The situation imposed a couple of restrictions, photographically. I travelled light within the confines of Paul’s car and didn’t use flash – it looks shocking against reflective stripes, can be distracting and draws attention. This meant fast lenses, a high ISO and a slow shutter speed. It was also necessary to avoid identifying Paul’s patients in my photographs: in some situations this can be a requirement of the PCC Code. It was also a condition of my presence, imposed by the NWAS.

It’s early evening and Paul waits at one of several designated points on the edge of the city. First responders like Paul serve as the nimbler cousins to conventional ambulances and from such points Paul can efficiently reach a central or suburban location.

Often Paul gets called to an emergency only for the call to be downgraded or cancelled after he’s well underway. After several such calls, I find we’re on territory that’s familiar to me, on Manchester’s Withy Grove.

Revellers enjoy their night out as Paul works.

A pair of police, a pair of women and a pair of men: as a first responder, Paul works alone.

The NWAS is the largest in the country, covering 5,400 square miles and a population of over 7 million. After ensuring all is well, Paul is swiftly on his way to another call.

Paul uses his skill and some of the valuable equipment he carries to provide care for a woman, inside a helpful hotel in Manchester City Centre.

The woman is taken to hospital by ambulance and Paul gets back on the road.

Many of the calls are inside people’s homes, so I don’t photograph those. To my untrained eye, these range from ridiculous to serious. Every incident calls for an emergency response from Paul, who drives at speed, sometimes taking personal risks to ensure support is provided. Every incident gets treated with the same level of care and attention.

After a few hours, it’s time for a break back at the NWAS Central Manchester Hub.

During his break, Paramedic Paul Gay cleans his ambulance

In to the early hours, Paul responds after a man is found injured in the middle of the road in Moss Side.

Police provide initial first aid and step back when Paul arrives.

A passer by had spotted the man in the road and checked to see if he was OK. When he realised he was injured he called the emergency services.

The injured man needs further care and is secured to a stretcher before being loaded on to an ambulance.

Paul checks on his welfare before he finishes at the scene…

…and fills out the necessary paperwork

Police give the passer by a lift home to thank him for helping, whilst the injured man is taken to hospital.

And at the close of his twelve-hour shift, Paul gives me 30 seconds for a quick pose.

Dozens of candles arranged in the shape of a red ribbon.

For the first time, hundreds held a candlelit procession through Manchester’s “Gay Village”.

A minute’s silence was held by the “Beacon of Hope” monument, in Sackville Park.

Before you start this, do not do this.

Flashes are dangerous.

For a flash to fire, a very high voltage is required. This voltage is stored on a capacitor inside the flash, charged up by much lower-voltage batteries. Removing these batteries will not remove the charge in the capacitor. Do not assume that 6v of battery power means a flash is a low voltage item. It is not. The charge required to make the flash fire is lethal.

If you do not know how to handle and safely discharge a high voltage electrical device, DO NOT PROCEED as you could get seriously injured or killed.

You will need:
-Canon part CY2-4229 flash tube/reflector assembly. I’ve seen them for sale online in America. Canon UK would not sell me a spare part directly. I bought mine from a Canon authorised service centre in the UK.
-Small slot screwdriver
-PH00 Phillips screwdriver
-Soldering iron with a fine tip + solder
-Soft-headed, delicate grips or tweezers

Before you start, remove the batteries from the flash.
Do not open up the flash head until you have discharged the capacitor as below.

Again, if you are not certain that you know what you are doing and how to discharge the capacitor first, DO NOT DO THIS, send it to Canon to fix instead.

1) Either side of the 580EX-ii’s head is a rubber strip. These strips are fixed to the plastic body with sticky stuff. Carefully insert a slot screwdriver underneath each rubber strip and peel it back. Place the strips somewhere, with the sticky side facing up. You’ll need to reuse these when you’re done.

