Pointless vanity project of the former Tabascokid

One job that proved very successful for me and still creates interests and enquiries from viewers on flickr was my coverage of the sinking of the MSC Napoli cargo ship and the resulting free for all that put the village of Branscombe on the international news map.

Having heard about a cargo ship running aground off the coast of Devon, I agreed with my picture editor to go the following morning and see if it made a picture.  Leaving London in the early hours, I arrived in the tiny village at around 8am and headed for the beach.  My first view of the scale of the incident made me realise how much potential the job had.  With police patrols sealing off the beach, the rough weather was bringing cargo containers to shore, smashing them against the rocks of the Jurassic Coast.

As day broke and the mist cleared, the MSC Napoli became visible and the scale of the salvage mission became apparent.  With strong winds and heavy seas still rocking the crippled ship, containers were still falling over the side at regular intervals and bobbing off in all directions. Laying in comparatively shallow waters, the size of the ship becomes apparent when you see the boat to the lower right of the frame below.

Hiking up and down the cliff paths with a 400mm and laptop over my shoulder was absolutely exhausting but with every pathway providing new angles and opportunities for pictures, it was one of those jobs where you’re aware that every bit of effort you make will pay off.  Word soon spread around the community of what was happening on their doorstep with residents making their way down to the beach to watch as the crew were brought ashore to discuss possible hazards to the environment.

By now, I’d had chance to explore the village and found what went on to become my hub for the coming days, the Masons Arms pub. Being the first media to arrive in small areas and villages always has real advantages. Showing courtesy and being open with what you are doing while the novelty of media attention is still fresh and unusual opens some very helpful doors. By late afternoon, satellite trucks and media crews had started to arrive in the area and while the doors of the pub remained closed, I could sit in the landlords office, sending images and drinking much needed tea. Small town hospitality rocks!  Back on the beach, I met a local photographer called Paul Glendell as I was wiring some shots and he kindly shot me in my mobile office.

As the day went on, police continued to secure the beach as more and more containers were washed ashore. The sun went down and I soon found myself back in the Masons. By this point, the media presence was considerable and all hotel rooms had been booked up. Yet again, Branscombe folk came to the rescue with one of the bar staff offering me sleeping bag space on his couch. As the evening went on and people swapped stories of the days events, rumours started of a handful of the locals planning to use secret paths to get down onto the beach to see what they could find. Dressed in my finest “Mission:Impossible” gear, I joined a crack team of drunk locals and headed into the dark. Torches flickered in all directions all along the beach with voices shouting out as people tried to find each other in the pitch darkness. Within a few minutes, scraps of polystyrene and random tubs of cosmetics were surpassed by BMW steering wheels and before long we hit the motherload..

A container containing seventeen £10,895 luxury tourer BMW R1200RT and £6,495 sports tourer BMW F800ST motorbikes, complete with petrol in the tank, log books and keys.

Within minutes, tool kits had appeared and a makeshift garage had appeared as impromptu pit-crews attached wheels and corrected steering before cardboard tracks were laid along the shale beach and the scramble towards the solid road began.  Now while off-road bikes would have been away in seconds, trying to ride stupidly powerful road bikes in complete darkness along a thin cardboard path over loose shale should become a new challenge for “It’s a Knockout”.  Sudden two and three second bursts of engine roar broke out all around as the modern-day Wacky Races tried to charge to glory but ended up once more in the rough.

Heading further into the darkness, the quantity of the spill became more apparent with tons of Lancome cosmetics, random BMW car parts, shoes and empty wine casks littering the beach.  After a few hours of mayhem, I headed back to base to get some shots out and sleep.

The next morning is how every day should start. After a quick coffee, I headed back to the beach via the post office to see if any of the shots had made the papers. For the first (and only ever) time, I had pretty much managed a clean sweep.  Nearly every paper was leading with my shots of the BMW bikes. THAT’S a great feeling.

Rushing down to the beach, it was now clear that any news desk that hadn’t sent anyone down late yesterday would now be waking up their teams and telling them to hit the road. Working with the villagers again paid off as one guy had heard that there were still a few bikes left that the new owners were trying to recover before the beaches filled with tourists.  By this point, any attempts to avoid the police had long gone with patrols just watching on as a nearby fisherman cashed in on the moment with use of his tractor for those struggling to move their new acquisitions.

Moving further down the beach, the debris continued with the inclusion of a brand new 4×4 car and a JCB digger smashing against the beached containers.

With the daylight came the chance to really see what was actually being washed ashore and with that came the awareness of the personal effects that were mixed in with the rubbish.  While everyone was happily loading up their bags and boxes with £50 tubs of skin cream and BMW medical packs, word came through that some of the containers contained a family’s belongings.  As far as I saw, this was the one time when the excitement of the search spilled over into disregard for ownership. The Bokdal family from Sweden had packed up all of their possessions into a container ahead of their move to South Africa and now their photo albums, paintings and clothes were being trampled underfoot while some people began to actively break open the crates marked with their name.

Aside from this, the whole experience had a definite “Whisky Galore” feel to it as vans, loaded with oak casks cruised away and new parents struggling with crates of nappies headed to the car parks.

By the end of the day, nearly all of the larger items had disappeared and the crowds of tourists from all over the UK were arriving to pick through the remains.  As the story was fading on the beach, I tried to see what would be the next part of the story to become of interest so rang around nearby animal shelters and sanctuaries for any sign of ecological damage.  Unfortunately, my hunch proved correct and the RSPB confirmed that sea birds were being recovered with pollution poisoning and oil damage.  Heading to a local wildlife centre, it was clear that the poisoning was too much for some of the recovered birds.

