced by the ‘easy image importing’ in the beta – frankly it seemed rather more fuss than the present simple dialogue, and images didn’t always quite end up where I wanted, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Something that isn’t made a great deal of, but I think many will find useful is the ability to use the tone curve just like the one in Photoshop. But perhaps even more important than all the little improvements it promises an overall performance increase.