2) NOW DISCHARGE THE FLASH’S CAPACITOR BY FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS VIDEO (credit to Darin Pointer):

If the video does not play on the page, try this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mgpbD0IFvw

If you don’t understand what is being said and done in this video, do not proceed: send the flash back to Canon instead. If you don’t discharge the flash’s capacitor, you risk a serious – potentially lethal – electric shock.

3)  On both sides of the flash head, beneath the rubbery strips, you will find small Phillips screws around where the head hinges. There are two further screws on the front cover of the flash head. Use a PH00 screwdriver to remove all these screws and then carefully remove the front cover of the head.

4) Slide out the plastic lens from the top of the flash head, being careful not to lose the weather-sealing gasket that goes around it.

5) The flash bulb, reflector, focusing motor and PCB which includes the high-voltage capacitor are built in to a single, white plastic assembly which I’ll refer to as the “flash assembly”. This is mounted to the back of the flash head by two small screws on either side. Remove these screws.

6) The assembly is attached to the flash body by wires at four separate points. These wires are just the right length and no longer. Carefully lift the flash assembly away from the back of the flash head’s body a little. Use a small, slot screwdriver and/or delicate grips to remove the two plug-in wiring looms on the side. Be careful: the PCB around the sockets is not solid but flexible and you don’t want to break any of the contacts or printed circuit that run from the sockets to the rest of the PCB, or damage the plugs and sockets themselves.

7) With the two small wire looms disconnected, you can further lift up the flash assembly a little. Don’t force it – it is still attached by short connectors. Note the single grey wire taped to the underside of the flash assembly, that runs along a groove in  the plastic to the front top of the flash head. Carefully prize this free from its track, along with the tape. You need to be careful as the flash assembly is still connected by another delicate connector, underneath.

8) This other delicate connector runs underneath the flash assembly to a mount point near the front and centre of the PCB on the flash assembly. This should be carefully teased away from its mounting point using soft-headed grips or tweezers with rubber tips.

9) The flash assembly is now disconnected and can be removed from the flash head. Next you must remove the faulty flash bulb from the flash assembly.

10) The flash bulb is soldered to the PCB at three points. Desolder it at these three points, being careful not to damage the PCB. The two, thicker, white wires that run from the flash bulb first pass through holes in the PCB from the top side of the flash, to be fixed to the underside. Sliding some slack through the hole first will make the job of desoldering these two wires easier.

11) The replacement flash component I ordered is a CY2-4229. This is the flash bulb, pre-mounted on a small plastic tray, with a metal reflector at the back and a clear plastic screen at the front. Take care when handling this. Do not get fingerprints, grease or dirt on the surface of the screen. This replacement component mounts to the flash assembly along two runners and is driven back and forth along those runners by a small motor. This is how the flash’s focus distance is adjusted.

12) At the base of the flash assembly, the two runners are fixed in place by two small, black circlips. Carefully remove these circlips. I used a small slot screwdriver and prized them away slowly. I did this inside a container so that these small, sprung components wouldn’t fly away and get lost.

13) With the circlips removed, pull the two runners down and clear of the faulty flash component. You will note that, as well as being mounted on the two runners, the flash component is seated on to a small peg attached to the focusing motor. The new flash component will need to sit in the same way before the runners are reinserted.

14) This is the new flash component, complete with bulb and reflector, ready to be fitted.

15) Here lies the cause of my flash’s failure. Now you must reverse the process to fix the flash.

16) Mount the new flash component: first sit in on the peg correctly, then slide the two runners back in to place.

17) Reattach the two circlips to fix the runners in place.

18) Solder the three connections from the new flash component as those from the old component. Remember to route the wires in the same way. These are high voltage connections so be careful to ensure good, clean contacts. Watch for the large coil that’s soldered to the PCB next to one of the flash bulb’s solder points as, with too much heat from the iron on the adjoining connection, this can come away.

19) Reattach the flash assembly to all connections by reversing the order in which the connections were removed. Ensure that all connections are pushed securely home and that the wires have no twists in them and are not pinched or trapped anywhere.

