>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

London St Patrick’s Day Parade

Sunday’s St Patrick’s Day parade in London formed up on Piccadilly, which was a problem for photographers, with lowish sun streaming into our lenses much of the time. Things were a lot easier for us when they used Park Lane around the corner. So although everyone else was probably enjoying the bright sun, we were cursing it.

I wasn’t helped by not having a lens hood for my 20mm on the D700, although frankly most wide-angle lens hoods are hardly worth the trouble. As usual I made use of my hand, holding it in the right place by looking through the viewfinder until I can just see it – and then at least in theory moving it just out of picture. In practice it’s more efficient than the Nikon lenshood, but it also means I have to crop the occasional image where my fingers intrude along the top of the picture!

‘Kennedy Homestead‘ above is a good example – the sun was only just out of picture and my hand was just visible along the top of the picture; fortunately I could also crop a corresponding area at the right and still keep the normal aspect ratio.

I’m not quite a cropping fundamentalist à la H C-B (and it’s always worth remembering that perhaps his best known picture, the leaping man in the Place de l’Europe which featured in most of his obituaries, was quite seriously cropped) but like him I do believe in composing in the viewfinder rather than after the event.

The second problem with bright sun is of course lighting contrast. Fortunately using fill-flash can help with this, along with a little dodging and burning in Lightroom. I’m not quite sure what the US-style cheerleaders were doing at this Irish event, though doubtless some of them had Irish ancestors, and it isn’t anything more than an adequate picture, but it is one that I would have found impossible just a few years ago.

Modern flash systems and high sync speeds make fill flash simple to handle. I couldn’t have done this with my old Olympus OM system. The shutter speed here was 1/320s (at f11, ISO 400) and I had my usual -2/3 stop setting on the flash along with +2/3 on the camera exposure. Really I didn’t have to think about it at all, other than to check I had the flash switched on and take a quick look at the image and histogram after taking the picture.

It did need a bit of work in Lightroom, bringing the sky area and some highlights down and opening up some of the shadow areas. The kind of control that in the old days one could do in black and white, but was very tricky with colour – I remember a number of times getting messages back from the lab that what I wanted just wasn’t possible in those good old days.

The St Patrick’s day parade was one of the big events started in London by Ken Livingstone, and one that he always seemed to enjoy. Although many of the supporters of Boris Johnson moaned about Ken wasting money on such events, I’m pleased to see that they are continuing under the new management – and Boris was there himself at the front of Sunday’s march. So far as I’m aware he doesn’t claim any Irish ancestors and for once he didn’t put his foot in anything.

You can see more pictures from the parade- including several different St Patricks – on My London Diary.

Happy Newroz!

One of the many festivals observed in our richly variety of cultures in London is the Newroz Festival, celebrated in Trafalgar Square this year for the first time – celebrations in previous years have taken place in Finsbury Park, Shoreditch and elsewhere.

Newroz is the Kurdish version of the ancient Iranian New Year holiday, celebrated (as we used to) at the Spring Equinox, and since the 1980s has become widely celebrated as a symbol of Kurdish identity.

Turkey brought in its own official Spring celebration in 2000, Nevruz, in an attempt to replace the celebration of Newroz. It’s now a crime to use the name Newroz or celebrate it there. Newroz celebrations in Turkey, supported by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have at times led to mass arrests and killings, and the same is true in Syria where although in theory it is allowed, in practice the security forces clamp down on it because of its political overtones.

I’ve photographed many events involving Kurds over the years and come to admire their fiery determination and appreciate the dream that unites and energises them as a people. Their immediate goal is the release of the man who has become a symbol of their nation, Abdullah Öcalan (pronounced ‘erdjerlan’), and the dream is of a Kurdish nation, Kurdistan.

London now has a Mayor who has made bumbling idiocy an art form, and one he has used to great political advantage, not least in defeating Ken Livingstone. As we are seeing it’s a smokescreen that hides some policies which will make London a worse place to live in, particularly for those on low incomes and who rely on public transport. His gaffe over Newroz is a curious one, and suggests to me some serious confusion at City Hall.

Here is a part of Ken Livingstone‘s message about Newroz in 2006:

Newroz is an important opportunity for the size and contribution of the Kurdish community in London to be recognised, and with a celebratory concert in Finsbury Park this weekend, an ideal opportunity for Londoners of all backgrounds to celebrate, explore and educate themselves about Londons Kurdish communities. It is my pleasure to wish you a Happy Newroz.

