May Day Illegal Immigration March, Downtown Los Angeles

Disclaimer: I generally stay away from taking political stances on my website except for environmental issues. With that said, I take pictures and I talk about photography experiences. That's it.

Picture: May Day Illegal Immigration March, Los Angeles, California


Yesterday morning I took the Metro Gold Line from Old Town Pasadena to Union Station because most of the streets near the Civic Center were shut down for the various protests in Downtown L.A. From there I walked all the way down to Broadway and Olympic where the illegal immigration rights group gathered. Initially there were about as many LAPD officers there as protesters but the crowd grew the closer it got to the 2pm starting time. It was easier to get pictures when the crowd was smaller in size, but the peak moments of action happened once the march started heading down Broadway toward 1st & Temple where The Times Building and Civic Center are located.

It may seem really obvious, but the key insight about photographing these sorts of events is the people want their picture taken. Unlike day-to-day scenes where it would be rude to do so, here it is a tailor-made situation to shove a 17mm lens in the faces of the subjects. The difficulty in shooting something like this with a wide-angle is that when you find an interesting sequence for taking pictures, five other photographers suddenly show up right after and often end up in the edges of your frames. Hit the delete button and hopefully you have 5-10 other similar images to pick from.

This photo was taken at the front of the pack with the entire crowd behind the flag. It was a pretty fast moving march so it required backtracking while taking photos others you will get trampled. I don't know very much Spanish but the crowd was generally speaking out against federal raids that arrest illegal immigrants and deport them back to their country of origin. The separation of families was a major theme of their argument. There was also a strong anti-Bush sentiment in the crowd and a desire to elect either Clinton or Obama to the White House.

My ultimate goal was to get a photo that captured tension between the LAPD and the protesters but it was mostly peaceful in this group aside from a few arguments between security and marchers.

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