20) Screw the flash assembly back to the inside of the flash head with two screws. Double check that all wires have been correctly seated and that they are not squeezed, pinched or trapped anywhere, especially near the hinge. Check this by carefully rotating and swivelling the flash head, being careful not to get your fingers sticky.

21) Double-check you haven’t got any dirt or fingerprints on the plastic at the front of the new flash component. If you have, use a clean and dry lens polishing cloth to clean it away.

22) Give the flash lens a polish on the front and back before reseating it in front of the new flash component. The weather sealing gasket that surrounds this lens has a couple of notches that stick out a tiny bit and match notches in the plastic body of the flash head – match these up tightly when sliding the lens and gasket back in to place.

23) Slide the front cover of the flash head back in to place. Ensure this is perfectly aligned. The notches in the flash lens’ gasket should fit perfectly between the two halves of the flash head casing and, with a gentle squeeze together, the two halves of the flash head casing should be perfectly flush, with no wires from the inside pinched or caught anywhere.

24) Reaffix the remaining screws on the outside of the flash head.

25) At this point it’s worth testing the flash to ensure the repair’s been successful. Assuming it has been, reaffix the two, still sticky, rubbery strips either side of the flash head. Remember to use the strip with the PUSH button cover on the correct side and to ensure it fits correctly over the release button underneath it.

26) If, upon testing, you discover the repair didn’t work and you need to go back inside the flash head then, having just recharged the capacitor to test the flash, you MUST be careful to remove the batteries and discharge the capacitor (as stage 2, above) again, else you will once again risk a potentially lethal electric shock.

The 8th August 2011 brought a third night of rioting and looting to London.

After Tottenham on the 6th and Enfield on the 7th, on the 8th I was in Hackney.

On Ellingfort Road a sports car was set alight. A bus was smashed on Mare Street, JD sports and other shops were looted.

Half a mile up the road, the Pembury Estate saw the worst violence that I witnessed.

A vehicle had been set alight on Clarence Road and police were blocking direct routes to the street. Walking wide I found a way through.

Looters ripped open the shutters of the local Clarence Convenience Store and stripped the shop.

Cars were set alight and pushed, burning, through the street.

Ignited wheelie bins were pushed over and several people involved in the violence were injured.

This man suffered a deep cut through the tissue on his leg. It looked like it went right through to the bone. I called an ambulance but, fearing arrest, he refused to wait and, after a stranger gave him some basic first aid, he hobbled away from the scene.

People were throwing rocks towards a line of riot police.

Sometimes photographers get a sense of when they’ve outstayed their welcome – there’s an imperceptible change in the mood. I’m sure others would say I was naive to feel there was at least a tacit sense of understanding at first. Either way the mood worsened.

I left when I saw another photographer viciously beaten across his head. I moved to pull the photographer away, and his attacker turned his attention to me, grabbing the front of my lens. I twisted my camera away from him and put my arm around the injured photographer’s back before turning and running away with him as fast as possible. We sprinted 300 metres to Pembury Road and chanced upon an ambulance, which we flagged down.

I never learned the injured photographer’s name or what happened to him after he got in to the ambulance.

After filing a few pictures I headed back to Clarence Road, this time intending to stay behind the police line. But as I approached I saw about six other photographers, their cameras hidden, walking away. Their advice, which I took, was not to return.

I don’t think I could ever get bored of photographing someone with such an expressive face.

It’s definitely faster to work through images that are shot right in the first place. But sometimes it just isn’t possible to get the colour and exposure right, in camera – and that’s when RAW format makes a massive difference.

Here’s a photo shot on a Canon EOS 5Dii with an EF24-70 f/2.8 (the fastest lens I had at the time) at f/2.8, no flash, at ISO3200. Shutter speed is 1/80th second.

This is the JPEG, straight out of camera. It’s dark and durgy, the colour’s all wrong – there’s no in-camera colour preset for mixed street lighting. If I’d used a slower shutter speed the photo wouldn’t be sharp and I couldn’t really have pushed the ISO higher without sacrificing too much detail to noise.

