Red isn’t my favourite colour in photography, although it’s sometimes been said that every good picture needs a little bit of it. Nonsense of course, but while a little bit of red is fine, it’s very easy to have too much of it, and neither film nor digital is all that good in coping with large amounts of bright colour in that area of the spectrum. Which can cause something of a problem on May Day.
With red road, red bus and red buildings as well as the clothing and banners there isn’t really a great deal that isn’t red in this picture, and getting a truly believable skin tone on the face was something of a challenge with all the reflected red light.
Most of the brighter red areas of these pictures needed some burning in to get some tonality, and the red tends to make other colours – such as the yellows in the above picture – look too wishy-washy and they have to have some attention too. I think I’ve perhaps overdone it on the flag at the bottom left in the picture above, but it certainly needed some darkening.
All the big heads made me want to do something with them, and I was attracted by the solidity and the expression of the man in the foreground, and though it might not show his best side I didn’t feel it was too unkind. But one face that truly makes me feel uneasy is the huge portrait of Stalin. Although he was ‘Uncle Joe’ to the press in the days of my childhood, and a vital figure in winning the war against fascism, it’s hard to understand why there are people still prepared to carry his banner or wear his t-shirt.
London’s May Day celebrations bring together “trade unionists, workers from the many international communities in London, pensioners, anti-globalisation organisations, students, political bodies and many others in a show of working class unity” and it’s a shame that May Day isn’t a bank holiday so that more people can take part. This year’s May Bank Holiday came almost a week later.
Jim Connell’s word’s, written at the time of the dock strike in 1889 are stirring and for an hour or so a year in London the red flag is flying over at least a small part of the capital. Here is his second verse (in web colour scarlet #FF2400) for any of you who have forgotten it.
Then raise the scarlet standard high
Beneath its fold we’ll live and die
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We’ll keep the red flag flying here
I didn’t hear the words sung in English this May Day, (and its a long time since many in the Labour party sang them with any conviction, and the tune makes most of us think of Christmas trees.) The Internationale which was also getting played certainly has a better tune, but the standard English words are impossible to sing.
Few of the flags and banners in my pictures are scarlet, although I’m not sure that the colours are entirely true to hue, but many seem to be a little bluer shade of red, and, as I’ve deliberately made some darker than they appear to retain some tonality. In the real world, colours don’t always look the same anyway, and change in different lighting conditions. You can see more of my work from the day on My London Diary in London May Day March.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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