And here is some of what Boris Johnson had to say in a press release that doesn’t appear to be on the extremely confused official London government web site:

‘I have the pleasure to announce that a Newroz Festival will take place for the first time in Trafalgar Square on Saturday 14 March. I’m proud so many people of Turkish and Kurdish backgrounds, like my paternal grandfather, have made London their home and have brought the rich history, culture, cuisine and trades of Turkish speaking communities to the capital’

Ilhan Genc, in an open letter to Boris on KurdishMedia, prints the whole of the message Boris sent to the London Kurdish Community, but with a deliberately unsubtle difference to point out the offence his message caused: ‘the words Turkish and Turkey have been substituted with German and Germany, and the words Kurdish and Newroz substituted with Jewish and Hanukkah.’

This results in Boris’s final paragraph now reading:

‘I am proud to be the Mayor of Londoners from every community and Im extremely proud of my GERMAN ancestry. HANUKKAH is a wonderful opportunity for strengthening the links that exist between City Hall and everyone marking HANUKKAH.’

Genc ends his letter:

‘I hope I have made my feelings clear, and look forward for an apology from the Mayor.An extremely angered and insulted Kurdish Londoner’

Boris is of course rightly proud of his Turkish great-grandfather Ali Kemal, a liberal Turkish journalist and politician, editor of the anti-Nationalist paper Sabah. Kemal was sentenced to hang by the Military Governor of Smyrna “In the name of Islam, in the name of the Turkish nation … as a traitor to the country” but was seized and torn to pieces by a mob of women with knives, stones, clubs and cutlasses as he was being taken to the gibbet. As the New York Times commented at the time of his death in Nov 1922, he was known as one of Turkey’s most enlightened and most impartial citizens.

Had Boris been at Newroz, he would clearly have seen that it was Kurdish and not Turkish, viewing the event through a sea of flags with pictures of Abdullah Öcalan, in prison on Imrali Island in Turkey since his kidnapping in Kenya in 1999 and heard the chanting “We are the PKK” and the calls for Öcalan’s release. As the finale of a highly energetic folk dance display on the stage, each of the troupe of young women pulled out a flag with his image and danced around the stage to tumultuous applause.

Many more pictures from this event on My London Diary.

Harry Benson at the Palace

On the Pop Photo‘s State of the Art blog you can see a picture of Glasgow’s most famous photographer Harry Benson getting his CBE from Princess Anne today. Unfortunately the link they give to Vanity Fair for more simply gets me an invitation to subscribe, but given the quality of the image on State of the Art I’m not too sorry.

You can however see a video interview with the man himself on Live Books, which also contains quite a few of his more famous images. I wrote about Benson last August after seeing his show at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Portraits? And One Law For All

Someone asked me yesterday evening if I took portraits. I found it a difficult question, though I do often take pictures of people. And some I think aren’t bad. But I rarely if ever have the luxury of being able to work with someone – at least for more than a few seconds, or to direct them or light them carefully in the way that traditional portrait photographers might.

It is of course a matter of choice. Although I can appreciate – for example – the portraits by great masters of the art such as Bill Brandt, the kind of deliberate and planned approach in much of his best work just isn’t my style. Most people probably know the story of the oil lamp in a picture taken for ‘Picture Post’ of a sea-captain in Liverpool; when the editor commented how fortunate he was to have found the man had such a lamp in his room, Brandt replied that he had taken it with him from London for the picture. And when he arranged to meet Frances Bacon at a particular time in the early evening on Primrose Hill, there seems little doubt that the picture he made – one of his finest – was already more or less present in his mind.

Then there are the more formal portraitists who I don’t find particularly of interest – except for some rare moments. People such as Karsh, Arnold Newman and others, whose work I can admire for its technical competence but with a few exceptions leaves me cold. Somehow I don’t think photography is really suited to this kind of formal portraiture, which suffers greatly from inviting itself to be compared with portrait painting.

Photography is much more concerned with capturing the fleeting moment, the look or gesture that perhaps gives an insight into the person. Of course there are great photographs of people that do this, and even some taken on large-format cameras. Paul Strand was one of the masters of this, in so many of his images. You can read an interesting description of his taking a portrait of Katie Morag Morrison in South Uist by John Morrison on the Scotland site, and her picture is one of the 32 by Strand on the Fine Art Photography Masters site (she is the 27th picture in the album for the impatient – but why deny yourself the pleasure of looking through the others before and after. ) Others have decribed the experience of standing in front of his camera a little differently, as a long process in which Strand more or less seemed to ignore them, simply waiting for the moment when he felt they were ready, composed (or as some put it, bored – but they don’t look bored in the images.)

