Back in 2006 I took a walk around the site where the London 2012 Olympics was going to be, as you can see from my pictures it was a pretty miserable place.

Recently I went back to the area to see what had changed, quite a lot it would seem.

No longer blighted by huge piles of rubbish and burnt out cars, instead there is a new eyesore. A 3m high, 11 mile long bright blue construction fence, encircling the entire site. 

A large blue construction fence now surrounds the site, cutting off parts of the area.

View Larger Full Set

But this huge feat of modern engineering is soon to be gone as well. Replaced by 5m high galvanised steel mesh fence topped with a 1.2m electrified section. Not too dissimilar to the one built around Kingsnorth Powerstation in Kent before this years Climate Camp

So far there has been little photography from inside the Olympic site, a deliberate policy made by the PR people at the Olympic Deliver Authority (ODA) not to allow any independent journalists onto the site, absolutely terrified of any negative coverage it might create.

The Evening Standard has a reporter assigned full time to covering the build up to the 2012 games. Two years in the job and he has not once been allowed on the site, other than on carefully planned photo-calls. 

This is a hugely important subject to be documenting, a project that will transform the area forever and access to this story is being blocked by a few paranoid PR bods in the ODA.

It is reminiscent of when The Dome O² Centre was being built, just down the road in Greenwich. Mark Power petitioned the developers for months trying to get access to the site, being turned down again and again, pleading with them to let him in. Eventually he gained access and over 3 years created a beautiful set of images using a 5×4 large format film camera, that were also made into a book.

We can only hope that the ODA comes to it’s senses and allows journalists and photographers onto the site, to document what truly will be great games. 

You can view the full set of images here

Chief Superint. Bill Tillbrook of the CO19 firearms unit, not seen here.

Last Wednesday a group of 12 photographers, headed up by Nigel Howard of the Evening Standard, went to a meeting with senior officers from the Met Police CO19 firearms unit

Press Gazette has the full story here And quite frankly it’s a shocking tale. Apparently an agreement was made where picture desks would be issued guidelines from the Met Police to blur or pixellate the faces of armed officers.

The current guidelines that were drawn up by the NUJ and BPPA took two years negotiation with the Met police and since early 2007 were adopted nationally by ACPO.

So for Nigel Howard to go a meeting that no professional photographers body was represented at and make a unilateral agreement that photo desks and editors should pixellate the faces of armed officers is a serious affront to press freedom.

The press need to be able to hold the police to account, especially armed officers. The stories of Scott Hornby and Alan Lodge seem pertinent here. Officers should be identifiable and accountable to the public. 

Thankfully the NUJ and BPPA have come out strongly against this ‘deal’:

There are already clear guidelines detailing how relations between the press and the police should be conducted. Those guidelines have been agreed between ACPO, the NUJ and other news organisations. We would have serious concerns if they were to be undermined by unilateral action by a specific branch of the police force.

Jeremy Dear, General Secretary – NUJ

It is unacceptable for the police to discuss, informally, with a group of independent photographers, matters such as this and them to then be reported as some form of agreement. 

Jeff Moore, Chairman – BPPA

Hopefully that will put a nail in this agreement and ward off future attempts by the police or rogue photographers trying to cut backroom deals.

Hello!

I’ve returned to blogging after a 2 year break. I hope to bring more of the same reporting from shoots plus some comment and views on the photography world.

This is also to co-inside with the relaunching of my site with brand new and much easier to maintain backend software. Before I was manually editing a xml file every time I wanted to add images, it was also quite slow to go through images so was more of a showcase of my work.

But now I’ve redesigned and rebuilt the whole site from the ground up things are looking a lot better. For the curious the gallery software I’m using is ZenPhoto and the blog is of course running on Wordpress