J'ouvert at the Notting Hill Carnival 2017
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to shoot a London job that had managed to elude me during my time here; the Notting Hill Carnival "J'ouvert" parade.
Notting Hill Carnival 2017 was always going to be different. The horrific fire in Grenfell Tower had happened just over two months before, and local emotions were understandably high with raw emotion mixing with anger at the lack of safety procedures that could have prevented such a massive loss of life. Plans to move the carnival out of the area were quickly put on hold by London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the wake of the disaster, correctly noting that the community needed as many opportunities to come together and heal as possible.
While the wounds were still very much causing huge amounts of pain to the people of Notting Hill, the young community managed to come together and celebrate life and all that the carnival stands for in the "J'ouvert".
The celebration is the traditional opening ceremony of the carnival with people gathering before dawn to take to the streets and go to war against each other, albeit armed with the unusual weapons of flour, melted chocolate, talcum powder and, of course, paint. Lots and lots of paint.
Knowing from pictures I'd seen from previous years how messy it was going to get, I thought I'd prepared pretty well, wrapping my Nikon D5 cameras in a mixture of cling-film and parcel tape but after bumping into professional lovely man (and coincidentally Magnum street photographer par excellence) Matt Stuart, I realised I might have underprepared.
Being the afore-mentioned lovely chap that he is, he had a spare mask for me to counter-act some of the talc, flour and powder paints filling the air. While my cameras survived reasonably intact, the same couldn't be said for the new Thinktank Shapeshifter V2 camera bag that they'd only just sent me. Ever the optimist, I like to consider it as a prototype from their incredibly rare new "Jackson Pollock" range of bags.
Having sealed my cameras from the multi-coloured elements, I was relying on manual settings but Auto ISO for the day and it handled the light perfectly. The new Nikon 28mm f1.4 prime lens was particularly lovely to use, with excellent colour rendition, fast focus and brutal sharpness. Consider it recommended.
Notting Hill Carnival has had a bad reputation in the previous years but 2017 was one of the best I've ever shot. Despite the weight of recent events, the people of west London took to the streets and showed the world that life continues. An inspiration to us all.
