A month or so ago I travelled to Los Angeles for 3 weeks to photograph stories around the recession, as well as any other stories I came across while I was out there. Over the next few weeks I’ll be blogging the different stories I shot. This first instalment is from the Prop 8 protests that started up soon after I arrived on election night.
Within days of arriving the movement surrounding the ‘No On 8′ campaign erupted into large street protests after a narrow defeat at the polls. The new law meant that same-sex couples could no longer marry in California.
Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
- Proposition 8, California State Constitution
The ‘No On 8′ campaign had been organising lots of protests all over the state at very short notice using the internet, specifically the social networking site Twitter As I watched the morning news I cursed myself for missing a large demonstration the night before in downtown LA, just a few blocks from where I was staying, where a protester had jumped on a cop car they mentioned there was another protest later that day outside the Mormon Temple.
Eager not to miss out again I grabbed my lonely planet guide and frantically flicked through it hoping it would be listed, thankfully it was, I worked out which busses to get, grabbed my kit and made the 2 hour trip across town.
The ‘No On 8′ campaigners directed their ire at the Mormon Church as they had heavily funded the ‘Yes’ campaign and had lobbied it’s own parishioners to vote for the proposition as well.
When I arrived outside the temple about half an hour before it was due to start there were already a few hundred protesters, a fleet of news vans and two cops watching the whole thing from across the street.
The protest quickly grew, a few more hundred arrived then a few hundred more ’til there were suddenly about a thousand and they pushed out into the road, stopping traffic along both sides of Santa Monica Blvd.
It was then that I got my audio kit out to start getting some ambient sound to put together a video, you can see the result below. It was my first time using audio and my first time editing it as well. In retrospect it could of been a lot tighter in the editing but I think I did a good job of condensing 6 hours of pounding the streets of LA into about 5 minutes.
You can view the whole set in my gallery or the full size video here
Posted by J Warren
Tags: Audio Slideshow, LA, LA Stories, Los Angeles, Multimedia, No On 8, Protest, USA
Filed under: Photos
I just watched it Jono. Great stuff. It took a bit of time to load but it was well worth the wait.