Flags are often important in photographs, and can be a real pain get how you want them. They tend either to hang limply when you want them to fly out, or to flutter unpredictably out of control. At political demonstrations they are sometimes waved high above the heads of the protesters on long poles, and although these may look good, they are often hard to incorporate into pictures that work.
At the No To NATO, Troops Out Of Afghanistan protest outside the US Embassy, I saw the chance to make a picture as Free Bahrein flags were being waved as someone was speaking about the situation there. It took me 15 frames to get a couple that had something of the effect I wanted -the flags were being waved vigorously and it was a gusty day – and there were a few images with no flag at all visible, and was made just a little trickier by working with the 28-105mm on my ailing D300, where I have to free the mirror after every few exposures by ‘locking it for cleaning’ and turning the camera off. I really must replace that soon, particularly as it now sometimes needs doing 2 or 3 times before the mirror will drop down. The image above was taken with the lens at 70mm (105mm equiv) and I particularly like it because the text on the flag is legible. There is also another frame in the feature in My London Diary, which I selected partly because I thought it portrayed the speaker better and there was a third I considered but didn’t use which has a more graphic use of the jagged white-red boundary.
The protest was outside the US Embassy, and as usual I tried to make use of the big ugly eagle and flag on its roof, though there were times when the flag just wasn’t playing, and it isn’t always convenient to wait for it. You can just about see it above this protester in orange, one of a group calling for the release of Shaker Aamer who lived in London with his family before being captured on a visit to Afghanistan, tortured and taken to Guantanamo, where he is still being held, probably because the evidence he would give on release about his torture there would embarrass both British and US governments.
Sometimes the wind was more helpful, though this perhaps wasn’t one of my better pictures. Those guys in ‘Anonymous’ masks looked better in other images without the flag.
Of course there are always choices and decisions. In the series of 7 frames I took of these two people there are differences in particular in the placards in the background (which again moved around while I was taking the pictures, though rather less so than the flags.) One reason for choosing this particular frame was that the ‘No to Nato’ in the background was more legible than in most of the others, although there are other differences too.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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