I was excited to bring my M3 to the recent No Kings protest in Manhattan in October. I don’t have a huge amount of experience shooting ‘documentary’ style to capture events, really just NYC Pride in June and a couple of protests that I’ve attended as a participant or a handful that I’ve stumbled onto, like an anti-Elon Musk protest outside a Brooklyn Tesla dealership. I’ve been doing a lot of street photography since returning to NYC, but more personal photography like street portraits or cityscapes, and not much in the style that I might aspirationally think of as ‘photojournalism’.
For someone who is still relatively early in finding their way into photography shooting protests can be challenging, especially giant ones like No Kings. It can be hard to get a decent angle when you are in the midst of a crowd in the tens or hundreds of thousands. I have far too many shots that day that are nondescript crowd shots where there is so much going on that nothing much stands out. I burned more film on these types of shots than I needed to as I was somewhat in awe of the scale of the event. This one, taking advantage of the depth of field on my 28mm, is one of the least unsuccessful, as there are lots of interesting faces in both foreground and mid-ground. More often I ended up with vast quantities of the backs of people’s heads.
As the day went along, I began to get more of a feel for shots that would have a sense of personality/emotional engagement, mainly by trying to find interesting people in the crowd and emphasizing in the framing/composition.
I like the look on this woman’s face that feels equal parts hope and determination with a bit of angst. Her family to her right share the mood — I think we were all feeling that way around that time, early in the march before things really got moving. There was still a bit of uncertainty about how the day would go in the context of crackdowns going on in cities like Chicago and Portland.
Planning a photo expedition in an unfamiliar shooting situation is always interesting. Frequently before setting out I am weighing the pros and cons of which and how much gear to bring, usually erring on the side of ‘a little bit too much’. No Kings was definitely a day for the M3, but the morning of the march I was trying to narrow things down to a two lens ‘pocket’ kit, with the Summitar 50mm f2 and the Voligtlander 28mm f3.5. But I was also feeling a little indecisive about dropping the 90mm as I had hopes of grabbing some portraits (a fool’s errand as it turned out) and also wanted to bring my filters and hoods, and external viewfinders. So after dithering for about 20 minutes, I said, ‘Screw it’, and brought the M3 bag which to its credit, is pretty slim and light.
But while there are benefits to having more gear around so you get more choices and options, there is a cost in terms of how fiddly and fumbly shooting can become while hunting around for the right accessory. That can be especially problematic in very dynamic/borderline chaotic situations like a protest march. At some point, I misplaced my 28mm external viewfinder and ended up shooting the rest of the day on the 50mm. I had a much better time going with a single lens…
As the day went along things were going much more smoothly than we might have feared.
I liked the group of three people in pink inflatable cartoon costumes, but kept struggling to get a good shot that showed all three of them without someone blocking them in the foreground mostly other people taking photos of them from closer range. In this shot, I liked the nice woman holding the small but lovely & positive sign while chatting with her friend. By that time, I had switched to shooting color. I like ‘code-switching’ back and forth from black & white to color, and eventually I might begin to see interesting patterns for how I compose and shoot differently depending on what is in the camera. But for now it’s more intuitive and these pink protesters were a natural when I was shooting color.
So was this woman in a bright red devil outfit!
By this time everyone on the parade route was having a pretty good time and it was clear the day was going off very well.
While I was having a great time marching along and got a handful of memorable shots, I’ll confess that I didn’t have my best shooting day at No Kings. My ratio of keepers over about five rolls is quite low and I spent more time fiddling with gear than finding good shots. It also took a long time to settle into a style of shooting that I thought worked for the nature of the event.
I also had some technical problems — the aperture dial on my Color Skopar 28mm has gotten loose and it kept slipping down to f16 leading to a fair number of severely underexposed shots. Worse, I had a full roll of pushed Pan F Plus that came back from the lab completely unexposed. My diagnosis is that I mis-loaded the take up spool on the M3 and apparently the film wasn’t advancing while I was happily snapping away. That is a hazard of the M3’s slightly tricky loading system, but that was the first time I made that mistake in about 18 months of frequent shooting. I was excited to see how Pan F Plus @ 200 worked in a dynamic situation in varying light, and that roll was in the prime part of the day after I’d settled into how I wanted to shoot the protest. I still remember some shots that were on that roll that were likely to have been keepers if not made the five frames cut for this post. C’est la guerre.
Next time I think I’ll slim down to that two lens kit, or maybe even go all in with a single lens! Deciding what the ‘single lens theory’ might be is another matter. I think 28mm’s have become pretty fashionable these days (someone made an interesting point in another post that they match the primary focal length of an iPhone camera) and there are lots of times when that feels like a great option to have on hand when you want to get right into the midst of the action. But I love shooting with a 50mm with the great HCB as a role model and I think my best shots at No Kings were mostly on the 50mm which maybe got me closer photographically to the individual people I wanted to focus on. In terms of documentary photographers, I’ve long admired Danny Lyon’s shots of 1960’s Civil Rights protests and I read that he used a 35mm, which might be a happy medium for a single lens instead of swapping back and forth between the 50mm and the 28mm. Happy to get feedback from the forum on the ideal lens for this kind of shooting.
Whatever decision I make about glass, I’ll also skip grabbing a lot of crowd shots and jump right to looking for shots that have personality, mood and emotion — mostly looking for the right people or groups of people who will ‘pop’ in some way. I have a feeling I’ll be getting more opportunities to practice my photojournalist skills at protests going forward.
All that being said, I think this group shot of young men protesting from a scaffold is my favorite shot of the day.
I spotted the people on the scaffolding from a few blocks away and had a feeling I might get a good shot at some point. As we slowly made our way down Seventh Avenue, I fired off a few frames from distance which didn’t make the keeper bin. But this felt like the right distance to capture the scale of their mini protest within the protest and a good moment to capture. I was close enough to be able to read the expressions on the faces of the young men on the scaffold, but because they were elevated I was able to get a clear shot of them that wasn’t blocked by the hundreds of people between us.
I knew I had a good one when I got this shot with the two young men at the left of the group pumping their fists and shouting into the crowd. At first glance, the prevalent mood of this photo is defiance. While that is clearly true, on closer examination you can sense that it is a happy defiance. The protesters are up there having a good time, smiling at each other and chanting to the crowd below. As the day went on there was a collective realization that the Manhattan No Kings March was a huge “feelgood” success and had taken on an atmosphere that was far more fun, love & happiness than fear, rage & anger.
We’ll leave those feelings to the other side…
Feature Image: UNCLE SAM PROTESTER, Leica M3, Leitz Summitar 50mm f2, Kodak Ektar @ 400
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