But I can rescue a decent amount of detail and brightness and massively improve the colour, if I work the RAW file:

I used Adobe Camera RAW to do some of the work, pushing the exposure and reducing the black level a little whilst doing some of the colour correction and trying not to lose contrast. I wanted more detail in people’s faces so used the selective colour sliders in Photoshop to reveal brighter, more natural-looking skin tones, whilst retaining the green of the jackets on the left and the blues and purples in the background. I also used these sliders to lighten and reveal some detail in the black clothes at the front. I did this to the limit of my own noise-tolerance and it’s a compromise – despite my best efforts, there’s a little banding starting to creep in.

Still, the end result is a long way ahead of the out-of-camera JPEG. But for the opportunity to post-process a RAW file, I wouldn’t have been able to get near to this.

Manchester United were playing Barcelona in the UEFA Champions’ League Final against Rome, in Italy. I was in Manchester, so headed out to photograph the fans.

Ahead of the match, fans were in a jubilant mood

Cigarette-hungry supporters clustered by venues with screens

As the pubs filled, eager fans watched through windows

but the Italian side won and, as the 2nd half came to a close, sad fans emerged

I’m grateful I used Canon’s RAW format. My cameras weren’t the best in 2009 and this was most evident in low light. I under-exposed shots in order to keep the shutter speed up. Processing these pictures today, I’ve increased the exposure by up to 2 stops and corrected the colour. RAW enables this kind of post-production with less loss.

Numbers on the streets increased. It started raining and a surprising wave of jubilation spread through the fans’ ranks

Their numbers swelled as more spilled on to the narrow road at the top of Manchester’s “Printworks” venue

A sense of physical and emotional release took hold

The rain poured heavier

Their team had just lost a massive match. Months of tension was released

A couple of times the rain and jostling from the crowd threw off my focus

Fans stripped off their shirts

and the streets became shiny, reflecting glorious multi-coloured lights, as the crowd cried out

Using high ISO on a cheaper camera and then pushing the exposure in post-production adds noise to the pictures, but detail is still retained

This shot’s full of motion blur, but I don’t care because there’s one emotion that’s sharp

A primeval instinct had been awakened

Police arrived and created a porous barrier, allowing people to leave but not enter

The year before, Glasgow Rangers fans rioted in Manchester during the UEFA Cup Final. The memory of that night would’ve been fresh

but there was no such disorder on this night

and the triumphant losers headed home.

20 months later he was found hanged in his home.

I travelled to Stafford in the morning, photographed the cortège in the town and most of the funeral outside the crematorium, filed my pictures and drove home for tea.

On Sunday a few of my pictures were used in the press. This one was used on the Daily Mail website:

On Sunday evening I received the following Email, which I’m publishing below with the author’s permission:

Hi Joel,

I felt compelled to contact you, and thank you for the attached photograph that you took, at David Rathband’s funeral yesterday.

It’s extremely poignant, given the circumstances, and beautifully shot. As a serving Police Officer in South Yorkshire Police, I have never seen a photograph that more successfully sums up the common bond and understanding shared amongst Police Officers, and that captures the effects of such an event on our “community”.

It has all the more impact on me, as the officer you photographed is my brother, another South Yorkshire Officer. Clive came to know David Rathband well, through a Blue Lamp Foundation event in Sheffield that Clive and his shift organised to raise money for David’s charity in September. David was the guest of honour, and was a very engaging speaker at the event. Everyone in the Police, as I’m sure you can understand was touched by David’s story. The wrong place, the wrong time. It literally could have been any of us.

Clive was very upset by David’s death and wanted to pay his respects yesterday. The photograph brought my wife (another SYP bobby – it’s in the family!) and I don’t mind admitting myself to tears, demonstrating the power of your art, I guess.

I just thought you may enjoy hearing the human story behind this moment you captured.

Thank you

Matt Collings

I’ve never received a more touching response to a photograph. I’m bowled over by Matt sharing his family’s feelings. It’s affirming.

For the sake of sense, I’ve divided these in to five broad headings.

