Today I experienced what many, many other photographers have experienced in London (and elsewhere) in recent years.  I got stopped taking pictures by someone who didn’t know what they were talking about.  I was lucky, I wasn’t stopped by the police, I was just stopped by a member of TFL staff.

I was on my way home after work and got off at Hammersmith Station.  I decided to take a few pictures, nothing special just a few quick snaps.  I was stood in one spot, not in anyone’s way taking pictures for about thirty seconds before a member of staff came over and asked if I had a permit to take pictures.  I told her that as I wasn’t a professional and was only taking pictures for my own use I was not required to apply for a permit.  She disagreed and demanded I stop taking pictures.  I had had a long day and couldn’t be bothered arguing so after telling her she was wrong I just headed home.

But Transport for London’s website makes it quite clear that non-professional photography is allowed on the Tube as long as you do not use flash or a tripod.  Their website states - 

“If you are just passing through, you shouldn’t have a problem taking personal snaps, souvenir shots etc, although you must NOT use flash or lights on any of our platforms.  However, if you want to spend more than 10-15 minutes at any one station videoing or taking photos, or if they are for professional use, you MUST have a permit.”

Clearly the member of staff I encountered hadn’t bothered to read her own employers rules and regulations!  The reality is that this isn’t just a problem on London Underground.  Increasingly in the UK photography is being treated as a crime.  Hardly a week goes by without stories of press photographers being stopped by police when conducting their job.  Recent events like the G20 protests and the Climate Camp in Kent have shown the poor attitude the police have towards the police.  The Metropolitan Police have just released their updated guidelines on photography and the law which are extremely inadequate.  The situation has become so bad that the British Journal of Photography has launched a campaign called Not a Crime.  With their campaign they are hoping to change public perceptions about photography and raise awareness about the problem.  You can find out more about the campaign on their website.

Of course what happened to me today in no way compares to those photographers who have been stopped and searched by the police using anti-terrorism legislation, but it is symptomatic of the attitude towards photography in the UK today.  Anyway you might be wondering what pictures I was taking that caused me to be stopped – well here you go!

I’m not the only one in my family that enjoys going to Speakers Corner, my brother does as well.  So this past Sunday, during his short visit, we headed to Hyde Park to listen.  I decided to use the opportunity to film some more footage and do a third Speakers Corner video, the result of which is below.

We hadn’t really planned on staying too long at the corner, but the Speakers were on top form and we were enjoying it too much, especially my brother.  So we ended up spending quite a bit of time there listening to about five different speakers.  As usual Diane was there and was drawing the largest crowds.  Also in Hyde Park that morning was a run for charity so quite a few of the runners joined the crowd after they finished.  One of the highlights of this visit was hearing Diane trying to criticise these runners who were raising money for cancer charities!

All the speakers, except one, took a largely religious theme this time with two Speakers holding bibles and two others sharing their views on religion.  One of the Speakers (the lady in Pink) ended up in a discussion with my brother – you can see the end of her retort 3 minutes, 48 seconds into the video.  Unfortunately I wasn’t filming the start but the whole thing was hilarious.

As always the Speakers were equally thought provoking, crazy, maddening, confused and inadvertently hilarious.  Hope you enjoy the video. 

So Friday was a very busy day in London, rushing around the city with my brother doing lots of touristy stuff.  My feet were not happy at the end of the day, so thankfully today (Saturday) was a much more relaxed day.  I’ve decided instead of uploading a series of photos from the day, I would show you this short timelapse video I recorded over the weekend.  This is my first attempt at this sort of thing so I hope you like it.

(To see the video in HD, please click here)

We started off by going to Horseguards Parade just off Whitehall.   For those of you who don’t know London, Horseguards Parade is a large parade ground which is used for a number of large ceremonial events including the Trooping of the Colour ceremony for the Monarch’s official birthday.   For the 2012 Olympics in London the Parade ground will be the venue for the Beach Volleyball.  We were there to see the Changing of the Guard Ceremony.  While the larger ceremony at Buckingham Palace is the more impressive ceremony, the crowds are much smaller here so you see a bit more.  While we were there we saw David Hasselhof walking towards Buckingham Palace – odd!

After that was finished we headed to Chinatown for some lunch.  We went to an excellent place called Baozi.  Really excellent sezchuan food, which oddly isn’t always easy to find in Chinatown.  Most times i’ve eaten in Chinatown i’ve come away disappointed at the quality of the food but not here, I would be happy to recommend the food at Boazi.

After lunch given that we were just around the corner from Trafalgar Sqaure we decided to head back and see some more of the Fourth Plinth project.  This is a public art project by Anthony Gormley, you can read more about in my previous post on the 4th plinth.  If you watch the video above you can see the process that happens every hour with a new member of the public raised onto the plinth.

Given that both my brother and I are avid photographers we decided to try some night photography in London, after all there are plenty of good places for night photography in the city.  We decided to focus on Westminster,  shooting the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye and everything in between.  Unfortunately I pretty much suck at night photography and this trip was no different, I got hardly any photos I was happy with, but I will try to upload the one shot I was happy with later! 

So Saturday was a much more relaxed day, but still as enjoyable and thankfully the weather held for most of the day.  For Sunday’s post we return to Speakers Corner and head to the Photographers gallery!

My twin brother Edd (food blogger – www.he-eats.com) is down in London visiting me for the weekend.  So for a few days we’re playing tourist,visiting places I wouldn’t normally visit very often.  I’ll probably do a post for every day of his short visit, depending on how many decent shots I get.  So this post is for Friday.

