I don’t usually have language problems when photographing in London, but on 21 May opposite the Spanish Embassy everyone was speaking in Spanish, and it was at times hard to know what was going on. Of course most of the young Spaniards who were taking part in the ‘Spanish Revolution’ camp in London were living and working in Britain, and most actually replied to me in English when I spoke to them, which was just as well as I’ve never learnt any Spanish at all.
This was one of the few banners and posters in English, most – as you might expect for an event very much focussed on what was taking place back in Spain – were in Spanish.
But while I was there in the evening (I’d gone first at lunchtime when the people at the camp had said there would be some media present, but found there was very little happening, so came back again later) I was able to photograph the putting up of a large banner reading ‘True Democracy’ between a tree and a Belisha Beacon.
As you can see, the sun was very low, giving long and deep shadows, including my own, partly visible in this image on that pink blouse. But it also made the figures seem rather flat. Having taken a few images from the side with the banner reading correctly, I then decided to try working directly into the sun. Having seen the sun on the banner, my idea was to place the actual sun directly behind this. The banner was rather thin, and the sun just a bit too powerful even shining through it, but I went ahead and took a few pictures.
As you can see, I decided to use the 10.5mm full-frame fisheye, and I wasn’t quite tall enough to get the sun in the centre of the ‘sun’ as I intended. I was holding the camera up above my head, so it was tricky to get the framing exactly as I wanted it, and this was the best of a number of attempts. I also had in mind when I was taking it that I would do a little correction of the fisheye effect, but I abandoned that idea when I saw the result. Partly because I hadn’t left quite enough space at the right of the image and it would have meant losing the T from ‘True’, but mainly because I liked the result as it was.
More at Spanish Revolution Camp in London. And as rather too often, I didn’t increase the ISO enough as the sun was going down, so lost too many images through camera shake and subject movement.