Photographing Events and Demonstrations

Robert Capa, the war photographer and founder of Magnum, had a simple piece of advice – ‘if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough’, which you should keep in mind at all times. Usually this will mean using a wide angle and getting into the situation rather than choosing a telephoto and standing back, though in some situations your personal safety may dictate a more distant approach.

One of the more annoying features of rangefinder cameras is the lack of close focusing, seldom allowing you to work at closer than 0.8 meters (about 30 inches). It sounds pretty close, but I find it a serious limitation when working in crowds. Some auto-focus cameras do better than this, and of course many SLR cameras allow direct focus to half this distance or less with standard or wide-angle lenses.

Working at around this 0.8 meter limit (or closer) can also cause problems, particularly if your subject is moving. You will need a higher shutter speed to stop movement than when at a distance. When I started using the 15mm last year, I also found a physical problem – it is difficult to avoid bumping into people!

I like to try and show something at least of all the different types of people involved – old and young, male and female, disabled and able-bodied, those dressed up and those not. Often the press concentrate on only the celebrities at an event – I’ll try to photograph the mass of people as well, working from the middle of the crowd as well as at its front, always moving along the whole length of any procession. Be on the lookout for the responses of other people to the event you are photographing too.

One technique that needs a certain amount of practice is walking backwards while taking pictures; don’t forget to look behind you regularly as you do so. Running backwards is harder. At least pay some attention to the requests of stewards and the police – and in particular where you are told to keep away from possible danger from traffic. It is all too easy to get involved in looking through your viewfinder and not see approaching vehicles.

Preparation and Equipment

First comes planning. Find out as much as you can about the event beforehand. Obviously you need the basic information – when and where it starts – and to get as much information as possible about what is likely to happen. Often you can contact the organizers, or there may be a website with information for those who are attending the event.

It may be worth getting accreditation. For some of the larger events here it isn’t worth most photographers even trying, with just a few passes going to the major news organizations. It may be helpful at some events to get a good position to view the main event, but there are usually more picture opportunities during the preparations and on the periphery where you are likely to be able to work without a pass. For smaller and less organized events it is seldom worth the effort in London. However in other places it may be necessary, depending on the attitude of the local police. There may also be press briefings, photo opportunities and coffee and snacks at the press office.

It helps to know as much as possible about the ideas and aims of the event; if it is a political demonstration, what are people demonstrating about? Again, background research on the web or in magazines and newspapers can help, though you may need to consult the alternative press as well as the mass media. Getting to know the faces of the leaders or major figures involved can also be invaluable, particularly if you want to sell pictures, and this too calls for a little homework. One of the major problems that the media has with reporting events such as the May Day event or last year’s ‘Carnival Against Capitalism’ is that there are deliberately no identified leaders, with various groups of people organizing the events. Try also to think about the kind of things you want to photograph – are there situations that would sum up what you want to say about the people or the event. Often things are unpredictable, but it can still help if you have some kind of framework of ideas to work to.

Plan carefully what equipment you will need. This will depend on the type of pictures you want to take. For most events I plan to work at close range using wide-angle lenses, but, for example if I know that there are going to be speeches from the plinth of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, I know that I will need at least a 90mm to be able to photograph the speakers adequately.

If a 90mm will be the longest lens I anticipate needing, I would always choose to use a rangefinder camera. Normally I’d take a number of lenses covering a range of angle of view – perhaps 15mm, 28mm, 50mm and 90mm – and at least two bodies, even if I were only shooting on one film type. If I need color as well as black and white, then an extra body would be needed. Recently I’ve also been carrying a small 2.3 Megapixel digital camera and will try and take a few shots on that as well. That way I can have some pictures available within minutes of arriving home, and they can be up on my – or a client’s – web site very rapidly.

For lenses above 90mm there is no substitute for an SLR system, again at least two bodies and a range of lenses. The SLR system is also easier to work with using color materials where some fill-in flash helps when shooting against the light; this can be tricky to work out with rangefinders, while most SLR dedicated flash units will handle it automatically and get it exactly right. This becomes more important if you are working for publication rather than just making prints.

There is no doubt in my mind that in general the rangefinder is the best tool for the job when you need to work close to your subjects and in crowds, and in particular if you want to work unobtrusively. For years the only name has been the Leica M series, but recently other choices have become available, in particular the Contax G2, and the new Konica Hexar RF and Voigtlander cameras.

The Leica M6 is supremely well made and expensive but rather basic in what it offers, with manual metering. One advantage is that it will work without a battery. The Hexar RF is solidly built if without the finish of the M6, has auto wind (and around 2 fps continuous mode), automatic or manual metering and a slightly brighter viewfinder although the rangefinder focusing is less easy to use. It is considerably cheaper than the Leica, and can be used with all Leica M lenses, although the rangefinder is not precise enough to focus the very wide lenses (such as the 50mm f1 Noctilux or 75mm f1.4) if used at full aperture. Currently it is only available here in a kit complete with 50mm lens and a small separate auto flash that could provide useful fill-in when shooting in high contrast situations. The Voigtlander bodies are both much more basic and less well built, but come with a range of excellently performing lenses at bargain prices. These have a Leica screw fitting and can be used on any M series camera or the Hexar RF. The 15mm in particular is possibly the best lens of its focal length ever made and astounded me with its evenness of coverage and lack of distortion.