1) RIOTS

I’ve already published plenty of pics of people burning bins and smashing shops. I’m not putting those here.

At a time when the ugliest face of humanity was on show, the most powerful voice in the world to me was Tariq Jahan’s. His son was murdered during the riots. Yet he called for calm, not revenge, likely averting a race riot. His words brought me to tears. They do to this day.

This photo has grown on me since I took it. I arrived at Tottenham High Street late – about 4am – when the initial rioting was all but over. Amongst the fire crews hosing burning buildings, a moment.

I took this as I bounced between the looting and violence in Camden Town and Chalk Farm, on the third night of looting. Between the hotspots, an eerie vacuum. It was a safe moment, set apart from the hostility of those who seemed to own the streets that night, those who were targeting people and property.

2) STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

I feel that my understanding of what makes a good street photo – and my style – has sharpened this year. I used to shy away from any sense that I was imposing myself on the moment. But that’s unreal. People react to the camera. Interaction is interesting and I’m not one to hide as I work.

See also: 12 Hour Street Photography Challenge.

3) ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE

During a demonstration in Cambridge, a boy in an EDL hoodie is separated from his family as police try to keep EDL and anti-EDL demonstrators apart:

Along with the larger, set-piece demonstrations, there are frequent, smaller fights over what has become as much about political ideology – left vs right – as about disputes over notions of race, culture, Islam and Nationalism. A couple of EDL supporters visited Manchester’s “Gay Village” one afternoon. They were confronted by people hostile to their beliefs. Many smaller fights like this have played out across the country this year.

Perhaps the biggest EDL story of the year: the group’s Tower Hamlets demonstration. The area has a large Muslim population and a massive police operation was mounted. Crusader iconography features strongly in EDL discourse:

4) CUTS PROTESTS

March 26^th brought a wave of demonstrations to London and, cutting under a massive and peaceful rally organised by the TUC, much anger was directed towards the police, as well as tax-avoiding businesses and banks.

5) POLITICS & SOCIETY

The Prime Minister in the Spring:

This year, gay & human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, celebrated 40 years since he immigrated to the UK:

Evangelical Christians protested at London Pride. Two lads shared a kiss in the face of their detractors:

Passionate protesters marched on the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Sheffield:

And finally, the picture which I’m most proud of from 2011. Click here to view it larger. Please take the time to let your eyes wonder over the frame, flick from face to face, read the body language, how the subjects react to one another, to me, to one another again, the symmetry and the asymmetry in each element and across the photograph:

Thank you for for letting me share these with you. Have a happy and healthy 2012.

Front page of London Evening Standard, police dogs on rioters in Enfield:

Arrest and ransacked shop in Tottenham:

Front page of “i” – arrests outside JD Sports in Tottenham:

Arrest shot outside JD Sports in Tottenham:

Looted Comet in Tottenham:

Arrest outside JD Sports double-page spread and looted Comet:

Police dogs on rioters in Enfield:

Carpet warehouse and flats on fire in Tottenham double-page spread and looted Comet:

Arrest outside JD Sports in Tottenham:

David Lammy in Tottenham:

David Lammy cutout:

Camden tea pic and running rioters in Manchester:

Office looted in Manchester:

Convenience Store ransacking in Hackney:

Riot police in Enfield:

Brixton Currys looter under arrest:

Camden tea on riot shield

Police dogs on looters in Enfield:

David Lammy:

Manchester arrests:

Hooded rioters in Hackney:

Police dogs on rioters in Enfield:

Riot policeman guards looted Comet in Tottenham:

Looted Comet in Tottenham:

David Lammy in Tottenham:

Looter arrest outside JD Sports in Tottenham

Fireman watch blazing building in Tottenham:

Looted Comet and looter detained in Tottenham:

Blazing building in Tottenham:

Blazing building in Tottenham:

David Lammy in Tottenham:

Looter arrest outside JD Sports in Tottenham

Police dogs on rioters in Enfield:

Car set ablaze in Hackney: