Photojournalism

Henri-Cartier Bresson defined photojournalism as waiting for the “decisive moment.” Happiness, sadness, accomplishment, failure, relief, fear, death; all the mosaics of life can be captured in that one “decisive moment.” We were given an assignment whereby we had to capture a moment, in either a news or sports event. Naturally I chose news! I attended Stop the War Coalition’s demonstration today (29/01/10) at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster. A day believed to be Tony Blair’s Judgment Day, as he explains himself to the Iraq Inquiry. Decisive moments were hard to capture since Blair entered the centre through a back door, and chose not to face the public. Although we may not have been an impressive crowd in size, we were incredibly loud!

The ISO varies from 200 to 1600 and the White Balance was set to cloudy.

Ready and Waiting.

Bring Their Brothers Back

Tears for the Lost.

George Galloway

A Calm Pause Before Damning Blair

Al Mustaqbal

Britain’s Got Talent

The Lies

The List Goes On…

Protesters from Oxford

The Blood Price

Peace

Team Work

Muscles From Brussels.

W1

Clean Streets

It’s Personal.

For one moment I thought you were sad…

Lunch Is Served!

Us vs. Them

Wild World

Loss of Innocence

The Chuggers

A Moment of Appreciation

Pigeon Patrol

Fabulously British

The Wise

Cultural Graffiti

The second half of the photographs were taken while working on my photo story, Culture Capital. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich coined the word volksgeist to denote the spiritual essences of diverse nations. I aspired to capture the cultural essences of some of the different races that have found a home in London. The photo story took a turn that should have been anticipated. Capturing the essences of cultures is no easy feat, and definitely requires a lot more time! While exploring London I quickly realised that London’s subcultures generally restrict themselves to their own areas. Nevertheless, London is unrivalled as a cultural city of the world. With a soft approach and chat about what I was doing, most subjects were more than happy to have their photograph taken. I learnt the hard way that you only get one opportunity to take the shot, and that names are not easily exchanged. This is not to say that I did not get turned away from. Most subjects that saw the camera from a distance avoided me.

You can read my article by typing Culture Capital into the search box above!

The sun had been shining throughout the week, so the available light was more than enough. I rarely changed my camera settings, and as a result some photographs were overexposed.

All of the pictures were shot with a Nikon D40 on manual, no flash, and no photoshop!