The Contax is not actually a rangefinder, although the classic Contax was – and many professionals preferred it to the Leica in the old days. The G2 is an interchangeable lens auto-focus camera and is a viable alternative to a Leica or Leica-mount system, although not one I’ve personally tried. Currently I’ve got 2 Leica bodies and a Hexar RF, and lenses from Leitz, Minolta, Hexar and Voigtlander, covering 15mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 90mm. I’m tempted to add a 24mm

With an SLR I would like to use a couple of zoom lenses (one for each body), perhaps a 24-80 and a 70-210. In practice I use a 20mm, 28mm and 50mm in addition to a telephoto zoom, taking most things on the 28mm, simply because those are the lenses I own. It would be nice to have a really ultra wide lens too, and if I was feeling both rich and strong perhaps a really long lens. I’ve tried a 500mm mirror but couldn’t get any results I liked.

In color, magazines seem still to prefer transparencies, although many newspapers shoot on color negative film. Fuji seems to have come up with a winner with its multi-speed transparency film – MS100/1000 – to judge by press reports and what other photographers tell me. For negatives there are a number of fine films; my personal choices are Fujicolor Superia 400 and Super G Plus 800, although there are good alternatives from Kodak and others.

Other useful equipment in my camera bag (though for some events where press may not be welcome I use an ordinary shoulder bag) includes a micro-cassette recorder for notes and a handheld exposure meter – the photographer’s comfort blanket – spare battery sets for everything that takes them, a bottle of water and a street map. Usually I add some sandwiches and a book to read if I have to hang around anywhere and there is no one else to talk to.

Reading Events

Some events are predictable – for example a march will move off in a particular direction and you will be able to see where it will start and how people are lining up. Often there will be stewards who will have some idea of what is happening and will be happy to tell you.

If there are going to be a series of performances or speeches, someone will know the running order and again you can ask and find out, so you can be in the right place at the right time. Of course this may still take quite a lot of running about, especially if you want to photograph from different viewpoints. Other events are less predictable, and you need to keep your eyes and ears open and work out what is going to happen next. You need to learn to read the event and to predict so that you can be where things are going to happen next. I’ve even found myself having to show demonstrators where they should be going on a few occasions. Even the most anarchic of events follows a discernible pattern.

Learn from other photographers, both while you are photographing, by watching how they work and also by studying work available in books and online. Many of the great figures of photography have photographed demonstrations, among them David Seymour (Chim). Working for the magazine Regards he photographed the 1936 demonstrations of the left-wing ‘Popular Front’ in Paris, showing the workers occupying a factory; arranged up the jib of a crane, they are raising their fists in a salute, and in the background is the factory chimney. An anti-war rally at St Cloud, just outside Paris, in the same year shows the same salute from a crowd dominated by giant posters with guns being broken and the texts ‘Disarm’ and ‘Insanity’.

In the sixties, Garry Winogrand photographed a number of demonstrations in America both pro and anti the Vietnam War. Winogrand’s viewpoint was closer and he used a wider angle lens. Their is an immediacy and sense of incident about his work. William Klein moved in even closer, using a 21mm or similar for his pictures of the crowd watching a May Day parade in Moscow and outside the Rockefeller Center in New York in the early 1960s.

UK freelance David Hoffman, has become well known for his coverage social issues, producing a strong collection of work covering social injustice, policing, poverty, drugs, homelessness, strikes, riots and protests as well as environmental issues. In 1983 he was photographing an anti-Thatcher rally when he saw another photographer being assaulted by the police, and as they dragged him past, took a photograph. Hoffman had more sense than to wait around, and immediately ran off, evading the coppers who were now chasing him by jumping into a taxi.

The police returned to the other photographer they had been holding previously, who they had jumped because he had photographed them assaulting a protestor. They took him back to the nick and charged him with, as Hoffman puts it ‘ assault on a policeman’s fingers with his throat or something’. They also decided to destroy the photo he had taken of them acting illegally. They rewound the film in his camera and removed the cassette, then fogged the film by pulling the end off the cassette and briefly removing the tightly wound spool. To cover their tracks it was then replaced in the camera and carefully restored to the same frame number as before.

When the photographer was released on bail he finished the film and had it developed. Although the film was fogged, film is pretty opaque, and the inner layers of the tightly wound spool showed a light pattern proving it had been fogged while tightly wound and not during the later processing. Scratch patterns also clearly established that the first twelve frames had been wound through the camera twice and the rest of the film only once, clearly proving the film had been tampered with. This, together with Hoffman’s picture (you can see it on his web site) got the photographer acquitted and awarded compensation.

