There was a strong reason to hold the vigil for the victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks outside the offices of The Sun newspaper. Murdoch’s papers have for years led the promotion of xenophobic views on immigration, on Europe and of simplistic right-wing views around the world, along with the misogyny exemplified by its ‘page 3’.
As I wrote in My ‘London Diary’:
Increasing numbers of Islamophobic incidents are taking place in the USA, Nigeria, Palestine, China and the UK, fueled by extreme right groups who are encouraged and emboldened by Islamophobic articles in newspapers, across the whole of the right-wing UK press, but particularly The Sun and other Murdoch titles worldwide who have engaged in a long campaign of demonisation of Muslims, and on our major broadcast media as well as on social media.
My London Diary:
http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2019/03/mar.htm#christchurch
You can see many more pictures from the event there.
I had taken both my Nikon D801 and the fairly newly bought Olympus E-M5MarkII with me, and began the event working mainly with the Olympus, which coped well in the fading light. But when it got really dark I began to severely underexpose with the Olympus, largely I think because I was simply unfamiliar with the camera.
Given that the viewfinder image comes from the sensor, I had assumed that if the viewfinder image looked good, the pictures recorded would be OK. But it didn’t seem to work like that, or at least not on the camera settings I was using. Even after using the camera regularly for over 3 months I still find its behaviour rather a mystery at times.
Of course almost all modern cameras are greatly over-complex, overloaded with features largely driven by the advertising departments. Even though I find using either of my two currently working Nikons generally straightforward, they can still throw in the occasional oddball when using flash. But I have much greater problems with both Olympus and Fuji mirrorless cameras, though rather different with the two makes.
But the Nikon D810 performed without problems, producing all of the usable later pictures using the available light, mainly from the candles. Part of the reason it worked better was undoubtedly that because I was using a wider lens I was also using a slower shutter speed, around 1/15s though that did mean a few images were spoiled by subject movement.
Vigil and protest for Christchurch victims
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Tags: candlelit vigil, candles, Christchurch massacre, Islamophobia, low light, Muslims, Nikon, Olympus, prayers, vigil