>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

More from Stratford Marsh

It saddens me a little now to walk on the Greenway across Stratford Marsh to remember what has been lost. The business estates and small works etc of course were not to everyone’s taste, although there were some modest but pleasing buildings among them, but there were some invigorating areas of minor wilderness, and some lush willow trees along the Pudding Mill River, along with some nice little touches of the picturesque.

© 2005 Peter Marshall
Willow trees by the Pudding Mill River on Marshgate Lane, 2005

The trees were at the left of this scene – June 2009

So much has now gone, and so many areas are now inaccessible – as for example:

You can see many more pictures of the Olympic area, including Stratford Marsh on my River Lea site, including some from the 1980s as well as since 2000. When I get time I’ll add more from the 1990s, when the waterways and footpaths in the area were all cleaned up and neatly signposted for walkers.

Saturday I went to take pictures to show the progress being made in covering the area with concrete for the Olympics, and made some more panoramas:

The opposite side of the Greenway to the Olympic stadium

You can see this rather larger, and also panoramas including the growing Olympic stadium and other pictures of the site on My London Diary.

Unfortunately the section of the Greenway south of the main railway line to Stratford High St is closed until Spring 2010, with a detour in place across to Pudding Mill Lane at Pudding Mill Station and down this to Marshgate Lane and Stratford High Street. This is to allow the roadway under the railway to be dug out to allow double-decker buses to pass under.

Poplar Walk

Poplar isn’t an area of London I know particularly well, although I’ve walked around it a few times and taken some photographs. I’ve found more to interest me just down the road in the Isle of Dogs, to the west in Limehouse, or along the Lea and Bow Creek to the east and north.

But it was very pleasant to take a walk around on Saturday afternoon in the company of around 18 other people and be led around by Bridget Cherry, who together with Charles O’Brien and Nikolaus Pevsner wrote the definitive volume on the architecture of East London in the ‘Buildings of England‘ series – she started work with Pevsner in 1968 and was editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides from 1971-2002.

The walk was one of half a dozen ‘Story of London’ trails organised by the Heritage of London Trust in association with Pevsner Architectural Guides, and although you’ve missed the chance to be guided personally by the experts you can still download a copy of the walk from the web site. (Or you can instead use the book, which includes rather more buildings and generally more detal than the walk, but is a little less convenient to carry than an A4 sheet.)

The walk started just below the stairs in this picture and related the buildings around Poplar High St and the East India Dock Road to the development of the area from the 17th century to the current day.

The most recent building mentioned on the walk is also one of the more controversial. Robin Hood Gardens, completed in 1972, has been encouraged by the council to get into very poor condition, partly by simple neglect but also by using it as a sink estate and permitting overcrowding. They want to demolish it and rebuild on the rather large site (and some people would undoubtedly make large amounts of money from doing so.)

© 2009 Peter Marshall
Narrow balconies overlook the park in the centre of the development; the outer side has wider ‘streets in the sky’ for access

Many tenants like the estate (though some hate it) and it still seems basically an excellent solution to a difficult problem, and a unique one. I was more than surprised to find it was not a listed building – it is a major work by two of our best-known architects – and shocked to hear that it was turned down. I’m sure the grounds must have been more to do with the politics of the situation than architecture.

Growing salad crops

You can read more about the area and the walk and see more pictures on ‘My London Diary‘

Police Try to Censor Protest

On Sunday Sikhs marched through London on the 25th anniversary of the storming by the Indian Army of their holiest site, the Golden Temple at Amritsar. Indira Ghandi had ordered the assault to capture or kill Sikh separatists who were in the compound at a time of year when it was also full of pilgrims.

It’s hard to be sure how many people were killed by the attack, but independent estimates suggest around 5,000, including many women and children, as well as hundreds of Indian soldiers and a relatively small number of Sikh militants.