The fuller version of this story on Hoffman’s web site makes interesting reading. He also tells the story of his own arrest and subsequent compensation, as well as the more serious assault on him – and other photographers – at a 1997 rally for sacked dockers in London. On this occasion the police were filming the scene but declined to make their film available as evidence.

As well as individuals such as Hoffman, there are various agencies that have specialized in the area of social injustice. Impact Visuals, based in New York, describes itself as ‘a photojournalism cooperative for social change’ and its pages contain some fine coverage of events from around the world, including marches and demonstrations. They also give a very clear statement of what they require from new members – a clarity of vision, social concern and technical proficiency, as well as adding to the diversity of the membership and geographical or topical coverage and contributing to the future of the cooperative. If it is an area of photography that interests you, you may like to take a look.

Covering the Event

The first rule for covering any event is to get there early. Often the most interesting time to take pictures is while people are gathering and getting ready for the event. One of the great photographers of slightly odd events was Tony Ray-Jones (1941-71). A British photographer, Ray-Jones studied first in the UK, but then went to Yale and studied with Alexey Brodovitch and Richard Avedon. After a few years as a photographer in America he returned to Britain and spent five years photographing the odder aspects of the British at leisure, from seaside holidays to beauty contests, but including a number of local ‘traditional’ carnivals, work that was published after his early death from leukemia as A Day Off – An English Journal. It was a body of work that had a great impact on many other photographers in the UK, notably including Homer Sykes and Martin Parr, as well as many less well known.

One of the projects I’ve been involved with over the last few years – led by two friends who were awarded a grant from the UK National Lottery – has concerned recording these carnivals, many of which are dying out. Almost all of Ray-Jones’s pictures of such events – and those by my friends and myself – are taken in the hour or so before the start of the events, when the carnival floats are being prepared, people are putting on their fancy dress and generally hanging around and waiting. Once the carnival procession has started, it is probably sensible to put away the cameras and head for the pub or beer tent!

With many events, it’s difficult to know exactly when they really will begin, so be prepared for a lot of hanging about. The times published for political marches or meetings here are often an hour or so before the actual time to move off, or for the speeches to start. If possible it is always a good idea to check with the organizers before the event and to see if you can get some kind of timetable of what is likely to happen.

If you have not made contact before, getting there early is often a good way to find out who is really organizing the event, both by watching what is happening and asking questions. More organized events may have press briefings and information handouts, and even more usefully, a pressroom where you may get free coffee and snacks. There may also be arranged press calls or picture opportunities, sometimes involving so-called ‘celebrities’, but generally I find these of little interest. Of course photographers working for some publications may be obliged to attend to such trivia.

Working with other press photographers at events can be interesting – it often seems to involve a herd mentality, a mix of competition and cooperation. You may well need to be reasonably assertive to avoid being pushed out of the way. If you get a good idea for a shot, be prepared to see everyone else borrow it – and other photographers will not be upset if you do the same. Often they will get out of your way if you need them to and ask loudly enough – and you’ll be expected to get out of the way of others. I find it a good idea not to get too involved with the pack; sometimes they are in the right place and you need to be there, but it often pays to stand back and keep your own eyes open and looking for opportunities. Once you see something and get in there to photograph, if you are lucky you will have a little while to work before other photographers see you are on to something – and you will have got the best position if they decide to join you. Try to avoid getting trapped in crowds, whether of photographers or other people – you need to be able to move.

TV crews can be totally unreasonable at events, barging their way through and obstructing other photographers. Of course they have a job to do, but so do others. Occasionally you need to stand up for yourself, and be prepared to push back or argue with them – usually very effective as they want sound also. Fortunately they tend to be slower moving than stills photographers and so miss most of the action. They can be useful in finding and interviewing people, allowing you an opportunity to take portraits – so long as you keep well out of their way. The quiet shutters of rangefinder cameras can be an asset here.

When you are photographing an event, you should aim not to spoil it for the participants or any audience. Make an effort to fit in with the event, not to get in the way and to inconvenience others as little as possible. Try not to impede people’s view for longer than necessary for example – either move about or kneel or crouch except when you need to stand to take a picture. The media are an important part of events -many any arranged solely for their benefit, but at others you are a guest and not always a particularly welcome one.

One event I’ve photographed on several occasions is the Good Friday ‘Procession of Witness’ on the street between Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. This ecumenical procession follows a man carrying a large heavy wooden cross – a physically demanding activity. Photographers should not have to be pushed back out of his way by police or stewards; they should also be sensitive to the fact that this is a religious event – and avoid undue interference with the acts of worship. Thoughtless behavior can lead to photographers as a whole being banned or restricted, and also make it harder for others to work.

Your photographs will be stronger if you understand the event and try to follow what is happening. What is your point of view; what are the key things you want to show? In the case of the Good Friday event, it isn’t just street theater; it is an event about people’s beliefs and their expression of them. It isn’t just something that the various ministers of religion are doing (though as at any other event, you need to find out who they are and make sure to take pictures of any who are well known), isn’t just about the obvious symbol of the guy with the cross. It’s also about the rest of the people their, singing hymns, listening to the word and the prayers.

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