Keep the NHS public

© 2011, Peter Marshall

It was surprisingly dark and gloomy on the Euston Road around 5pm when I arrived for the Islington march to ‘Keep the NHS Public’, which was gathering under the trees opposite University College Hospital. Although I know that digital cameras such as the Nikon D300 and particularly D700 that I use give great results at high ISO, I find I still have a great reluctance to push them into the regions that were off limits in the days of film.  Looking at the results I got, it seems obvious that I should have given myself at least a stop more to work with most of the time, and there were just too many that were not quite sharp enough, either because of slow shutter speeds or insufficient depth of field.

One of the first people I met there was a woman I’ve known for some years – and a former colleague of my wife – who embroiders her own placards for protests.  The health service affects us all, and there were a very wide range of people attending the protest along with many medical students and health professionals, and I hope my pictures reflect this.

© 2011, Peter Marshall

I rather liked this woman who was walking around at the start of the march waving a red ‘Unite – the union’ flag, reminding me of a socialist realist poster, and took a number of pictures – several of them on My London Diary – though I don’t think any of them quite caught what I saw. I also took several pictures of  one of the organisers of the march, Janet Maiden, who works in the Haematology department at UCH, which I felt happier that they captured some of her energy – even if they weren’t always quite sharp.

© 2011, Peter Marshall

Backgrounds are important too – and in the image above it is clearly to those who know London taken at UCH. More readily recognisable are perhaps these gates at Downing St, where a small group decided to sit down away from the main group.

© 2011, Peter Marshall

and even more so, the man on the column in this image.

© 2011, Peter Marshall

Although I perhaps took better pictures with the slightly less well known but still fairly recognisable National Gallery and portico of St Martins in the Fields in the background, which you can see with the rest of the pictures on My London Diary in Keep The NHS Public.

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