A few months later, Mrs Ghandi’s Sikh bodyguards killed her. Following the assassination, high-ranking Indian politicians from her Congress Party incited mobs to indiscrimately attack and murder Sikhs, and thousands were massacred. Sikhs continue to fight for a nation of their own, Khalistan, through groups such as Babbar Khalsa International, and repression against them has also continued; Sikhs allege that “over 250,000 Sikhs have been killed by in an orchestrated genocide by the Indian government.”

You can see more about the march and rally before the march on My London Diary, where there are many more pictures.

One aspect that worried me was an attempt by the police to censor the placards before the start of the march. The officer in charge, Superintendent Raj Kohli, the Met’s highest-ranking Sikh officer, objected to a number of them because of the images on them, and a woman officer said that some might cause offence, particularly because they might be seen by children.

I didn’t think that the arguments the police put forward were in fact valid. Children would be unlikely to be able to interpret the images in any detail when they were being carried on placards in a demonstration, and I think they would have rather less impact on children than on adults. The placard that Kohli was most insistent about was different, showing a simple graphic of a person’s head seen in a gun sight, and the name of a prominent Indian politician who was implicated in the massacres of Sikhs. He saw this a clearly a provocation to violence, while I would see it more as an expression of what should the persons concerned deserve.

Although some agreement seemed to have been reached between Kohli and the protesters, many if not all of the disputed placards were carried in the march and can be seen in the pictures on My London Diary.

Kohli was carrying an A4 printout of the symbol of Babbar Khalsa International, a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act, 2000. This was present, along with the name Babbar, on many of the placards and banners that people carried in the march. So far as I saw the police took no action over this, perhaps because it would have involved dealing with thousands among those marching.

BKI and attempt to establish Khalistan certainly appears to have the support of a large fraction of British Sikhs, and more obviously so than when I started photographing Sikh events, perhaps around ten years ago. It’s only aim appears to be self-determination for the Sikh nation and I can see little reason why our government should feel a need to include it on the list of banned organisations. Though of course I wouldn’t want to express any approval or support for it, as that would almost certainly be an offence.

Gaia

Here’s a site I think is worth a look both for the photography on it and the idea behind it.
Gaia Photos mission is to “increase awareness about the challenges we are facing together on this planet and to promote understanding across all borders, physical or otherwise, of this world we share“, and to “promote quality and diversity in documentary photography.”

They are also looking for photographers around the world, and if you are “an active and professional freelance photographer or photojournalist” with “a ‘track record’ of working for publications or other media organisations“and particularly if you live in a country where they don’t yet have photographers (when I looked there was only one for the whole of Africa but already a couple for the UK) this could possibly be a place worth putting your work.

The site certainly has some interesting stories already posted on it, and looking through the names there I find a few I recognise, including Bevis Fusha from Albania who I met in Poland in 2005, and whose recent Facebook post led me to the site.

You can see much more of his work on his own web site.

But That’s My Picture!

Most photographers who put pictures on the web – or publish them in magazines – are likely to have the experience of opening a web site and finding to their surprise that one (or more) of their pictures is being used without their permission.

It’s a problem I’ve written about in the past and doubtless will return to. The first thing to do is perhaps to make sure it really is your picture – especially if it’s a picture of a popular place or event other people may well have had the same idea as you and produced a very similar image.

If it was taken from the web, it’s quite likely still to contain the metadata that you always include – such as your copyright message and contact details (and if you are not including these you should be.) If it was scanned from a magazine it won’t have your metadata, and of course some software discards much or all of it from web images.

Once you are sure it is your picture that has been used, you need to consider whether the use could be legal. If you sell images through an agency or picture library, the person using it may have a licence for the use they are making, and in some countries, particularly the USA, the concept of ‘fair use’ may give people rather more licence to use work without permission than in the UK. Probably the main area where such as use would normally be accepted here is in reviews of exhibitions and publications, where normally selected images are made available by galleries and publishers.

Photo Attorney Carolyn E. Wright, LLC, in her post Help! I’ve Been Infringed! provides excellent advice from a US perspective on the various options for dealing with this, starting with doing nothing at all and ending with going ballistic – or rather File a Copyright Infringement Lawsuit.

Although much of it applies in other countries, in the UK photographers are perhaps less greedy than in the US – or rather the law allows them to be. She warns against sending invoices at three times the normal rate for any unauthorised use – apparently fairly usual in the US – on thegrounds that you may otherwise get considerably more. Most photographers here are happy to settle for double, and invoice on that basis.

You’ll also need to decide whether filing with the US Copyright Office is worth the cost and they hassle involved. While she recommends it strongly, for those of us not based in the US I think it is considerably more debatable.

Spanish Tastes

I don’t think the organisers of what now seems to be an annual ‘Taste of Spain‘ in Regent St have really decided quite what the event is. I only bothered to go to it as I had to get from one of may favourite pubs just to the north of Oxford Circus, where I’d met up with a few friends, to Piccadilly Circus, where I could get a bus towards Waterloo. And of course I only needed to do this because Regent St was closed to traffic for this event. It didn’t put me in a better mood when I got to the bus stop and stood there waving wildly to the driver as my bus sailed past at some speed – there are just too many bus drivers with something against picking up passengers.

There really didn’t seem enough in the way of entertainment taking place – unless you find queueing fun. Not even a great deal of leaflets to collect and very little being given away.

Coming out of the pub I almost bumped into a guy with some legs over his shoulder and a companion with a bright pink wig. Fortunately he stopped and posed briefly for me, as I’d been busy talking and not at all ready to take a picture.

Photographically things were pretty straightforward, other than the sun which was a little low and usually in exactly the wrong place – one or two shots ruined by nasty flare (a little in this picture.) Everything here on a 20mm lens on the D700 as I couldn’t be bothered to get the other body out of my bag. Or because I really like working with just the one fixed lens when I can. A few are slightly cropped where I didn’t have time or couldn’t move in closer.

The only really interesting stand in Regent St was for Madrid, mostly taken up by reproductions of pictures from the Prado in large bright red stands. Favourite for the poseurs was Goya’s ‘La maja desnuda‘ and I took a whole series of various people in front of it. I’ve several of this scene, and o one of the things I like about it – difficult to see on this scale – is that you can clearly see the guy in it photographing his woman is framing out her body language which is what would give the picture its interest.

There is of course another photographer in the picture – Epson digital rangefinder on his stomach at extreme left, and being a mate of mine I’ll probably get to see his picture of the scene later. But I find I see through the viewfinder better when I hold the camera to my eye!

More pictures and ‘anthropologie’ on My London Diary. Where I also speculate about the copyright issues involved and that a prior trip to Madrid might have made Ruskin less shocked with Effie on 10th April 1846. Nowadays its rather easier to find porn on the Internet.

Hizb ut-Tahrir and Pakistan

It’s hard not to agree that America is the root cause of much of the current troubles in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, but while it may be an ‘American War’ that Pakistan is currently fighting, it is rather harder to see what the solution should be.

The placards say ‘Khilafah – only way to stop America and Terror’ but at the moment a Caliphate isn’t on offer from any of the sides in Pakistan, and Muslims are capable of killing Muslims without the encouragement of the USA.

It’s also hard to disagree with Hizb ut-Tahrir when they talk about many (if not all) Muslim regimes as corrupt. But those areas under attack by Pakistani and US forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan have seen terrible repression, particularly of women, under Taliban rule. If any of the speakers mentioned this, I missed it.

I missed too hearing what the women who made up almost half the march thought, as none were called to speak. At the two rallies they stood apart, some way from the speakers – the party insists on the segregation of sexes in public activities, insists on the covering of women’s bodies except for face and hands, forbids women ot be in private with men except immediate family, bans them from important public office and insists on their duty to obey their husbands.

More about the march and more pictures on My London Diary.

Don McCullin’s Selection

The National Media Museum has a fine collection of early photography, and Don McCullin, one of the better British photojournalists of the 20th century was invited to pick images of archaeological sites around the Mediterranean taken in the 19th and early 20th century to go on line on Flickr (he has a new book of similar sites taken recently.) They are also available as a slide show, which I found technically disappointing.

Possibly better still, if you can manage to get to the Museum’s Collections & Research Centre – for some reason they call it Insight on Wednesday 3 or10 June at 2pm or Sundays 7 and 14 June at 12pm you, together with all the others who’ve come, can see them for real. It may be in a rather obscure place, but even so I’d be surprised if the numbers are small enough to make this a worthwhile experience.

McCullin’s show at the Museum until Sunday 27 September 2009 in covers his personal vision of England, and is certain to be worth a visit – and the web site also has a number of video clips of the man talking about his life and work. There is also the full 70-minute podcast of Don’s talk with exhibition curator Colin Harding, recorded live on 8 May which you can access from this page.

According to the Flickr page, “Copies of the photographs selected by Don can be obtained through the Museums picture library, the Science and Society Picture Library.” It’s a pity that there isn’t a little more co-operation between the Museum and its picture library. I searched for one of the pictures, “Maxime Du Camp (1822-1894); ‘Haute Égypte, Grand Temple de Denderah, vue genérale’ (Upper Egypt, Great Temple of Dendera, general view), 1852 ; Salt print; 16.2 x 20.8″ and failed to find it. A second search on “Maxime Du Camp” gave 8 results, none of which was by the photographer (for some reason it felt I really wanted Tony Ray Jones or Roger Fenton.)

I’ve previously bought prints from the picture library and found them to be good quality inkjet prints – in some cases better prints than the vintage bromide originals. I rather doubt if those of fine salt prints from calotype negatives would be as satisfactory.

For a rather larger and more informative selection of similar pictures take a look at Voyage en Orient from the BNF (there is an English version, but the French is better if you can.)

Wedding Pictures

No, not a real wedding, just in case anyone is thinking I’ve flipped. Exactly two years ago, US forces attacked a wedding party in Haji Nabu, Afghanistan, killing 47 people. It was one of a number of similar incidents which have contributed to thousands of Afghan civilians being killed by US/NATO forces.

Protesters from Voices in the Wilderness UK, Justice Not Vengeance and London and Oxford Catholic Workers organised a Die-In on the second anniversary of this massacre in wedding dress, with brides and grooms and wedding guests.

This was a non-violent protest against the war in Afghanistan and in sympathy with the victims of NATO aggression there, and they marched on The Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, Middlesex from which our wars, including that in Afghanistan, are run. Police allowed the marchers to approach the area, but stopped them outside the camp around 200 metres before the main gate.

Here around half of the 40 or so protesters staged a die-in, lying on the road and blocking it for around 45 minutes before police eventually removed them. Six people who insisted on continuing their protest by going back onto the road after being removed were led away by police. They were held for several hours before being charged and released to appear in court at a later date.

You can see more pictures and more about the protest on My London Diary.

Wet Weather

Wednesday morning was cold and wet. The rain wasn’t particularly heavy but it was persistent. We can probably all agree there’s only room for one Martin Parr in photography, and while his ‘Bad Weather‘ was one of his most interesting books, the odd effects caused by water droplets on the lens and other hazards are generally things to be avoided rather than emulated. Photographing in the rain was, frankly, a pain (and lying on that cold road, even on bin bags must have been pretty uncomfortable.)

Both the Nikon D300 and D700 I was using stand up pretty well to rain and the real problems I have are with lenses. Mainly I was shooting with a 20mm f2.8 on the D700, and as always with a UV filter on the front. I worked with a microfibre cloth in my left hand, keeping the front of the lens covered except while actually taking pictures, and wiping the filter obsessively, but still there were plenty of shots spoiled by raindrops on the filter. I don’t own a lens hood for this lens – with a 20mm lens hoods offer little protection either from sun or rain. A carefully placed hand is considerably more effective against the sun (and yes I do often have to crop the odd finger out of pictures) but doesn’t work for rain.

On the D300 I was using my Nikon 18-200, but this is truly a fair weather lens. Even a hint of damp in the air tends to deposit on inner lens surfaces, having got dragged in by the pump action of the zoom. Mostly this stayed under my coat, and the longer lens hood (it’s a 27mm equivalent at its widest) although a pathetic piece of design that falls off regularly, does help a little to keep the rain out during use.

A Day Off?

What do photographers do on their days off? Usually take pictures, at least while sober, and sometimes when not. For most of us, photography isn’t just a skill or a job (or even a profession) but an obsession.

Last Monday was a Bank holiday, and rather than go an photograph London taking its Bank Holiday in different ways I went with my wife and two sons (both in their 30s) for a walk in the country. Fortunately I didn’t take the full kit, just the Nikon D300 with a couple of lenses, because it turned out to be about twice as far as I’d expected, around 18 miles.

Fortunately it was mainly along canals, and so pretty flat. And quite pretty and mainly very quiet – not quite my sort of thing at all! Probably there are far too many pictures taken along canals and as there was a canal festival going on there were lots of prettified canal boats (and for a short stretch some excruciating country music – the wrong country – over a noisy loudspeaker system.)

I was reminded of something I wrote a few years ago, about Eric de Maré, though largely because I’d then omitted to mention his great interest in canals. What I mainly wrote about was his Penguin “Photography” written in the 1950s on which a whole generation cut its photographic teeth, and a better introduction to the subject than many – here’s an edited version of what I wrote then:

A historical introduction, was followed by a chapter on photography as a creative medium, then one on composition and then five pages of quotations about photography. Only after that did it get down to a basic and readable coverage of the technical side of black and white photography.

A strong point was its use of many fine examples of the medium in its two picture sections, which included well-known works by great figures of the medium, including Werner Bischof, Bill Brandt, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Peter H Emerson, Bert Hardy, Hill & Adamson, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Clarence White and many more. The few nudes included (the only images of naked bodies allowed in our house apart from a few anthropological images in ancient back-copies of National Geographic) undoubtedly were a major part of the book’s attraction for me as a young teenager.

There is a nice short feature on de Maré on the English Heritage site, although the only canal image included is more an image of a structure than a typical canal picture.

Incidentally if you are thinking about buying his canal book, the 1987 paperback edition is readily available second-hand at under a fiver, despite some vendors describing it as “hard to find” and offering it at around 20 times the price. His “Photography” can be found for less than a quid, and most of his other books are also available cheaply, not because they are bad, but because they were popular. Some are illustrated by his generally excellent drawings rather than photographs.

You can see some of my photographs from Monday’s route march on My London Diary. A couple appear in a roughly 2: 1 panoramic format, and were taken with this in mind using the Sigma 10-20mm (15-30mm equivalent on the D300.) I find 10mm is often too extreme using the full image rectangle, but gives a decent panoramic.

The D700 (and D3) can record RAW images either for the full sensor or for the ‘FX’ cut down frame area – and with Nikon lenses at least you can get the camera to automatically switch between these as appropriate for the lens in use – or choose manually.

I actually rather like shooting with the FX format 18-200mm on this body, when you get a brightline frame in the centre of the viewfinder image, making taking pictures much more like using a rangefinder – so much better for cropping and also for action where being able to see what is just outside the image in the viewfinder is a real plus. At around 6Mp, the cut down frames are a little short of pixels, but it’s still plenty for most purposes.

But for me it would be useful for Nikon to add a panoramic option too, that could be switched on to show in the viewfinder (and of course crop the RAW image too.) Nikon’s 14-24mm and Sigma’s 12-24mm would be ideal candidates to use with this. Of course there is some advantage to not cropping at the point of taking – but rather just thinking panoramic – in that the normal format image gives considerable scope for the equivalent of a rising or falling front when cropping to a panoramic format.