We started off in East London heading to Brick Lane.  Unbelievably in over three years of living in London I have never visited Brick Lane, and I don’t know why.  Visiting today really makes me wish i’d been before.  Not only is there so much to see, and loads of really interesting graffiti, but at the very top of the street in Beigel Bake.  This is a 24 hour bakery and its worth a visit to Brick Lane even if you only go here.  By far the best bagel I’ve ever had, absolutely perfect and just 30p!

After we’d done Brick Lane we headed into the City to visit Leadenhall market, which is a really ornate building (at least for a market).  Despite the really nice building I found this place a bit of a disappointment, there wasn’t much going on and the market stalls that were open were no good.  While this market may not have been that good the next one was, he headed across the river to Borough Market.  Borough market is by far one of my favourite places in London, especially for food.  My brother’s a real foodie so this was one of the places he really wanted to go to.  Lots of nice food to taste and the best brownie in London!

After we’d done at the market we hopped on the bus and went to Covent Garden.  Now not to suggest that our day was all about food (ok it was really!) but in Covent Garden we headed to a place called Yuforia which is a new Frozen Yoghurt shop.  On a hot day like Friday it hit the spot.  I had chocolate frozen yoghurt with marshmallows and banana.  While in Covent Garden we watched some of the street performers who weren’t bad, but I had seen them all before.  From Covent Garden it was a quick walk to Chinatown to have a look around – decided to head there for lunch on Saturday.

To finish the day off we headed to the cinema in the Trocadero Centre at Piccadilly Circus to see the new Harry Potter film.  I won’t bother to do a review as I’m sure most of you don’t really care, except to say that it was really good and the perfect way to end the day!

(To see the video in HD, click on Vimeo)

Last week I showed you a video I shot at Speakers Corner.  Well I enjoyed it so much I’ve decided to make it an ocassional feature.  It won’t normally be weekly, it’s just that its happened this way with the first two parts.

This Sunday was really hot in Hyde Park which usually brings people to the Corner and this week was no exception.  It may also have had something to do with the festival in Hyde Park!  But there was a pretty good turnout of Speakers so I could film some new people rather than those that turn up every week.

Anyway I hope you guys enjoy it, there’ll be another video coming later this week of Speakers dealing with hecklers which should be worth a watch.

So it took ages to upload but here is my short video from today’s moonwalking flashmob in honour of Michael Jackson.

The quality isn’t brilliant, turns out in the middle out a tightly packed crowd with a lot of journalists elbowing their way through, isn’t that easy.  Enjoy.

(To see the video in HD, click on Vimeo)

Yesterday London had quite a few protests going on, four in fact.  There was a protest by the Hilsborough Justice Campaign which attracted around 4,000 people, there was a massive protest by the British Tamil community, the daily protests against the Iranian elections continued in Kensington and in Trafalfar sqaure there was a protest for refugees rights.  So I faced a dilemma in choosing which to shoot.  In the end I decided to go for the refugees rights protest mainly because I thought it was a story that needed telling (asylum seekers face an extremely difficult situation in the UK and can be left destitute for years).

The protest was called to mark International Refugee Day and was to support the campaign to end destitution of refused asylum seekers.  Amnesty International’s London groups teamed up with other organisations including the Refugee Council to hold the rally in Trafalgar Square.

Everyone will have seen in the news the daily protests in Tehran against the election results from last week.  What has received less press coverage (or at least none i’ve seen) are the protests that have been taking place in London.

Since the weekend 100’s of people have gathered outside the Iranian Embassy in Kensington to protest against the fraudulent election.  Many, if not most, are supporters of the leading opposition figure Mir-Hossain Mousavi.  They are calling for either a genuine election recount or the annulment of the current result completely.  From all I can tell the protests will continue to take place every evening between 6-9pm.

For more of my pictures from the protest, and to see some excellent and important coverage coming out of Tehran itself, head over to Demotix.com where they have a special feature on the Iran election and its aftermath.

While I was filming at Speakers Corner yesterday I heard a large amount of noise off to my side.  I turned to see a large crowd heading in my direction.  They were clearly heading towards a protest as most carried placards and there was a little bit of chanting.

As you will see in the video and from some of the placards this was a Sikh protest against the Caste system.  It was also an event in memory of a religious leader who was killed a number of years ago.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find much information on this event, but I think its an annual protest as I seem to remember seeing a similar protest last year.  If anyone can tell me any info about the protest i’d love to hear it.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, or my photostream on flickr, chances are you know I used to visit Speakers Corner in Hyde Park quite a lot. I find the place really fascinating, and I love listening to the different speakers, even if most of them are a bit mad! Well last year I would go on a regular basis and I would photograph all the speakers, but it sort of fizzled out.

Because the same speakers tend to turn up week after week, with just the occassional new speaker, I got a bit bored photographing the same people all the time. So as winter came I sort of gave up on the corner, feeling I’d exhausted all photographic possibilty (that sounds a bit pompus!). Anyway with my new camera and its ability to take video I decided that I should give the Corner another chance.

So this Sunday just gone I headed to Hyde Park to see what I could get with video. And I was pretty impressed with what I got. The video above is just a short three minutes or so, but I filmed much more. I finally started to feel like I was getting the hang of video and was very happy with the results. Certainly having a monopod helped things immensley, I could focus on what I was filming rather than on keeping my hands still. I think with Speakers Corner video has the advantage over photographs, because you can really see what it’s about, you can convey a lot of the passion and expression in a photograph, but by itself I think it’s hard to get across the Speakers message.

I can see a lot of possibility for video at Speakers Corner, so don’t be surprised if you see some more later on.