G8 2007 - 'Rocking the Stock': Organised Anarchy

So these are some of the pics I took during the protests at G8 this year that was held in Heiligendamm, Germany. It’s always quite tough photographing riots or anything with a lot of action and emotion, to try and compress all the mayhem and energy into one frame I often find to be very hard. Of course riots like this are even worse because you have to be constantly aware of what’s going on around you in terms of flying debris and people high on aggression, so finding time to think about exposure and composition can be quite tricky! As it was I had a banger or something explode somewhere near my face (with the camera luckily taking most of the blow) and a brick on my shin (ouch). I think if I did more sports photography then I would probably be better at freezing the moments of action, a fast zoom lens also would have been handy at times. Capa’s rule of getting close is all very well and good but often the closer you get the harder it is to get a clean composition, especially when you haven’t got much to think about it. A Dutch photographer we were with, Dirk-Jan Visser, got an amazing photograph that seemed to really sum up the mayhem-it almost looked like street theatre (the photo can be found on the WpN website). I don’t think however that this time I really got one image that I was especially proud of. Nevertheless it was amazing to witness history as always and also to meet some great photographers over there. If you want to see more photos from G8 I should be putting some up on mw website soon, but in the meantime there is a set up online at my flickr account.