Jus' a few more Protest shots

The Clash

[IMG]http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j159/paulyrichard/clashcontrastmediumsharpened4BWbord.jpg[/IMG]

Police Are Coming

[IMG]http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j159/paulyrichard/policearecomingcontrastmediumBWbord.jpg[/IMG]

Coffee Break

[IMG]http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j159/paulyrichard/coffeebreakcontrastmediumsharpened4.jpg[/IMG]

Corralled Protesters

[IMG]http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j159/paulyrichard/corralledatthebanksharpened5BWborde.jpg[/IMG]

High Viewpoints

[IMG]http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j159/paulyrichard/highviewpointsbacklight50BWbordered.jpg[/IMG]

'Welcome To Pig City'

[IMG]http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j159/paulyrichard/welcometopigcityBWbordered391Large.jpg[/IMG]

I like the last one the most of all the protest shots you've posted. Mainly because I'm not a very PC kind of person (excuse the pun).

Looks like a nice day out, why B&W? saw it all on TV

Rob, i'm not a PC type person either, in fact I hate it with a vengeance!

Jack, I cannot stand the look of reportage and social documentery style photos, in colour. I jus' think colour doesn't work in photos like this, and jus' detracts from the imapct of an image.

Nice series. I very much like the second one...there is a sense of urgency and fear in it.

No.

The monochrome rendition perverts the reality - it was a beautiful day, predominantly peaceful.

There were isolated disturbances, pockets of violence in the news, none of which appears in the images.

Our perception of threat and danger is not in the images, but in the way we relate them to the more dramatic news reports - which are not reflected in these pictures, except in our imagination.

Tabloid journalism this. Selective, suggestive; maybe valid as far as its subjectivity goes, but not representative.

Express, not Independent.

Thanks Peter.

The police at this protest were absolute bastards, they treated people with so much disdain and ignorance, and manhandled and corralled everyone indiscriminately.
They talk of certain people in our society of incitin' hatred and violence, but never did I see more of it than here and from the police themselves.

Oh get over it - it's not what you think.

I live in Twickenham.

Every few weeks, there's an international Rugby match, or a pop concert at the stadium.

Anything between 40-85,000 people descend, and for several hours before and after, the place is a nightmare. The police run a tight ship - you step out of line, you're in trouble. The rights of the residents are suspended (the roads are closed, and you just have to wait). Everything is about crowd-control - to stop it kicking off.

They do a fantastic job, keeping tens of thousands of pissed rugby fans in order, despite being outnumbered hundreds to one. I don't like it, but the cops are not pigs. They're keeping order, and from the occasional chats I've had with the apparently hard-nosed bastards looking intimidatingly at you, they're just ordinary guys, with an out-of-the-ordinary job to do.

I'd have to disagree with this point. Especially with the 2nd image as highlighted by pschlute. Here we see people spilling into the road in great numbers, many of whom are looking directly over their shoulders. This combined with the blurred movement & off tilt capture (indicative of a huried photo) suggest to me that these people (including the photographer) are fleeing. People flee threat & danger, not fluffy bunnies & candy floss. The fact that I cannot see past the crowd means I have to take their perception as my own, which conveys threat & danger directly to me.
I personally have not seen any of the news reports on this event & neither do I have any desire to, so telling me that my perception of these images have been skewed or affected by the wider media is way off the mark.

edit for typo..

There's lots of people, sure. There are far more people than that at Covent Garden on a Friday or Saturday evening. Whether they're 'spilling into the road' from somewhere else, cannot be determined from the photo, only from our imaginations.

In that second shot, there's no one fleeing. There's no one even running.

There's a girl looking over her shoulder pushing a bike. There's a girl looking back towards the crowd taking a photo. There's a guy looking over his shoulder with his hands in his pockets... hardly fleeing.

Blurred motion, off tilt capture - phooey.

Just photographic techniques that may or may not represent reality.

Maybe a man painted silver or a fire eater is just what this shot needs.

Chris

The picture I commented on has (in my opinion - and it was that I was expressing)) a sense of urgency and fear about it. It may not ellicit that response in your opinion, but I am the only arbiter of my own views.

I am well aware of the reality of the day, I was there and have posted my own collection of pictures in another thread. On the whole my pictures (in my opinion) reflect a rather jovial event that was centred on the "climate camp" in lower Bishopsgate.

Any picture of a photo-journalistic type cannot be divorced from the time/era in which it was taken. Photography of this type is not an isolated artform.

paulyrichard

I work in Bishopsgate and only got out to photograph from 2.00pm ish. My only terms of reference were the news television bulletins up till then, and the violence inflicted on the policeman who fell would certainly have coloured his colleagues feelings for the rest of the day. I saw no agression from either "side", but then I did not get very close to the cordoned off area outside the Bank.

It was also noticeable that the "climate camp" demonstrators left lower Bishopsgate as they found it, whereas the area around Bank was a graffiti covered mess this morning

One thing I noticed though.....there were loads and loads of amateur photographers about. But surprisingly few images on the forums ?

Exactly. You can't tell from the images whether that's exactly what people are looking at.

Let's see the colour originals. Bright yellow hi-vis jackets, beautiful blue sky, no one looking scared, running, or bashing each other, and no "Ooh, G20 protests - scary" undertone..

..and the perception will be very different.

Of course, everyone has a right to their view.

I'm merely offering another.