It’s now 21 years since St Patrick’s Day was first celebrated on a big scale in London, due to then London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who had lengthy been a supporter of Irish republicanism, and MP for Brent East, from 1987 to 2001. His constituency included areas round Kilburn – Brent is the London Borough with the biggest Irish inhabitants.
Till compelled to drop its insurance policies due to Tory cuts, Brent had a fantastic file of supporting celebrations of plenty of festivals for its totally different communities, and and final yr I posted right here in regards to the varied years I photographed the Brent St Patrick’s Day Parade.
In 2002, London had its first St Patrick’s Day Parade, from the Catholic Westminster Cathedral to Trafalgar Sq., the place there have been a spread of Irish performances and a substantial amount of singing and ingesting to have fun the occasion.
In contrast to the Brent celebrations which have been on the day itself, the official London celebrations which have continued yearly since then occur on the day itself. In 2002 St Patrick’s Day was on a Sunday (and in 2013 and 2019) and the parade befell on the day, however in different years it has been celebrated on the closest Sunday.
I did return in 2003 to have fun St Patrick’s Day, when the parade started from Hyde Park, however discovered it quite much less fascinating. Someway I by no means bought round to importing any of the photographs I took to My London Diary, so these color pictures are on-line for the primary time.
These footage have been taken on my first digital digital camera able to skilled outcomes, a Nikon D100, which was able to making prime quality digital pictures, though its 6.1Mp now appears meagre. Its small, dim viewfinder was additionally quite primitive and on the time I solely owned a single lens to suit it, a 24-80mm zoom, which on its DX sensor gave the equal of a 36-120mm on 35mm movie.
I used to be additionally working with two movie cameras, one with black and white movie and the opposite with color unfavourable, each I believe utilizing wider lenses. The photographs is likely to be higher, however I’ve solely ever bought round to printing one in all them. It was protection of occasions like these that basically made me respect the large benefit of digital, that the outcomes have been instantly out there. I’ve nonetheless not digitised any of the color footage from 2002 or 2003.
It was this that basically made potential ‘My London Diary’, although I had begun it a little bit earlier – and there’s some earlier color work taken with consumer-level digital cameras on it among the many primarily black and white pictures which then have been scanned from the 8×10″ RC prints I made to provide to an image library.
My London Diary has taken one thing of a relaxation just lately, although I could return to it at some later date. The explanations for this are combined. The pandemic meant there was nothing a lot so as to add for quite a very long time, simply plenty of footage taken on native walks and bike rides. the software program I used to write down it doesn’t work on my more moderen pc, and I’ve nearly reached the restrict of the variety of recordsdata that my internet server permits. If I’d saved importing recordsdata I couldn’t have continued with >Re:PHOTO.
Tags: 2002, 2003, black and white, celebration, color, digital digital camera, hyde park, Irish, Ken Livingstone, London, London Pictures, Nikon D100, parade, peter Marshall, piper, shamrock, St Patrick, St Patrick’s Day, Trafalgar Sq.
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