At the ‘One Law For All’ rally at Trafalgar Square on Saturday, against any introduction of Sharia law into the UK, the speakers were far from bored. It was an event where relatively little else was happening, and I was concentrating on them, photographing and trying to catch moments when expression or body-language seemed to speak to me.

The placards for the event provided some lively and relevant background. For once I worked without any flash fill, using fairly long focal lengths to give some differential focus. Here are a couple of the results – and there are a few more (evenincluding some of men, although it was an International Women’s Day event) on My London Diary, where you can also read more about the event.

And sometimes I take one that isn’t bad – like this picture of Tariq Ali in Trafalgar Square a few years ago:

Prada Protest

Unusually well-dressed protesters posed outside Prada holding placards denouncing the treatment of the woman workers who make some of the products on sale inside.

After sending an e-mail from the Labour Start web site, I received a reply from Mulberry, one of the other companies selling products from the Desa factories in Turkey. This claims that Mulberry have investigated the allegations that were made through a number of audits and visits to the site and are confident that the two Desa factories which supply them with goods are working to the high ethical standards that they insist on for all their suppliers – which include respecting the rights of workers to join the union of their choice.

On the specific case of the women who were sacked and whose cases are currently under appeal, it states that Mulberry will insist that Desa follow the court rulings when these are made.

There seems to be a very direct conflict between this message and the information about Desa at Labour Behind the Label, the group behind the demonstration. But obviously the companies that are profiting from selling these highly priced cheaply made goods and all the people they employ both in Turkey and here have a considerable interst in maintaining the status quo.

But you can read both sides of the story and make up your own mind. There is more about it and more pictures on My London Diary. I’m sure if you send a message from the Labour start website and you will get the same Mulberry response as I did a day or two later in my e-mail.

Copyright infringement & Visible Watermarking

I know several photographers who won’t put their work on the web at all because they are worried about people stealing their pictures. Of course with over 25,000 images on the web I do get some of mine used without permission, but it isn’t something I get too worked up about.

I don’t like getting ripped off, but I don’t think I lose a lot of revenue – if anything the opposite. Probably most of the sites on the web where my work has been used without permission are the kind of sites that Alamy would sell a licence to for a couple of dollars or I would allow free use if they asked me and provided attribution and a linkback to one of my sites. Personal sites of people with an interest in photography or in some of the causes I also support.

Of course if I find my work on a commercial site things are different. I follow what many photographers I know advise and send the company concerned a polite letter pointing out the detail of their copyright infringement, accompanied by an invoice for the usage – at double the price I would normally have charged.

According to a recent post on the BJP blog, quoting John Toner (who I was sitting a few feet from in the London Freelance Branch NUJ meeting last night,) “only 74% of photographers who pursued payment for copyright infringements received fair compensation” but this still seems a fairly good figure. Of course the actual proportion of infringements successfully pursued could be rather lower. It is a tricky business pursuing debts through the courts – even for small claims – and winning your case doesn’t unfortunately guarantee you will ever get the money.

The figure comes from a report by the British Photographic Council which is covered in more detail on the EPUK web site (and can be downloaded from a link there in full) , which reported that almost three quarters of the photographers they surveyed were aware of infringements of their copyright (not all on-line) and that the average photographer was aware of 26 such infringements.

One response to image theft is to watermark images, either visibly or invisibly. Invisible watermarking really only makes sense if you can afford the services of one of the companies that will crawl the web looking for use, and will have no effect on use off-line. Although the pictures we put on the web are small – perhaps 600×400 pixels, these still suffice for reasonable size reproductions in newspapers, perhaps up to five inches wide at suitable quality. I’ve actually seen one of mine used as an A2 poster; it wasn’t pretty in photographic terms but it did the job.

Visible watermarking makes more sense for those of us without deep pockets. But I hate those sites – such as Magnum – where it can make some pictures almost impossible to see, let alone appreciate. One useful compromise is to add a border to the picture and add your copyright information on that rather than across the actual image.

I thought about that again last week, following a link from the Photo Attorney to Jim Goldstein’s site and one in a useful series of features about watermarking – and this one also deals with how to find copyright infringement of your work. Although it’s perfectly possible for people to crop or eliminate watermarks from your files, most infringers don’t bother – they either don’t know about copyright laws, or think their usage is covered by “fair use” (and it may be – see the Photo Attorney site on the US position on this) or they don’t think anyone will notice.

Goldstein asks people who contact him for pictures where they saw his work. As he writes, it is “the way I find some of the most surprising cases of not just infringement, but marketing.” The visible watermark turns infringement into a marketing too, but of course, once you know it is happening then you can decide whether it is worth sending an invoice or making a complaint.

Lightroom copright example
Lightroom 2.3 added this watermark automatically when the output option was checked

Lightroom, at least in the latest versions, does quite a nice neat job of putting your information from the ‘Copyright’ metadata field just inside your picture, though I can’t find any way to customise this at the moment. What I’d really like is to add a small border on the lower edge of the image with it in. But at the moment I can’t decide whether this is something I want to use.

Million Women in Oxford St

Most Saturdays there seem to be about a million women shopping in Oxford St, and quite a few men too, worshipping at the altar of consumption. It’s a place I try to avoid, especially if I’m trying to get anywhere in a hurry, with crowded pavements and buses largely stationary. Unless, like my friend Paul Baldesare, you want to document such things. Its something I’ve tried in the past but don’t think I have the stamina to attempt now.

But Saturday it was different, with women marching in the ‘Million Women Rise‘ march from their assembly point in Portman Square turning onto Oxford St at the corner of Selfridges and continuing along it to Oxford Circus before turning down Regent St on its way past Piccadilly Circus to a rally at Waterloo Place.

This was intended to be (but was not quite entirely) an all-woman march, and although most of the couple of thousand or so taking part seemed happy to be photographed even by a male photographer, once the march was in progress we were asked to keep off the roadway while doing so. Which I did (although plenty of others did not) and was a little annoyed to then be harassed by one over-zealous steward for standing too close to the edge of the pavement. It was however an isolated incident. But as a photographer who very much prefers to work close to people this restriction very much affected my work, and I was taking much more with longer focal lengths than usual.

The march takes place at this time to mark International Women’s Day (the actual day is March 8th) and its theme – on the banner above – is “together we can end violence against women.” One of the more popular chants was “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes, no means no!”

This year, the global theme of International Women’s Day was a similar but significantly different message: “Women and men united to end violence against women and girls“, which perhaps explains why one of the groups taking part – marching behind the women-only march’ with largely Turkish placards – also contained men.

But of course I was much more interested in the women and the statement that they were making, because, as some of the marchers maintained, “Women are Wonderful”.

By the time I reached Oxford Circus I was exhausted and left the women to continue their protest, while I sloped off to my favourite pub and a very welcome pint of bitter. Fortunately Paul, who had been busily photographing consumption, was ready for a pint too, so I didn’t have to drink on my own. You can see some of his work – from suburbia rather than from Oxford St – in our Another London on-line show which also has work by Mike Seaborne. Of course an updated version of this show is still available for galleries.

More of my pictures of the women on the Million Women Rise 2009 march on My London Diary, where there are also pictures from last year’s rather larger Million Women Rise march.

Tibet – 50 Years

I’m not a great traveller and it is pretty unlikely I’ll ever go to Tibet, but one of the advantages of being based in London (or at least just on its edge) is that London is a place more or less the whole world comes to. And comes to in order to protest on its streets about what goes on in their country.

We are Tibetans, not Chinese

Once our country had a great record for giving refuge to the oppressed from other countries. Many of the great revolutionary figures of the nineteenth and twentieth lived at least for a short time in London and their time here is marked by statues, blue plaques or both. Of course our reputation has now been tarnished by restrictions on entry and a heavy-handed enforcement of these by immigration officers which have turned away many genuine refugees and a shocking system of detention centres.

Last Saturday’s march to mark the 50th anniversary today of the popular demonstrations in Lhasa against the Chinese occupation of Tibet was, as in previous years a noisy and colourful event. As well as a large proportion of the UK’s small Tibetan community there were also Tibetans who had travelled from Europe to be there and many British supporters. There are the usual discrepancies about the number of demonstrators taking part, with reports ranging from “a small number” on CNN, 500 on Sky and Reuters and over 1000 on AFP. Before I left the march I stood and counted as best I could the people going past me down Regent St, and AFP seemed to have got it about right.

Palden Gyatso and Tibetan flag

Among those was at least one man who had been in Lhasa on 10 March 1959. Then a young Tibetan monk, Palden Gyatso took part in the peaceful demonstrations. In the violent repression that followed, some 80,000 Tibetans were killed and many imprisoned. He spent 33 years in jail and prison camps, and was subjected to beatings and extreme torture. At the start of the march he attempted to deliver a letter to Chinese Ambassador at the Chinese Embassy which included detailed evidence about his treatment by the Chinese, but the police on duty refused to allow this to be delivered by hand.

You can read more Tibet, Palden Gyatso, and the London march on My London Diary, which also has pictures of this annual march from some previous years: 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

I also photographed it in 2001, and there is one picture on the web site, along with a link that says “more pictures to follow” which I wrote at the time but never got round to putting them on-line. And the first few years I only have black and white on-line as I was still shooting film and only had a black and white flatbed scanner. Looking back on work from just a few years ago is a reminder of how much things have changed in those few years, and how we’ve come to take those changes for granted.

Cleaners Protest Unfair Sacking at Willis

Cleaners in London achieved some successes with their campaign for a living wage, which was supported by Unite for around two years. But the union have now dropped their support for the Justice for Cleaners campaign and appear to have lost the confidence of many of the cleaners.

The cleaners are continuing their campaign and one of their targets is the large office block of the insurance brokers Willis, immediately to the east of the Lloyds building on the opposite side of Lime Street. Cleaning of the offices is subcontracted to Mitie Cleaning and Support Services Ltd, part of a huge business group offering all kinds of services to businesses which is one of the top three providers of cleaning for commercial and public sector premises.

Mitie decided to change the working hours for cleaners at Willis from 7-11pm to 10pm-6am. Five cleaners who had been active in organising for better conditions including the living wage were then dismissed, apparently illegally, on grounds of redundancy.

When the cleaners decided to protest outside the Willis building they were amazed to get a letter from the company telling them that their union had signed an agreement banning workers from demonstrating outside company buildings. They had done so without consulting or even informing the workers. So the demonstrations have gone ahead without union backing.

This lunchtime saw the latest in a series of demonstrations that started on 12 Feb and around twenty people including cleaners and their supporters turned up to demonstrate noisily outside Willis, with slogans and whistles. They say they will keep up these demonstrations “until we get our jobs back… we have families to support and children to feed. We are completely sure about the unfairness of the company decision.”

More pictures on My London Diary.

Climate Rush at RBS

One of the consequences of the government’s rescue of the banks is that it is now public money, our money, that is backing hugely polluting schemes such as the building of coal fired power stations such as Kingsnorth. As we were reminded in one of a number of short speeches outside the RBS HQ in Bishopsgate, this power station will produce as much carbon dioxide on its own as the total industrial output from some countries.

The pension payout to its former boss Sir Fred Goodwin for bravely leading RBS into bankruptcy guaranteed that the action would have wide public support – and probably from most of the RBS staff too. But though most people would like to see Sir Fred stripped of pension and knighthood and locked up for life for his crimes (if not something more appropriately severe) this was an opportunity to remind people of his and the banking system’s crimes against the planet.

Although the Climate Rush at the RBS was something of a fun affair, like other events they have organised, its purpose is deeply serious, something that seems to be lost on some of the more dinosauric Indymedia armchair comment-makers.

Protests like this are successful because of the media interest they attract, which draws some public attention to the issues involved (if sometimes despite the efforts of mainstream reporters.)

It was also closely watched by many of the RBS employees, who cannot have failed to see the point of the protest which they were being entertained by. Many walked in past a very large banner saying ‘No New Coal Awards’ which was stretched out in front of the barriers around the whole entrance area which was full of security men and police. The same message appeared on sashes and on placards along with those opposed to airport expansion.

As well as the speeches there was some singing as well as music from a bike-hauled sound system and with some lively dancing. I was sorry that I had to rush off before the end as I wanted to support the office cleaners who were demonstrating outside the Willis building at the same time.

You can download your own copy of the poster that was distributed at the event – you can see one in the top image – for ‘Storm the Banks’ coming up on April 1st at the Bank of England from the G20 meltdown site; they are also available from Freedom Bookshop.

The G20 protest will starton 1 April at 11am with four carnival parades, each led by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from a railway station – from Moorgate the Red horse against War, Liverpool St the Green horse against Climate chaos, London Bridge the Silver horse against Financial crimes and from Cannon Street the Black horse against land enclosures and borders and honouring the 360th full circle anniversary of the Diggers.

The carnival will converge on the Bank of England for ‘Storm the Banks‘ at 12 noon. And then at 1pm there’s the Climate Camp at the European Carbon Exchange at Hasilwood House in Bishopsgate. It should be an interesting day.

Oh yes, more on My London Diary.