![\"\u00a9](\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2011\/02\/12\/20110212-d0399.jpg\" "\\"\u00a9")
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I’m not sure why I missed the inaugural St Valentine street event in 2004, but having arrived at Piccadilly Circus with a climate protest march on 12 Feb 2005 and meeting a few people I knew who were partying there I stayed to photograph it – and I’ve gone back every year since then, largely because this is just such a fun event.<\/p>\n
Of course it is a little more than just fun, as in its own way it presents a radical challenge to the capitalist exploitation of our basic human desires. And while I may be a little sceptical about some aspects of the event, I certainly share the desire to “reclaim love” from the tills.<\/p>\n
![\"\u00a9](\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2011\/02\/12\/20110212-d0522.jpg\" "\\"\u00a9")
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I was able to find the links to these events quickly making use of the index to My London Diary, which I’ve just updated.\u00a0 I used to laboriously add each event individually to the index page, placing it in a suitable category on the page. It was useful in some ways, but not particularly user-friendly, fine for browsing but not always too helpful for actually finding things. The easiest way to locate entries was by using the browser find function (Ctrl+F.)\u00a0 But it just took me too long to update, and at the start of 2011, that index only covered to the end of 2010.<\/p>\n
A week ago I decided to do something about it and to start a new index from the beginning of 2008, this time designed for simple updating on a monthly basis. It doesn’t use categories but is just as easy to search using Ctrl+F, and – like the rest of My London Diary – is arranged by date.<\/p>\n
![\"\u00a9](\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2011\/02\/12\/20110212-d1632.jpg\" "\\"\u00a9")
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There is a fairly full account of this years Reclaim Love party, which for the first time incorporated a trip to Green Park, which has a fine circle of 13 trees we used for the circle at the heart of the event. Thanks to the 10.5mm, which gives a horizontal angle of view of more than 140 degrees you can see 9 of them in the picture above, and the semi-fisheye lens makes the trees curve in to enclose the scene in a rather pleasing effect.<\/p>\n
![\"\u00a9](\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2011\/02\/12\/20110212-d0714.jpg\" "\\"\u00a9")
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After the trip to Green Park, when we arrived back at Piccadilly Circus, strong winter sunlight was streaming in at a very low angle, making photography very tricky. Of course flash fill could help a bit, but it was still too much to cope with. As well as the extreme contrast, there is also a huge difference in colour temperature between the warm sunlight and the skylight in the shadows from a clear cold blue sky.<\/p>\n
![\"\u00a9](\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2011\/02\/12\/20110212-d0868.jpg\" "\\"\u00a9")
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But I was still pleased with some of the pictures, such as this one of some of the dancing, with the neon in the background providing some appropriate messages (‘love it’ and ‘Be my Valentine’ – not the ‘Hair Loss Centre’) and some striking colour in that shirt (the metallic dress did have some rather tricky reflections and the union jack t-shirt. Of course I was trying to carefully frame Eros at the top of the picture, though it wasn’t too easy with some really vigorous dancing to get things right. The spot in the sky to the right of the little bit of cloud isn’t dust but a helicopter keeping an eye on the event. You can see that the front figure, lit partly by flash, is slightly less warm than the figures behind.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later the flash became even more important, both because of the need to stop the action and also as the light levels fell around sunset.<\/p>\n
![\"\u00a9](\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2011\/02\/12\/20110212-d0974.jpg\" "\\"\u00a9")
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The party also continued well after I left, I think into the early hours, moving later to an indoor location. There are something like 180 pictures of it on My London Diary<\/a>, because I know that many of those who were there (and in the Facebook group for Reclaim Love where I posted a link) would like to see them. Its rather more than even I would normally post for an event.<\/p>\n Reclaim Love Pavement Party<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 I’m not sure why I missed the inaugural St Valentine street event in 2004, but having arrived at Piccadilly Circus with a climate protest march on 12 Feb 2005 and meeting a few people I knew who were partying there I stayed to photograph it – and I’ve gone back every year since then, … Continue reading Valentine Party<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-photo-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}