Gnasher's Eye

Save the NHS

Yesterday up to 2000 people marched through from the South Bank to Downing Street as a protest against Government cuts to the NHS, against the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), and against the closure of several A&E departments across London.

Tags: 2013, anger, austerity, ConDem, cuts, hospitals, London, NHS, people, PFI, photography, police, Protest

My second Attempt

This is only my second attempt at manually blending an HDR

Tags: 2013, HDR, London, Manually blended, photography

First Attempt

This is my first attempt at manually blending an HDR image. I know it’s not perfect, and I have a lot to learn, but I do enjoy doing these. Why? Well when I photograph a demo/protest/event etc we are not allowed to do much more than the basic processing, levels and sharpening etc. With HDR’s I can do whatever I want, there are no limits.

Normally I use Photomatix Pro to do my HDR’s, and although I do like the result, they are not very realistic or natural. Manually blending allows us to achieve a more natural look to the images, but they are much harder to do. If any of you know about manually blending HDR’s please feel free to give me any tips.

Tags: 2013, HDR, High Dynamic Range, London, Manually blended, photography, Photomatix Pro, Photoshop

People’s Unity – 99% Against Austerity

Yesterday around three hundred people, mainly from the group Anonymous protested in Trafalgar Square, followed by a march to Parliament and back. They had twelve demands which were

1.An end to the spare room under occupancy rates (Bedroom Tax)
2.Abolition of Workfare
3.Stop the cuts to national services (NHS, Police, Military)
4.An end to minimum wage and establishment of a living wage.
5.End the contract with ATOS for disability assessment
6.VAT to return to 17.5%
7.Re-introduction of the retirement age to 65
8.Banks and services to be reformed and managed by the state.
9.End tax havens and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes
10Introduction of referendums to stop the government from ruling the people and to start representing the people.
11.We demand the end of this corrupt governmental system whose only interest is profit for the few and misery for the many.
12.A constitution written by the people for the people.

The march was peaceful mainly, although there were some minor scuffles and one arrest.

As a foot note I would like to add something. Today the police were rather confrontational, pushing people about. There was also a large number of them, they must have equalled the number of protesters. Anonymous protests (which I have been to a far few) are peaceful events. There was a different ‘feel’ about yesterday’s march. I know that there were undercover police in the crowd, the question is were they agent provocateur’s (is that the correct spelling?). To be honest I wouldn’t put it past this government to try and discredit a group that have had some high profile victories lately, and are not afraid to challenge them.

You can see more images by either clicking on one of the images or by CLICKING HERE

Tags: 99%, Anon, Anonymous, arrest, austerity, ConDem, cutbacks, government, London, police, Protest

Having a break

Amongst all the chaos and violence of Sunday at Brighton, I spotted these three, just sitting and calmly taking a break from all the madness.

Tags: 2013, black/white, Brighton, people black/white, photography, Protest, street, street photography, street portrait

March For England. Brighton 21st April 2013

150 members of various right-wing groups staged a St. Georges Day March through Brighton. Over 1000 anti-fascists counter protested. There were various scuffles throughout the day with several people being hurt.

Anti-Fascist gets pulled off of one of the marchers by police – © David Nash

The actual March for England – © David Nash

Anti-Fascist March through Town – © David Nash

Tags: 2013, Anarchist, anger, Antifa, Brighton, Casuals, Community, EDL, English Defence League, fascism, fascist, March For England, MfE, nationalist, Nazi, Patriot, Patriotism, photography, police, Politics, Protest, racist, unions, violence

Worlds Apart

Out playing with my new toy again. The first thing I notice is people are much more relaxed when you have a point’n'shoot. What is it about a DSLR that makes people nervous? Anyway I spotted these people sitting opposite me on the train, all lost in their own little worlds, oblivious to the life and people around them.

Tags: 2013, black/white, flickr, London, monochrome, people, photography, street photography, train, women

New Camera

I’ve been thinking about getting a point and shoot camera for a while. I had few requirements. It had to be able to fit in my pocket, but the utmost priority was image quality, then it must shoot in RAW, and it must be in my budget of £300. I did some research and narrowed it down between the Canon Powershot S110 and the Fuji X10. And it was a very close thing. There were a couple of things I preferred about the X10, such as it had an optical view finder, however it lost out on the fact that it was just a bit too big to stick in your pocket.

Although I have only had the S110 for a very short time, I must say that I am very impressed. It is very responsive (unlike a Nikon P7000 which I had before), it’s very easy to use, and despite it’s small size, big clumsy finger like mine can navigate around the menu with ease.

I’ll let you know how I get on with it after I have used it in anger a couple of times, but until then heres a few test shots I did with it.

Tags: Canon S110, new, test

#nowthatchersdead

Tags: hate, t-shirt, Thatcher, Tory

International Pillow Fight Day, London 2013 (Part 2)

The main event. I photographed this a couple of years ago, so I had an idea of what was going to happen, and was therefore not stupid enough to take expensive cameras into the middle of the melee. This year well over a thousand people battered the hell out of each other for well over an hour. Fun was had by all, no one got hurt (to any serious extent), no one died (that I know of) and Sergeant Harrison still has a small prick. Here’s a few photos.