Thankfully, this wasn’t the case for all of them with the staff working their way through crates and crates of injured sea birds.  Never having seen this done before, it was interesting to see that Fairy liquid isn’t just kind to your dishes..

With the wildlife angle covered, I headed down the coast to Chesil Beach after hearing reports that clean-up crews were battling an oil slick that was washing ashore.  Again, never having seen these guys at work, I couldn’t help but admire their energy as they worked their way along the shoreline, removing rubbish and debris as they cleaned the oil from the rocks, only to have to start again after the next tide.

One Year Later

With the anniversary approaching, I decided to head back to Branscombe to see how the clean-up had gone and to see if the events of the previous year were still impacting the lives of residents.

With the majority of the ship removed to a shipyard for disposal, only sections of the MSC Napoli remained.  The beaches had now returned to their former glory and the gift shop in the car park was selling paintings by local artists of the skeletal hull in the distance.

Back on the beach, tiny scraps of polystyrene were still visible in the wash but nothing that could tell of the previous years chaos.  However, I’d only been walking for a mile or so until I found my first BMW remnant.  Washed clean by a years worth of sea water, the component looked pristine and should be used as an advert for BMW’s design strength!

With the ship itself now nearly gone, it was only in local pubs and hotels that signs of the beaching were still evident. The wine casks are now tables, flower tubs and water drums with cuttings and framed photos lining the walls.  Any attempt to find out the whereabouts of the fabled motorbikes is met with scratching of chins and denials of any knowledge of the whole thing. Some reports say that all but four were returned while others say that thirteen are still hidden away in garages and sheds across the area. I went from pub to shop to restaurant but now lips are sealed. I guess my “honorary local” privilege was only an annual membership.

AKA “Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Side”.

Last night, I got the chance to see the world premiere of “Star Wars:A Musical Journey” at the o2 arena in London.  As I sorted out my pass, the area around the venue was filled with rather giddy parents, over-enthusiastically pulling their kids over to see Boba Fett and Chewbacca in the exhibition of items from the films. It really is a religion to these people as became apparent when the show began.

The 20th Century Fox theme rang out, the curtain dropped and the 86-piece Royal Philharmonic orchestra and choir broke into a short medley of some of the musical highlights from the six films. An audience member sat near to me looked as though he was about to break into gospel-style “overcome with the power of the lord” dancing in the aisles as he rocked backwards and forwards, applauding every clip that was shown. After the opening section, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) was introduced and began his job for the evening of providing live narration for the various themes and the film’s story.

With Lucasfilm only allowing five minutes of shooting from a fixed position, I was then “forced” to rush around the back of the stage and find a seat in the crowd to edit.  I must admit, it’s quite a nice change to have an orchestra perform the “Cantina band” song for you as you work!

..”That’s the way to do it”.

Having extensively covered the G20 protests last week, I can honestly say it was a real pleasure to photograph the Tamil demonstration in Westminster. By arranging the “flash-mob“-style protest through text messages and avoiding social websites that can be monitored, the group managed to appear from nowhere and catch the police totally off-guard as they set up camp in the middle of a very busy arterial road next to the Houses of Parliament in central London.

Since anti-terrorism laws came into force a few years ago, not only do demos have to be pre-approved but they are also forbidden from stopping within one kilometre of Parliament itself.

As I’ve previously stated, I couldn’t help but find the G20 protest weak due to the amount of people there who clearly did not fully understand the reason for the event. It may come across as very revolutionary and exciting to teenagers to write “Smash the State” onto the Bank of England in chalk but sitting for a few hours in the sun in central London before complaining that you can’t then leave to go home when you’re tired is a very different level of protest to what is happening in Westminster.

When a protest genuinely means something to the people in the street, you can feel it.  There have been no threats of violence, no smashing of shops windows, no graffiti. On the first night, I was constantly approached by people in the crowd to thank me for taking time to cover their protest.  I, as well as the police that were surrounding them, was offered a share of their food and drink.  Young guys in hoodies would approach me, ask who I was representing and then begin an eloquent and heart-felt explanation of why they were there including details of political history and dates of events.  According to reports, the controlling government in Sri Lanka is currently pushing to stamp out their Tamil Tiger enemies but many civilians are being caught in the crossfire. While both sides have been accused of war crimes over the years, it seems that this last push by the Government is proving particularly destructive.

The group is made up of a whole cross-section of the Tamil community with pensioners sitting alongside their grandchildren.  Last night, the people spent their second night outdoors, chanting and drumming with unbelievable amounts of energy.

Having now been moved from the roads onto Parliament Square, it will be interesting to see how long they are prepared to stay there as there is also a march planned through central London on the 11th.

After countless hours of research, meetings, plans and tactic proposals, the G20 rolled into town on Wednesday for a few days of PnP (politics and protests).

First job of the day was a visit to Maggie’s Cancer Care unit in Hammersmith with Michelle Obama and Sarah Brown.  Usually a pool job means one photographer and possibly a film crew will be allowed access to the event due to security and space restrictions.  The results will then be shared among certain agencies and new outlets and all is good with the world. Knowing how the US media works, it didn’t come as too much of a shock to find that the pool actually involved four photographers and two camera crews.  Bahh..  Thankfully, things went well and I managed to get a few frames before grabbing a lift back to town in the travelling media bus.

After editing en route (travel sickness has been pretty much overcome due to forced wiring of pictures in cars and buses) I headed to the Bank of England for the planned “Meltdown in the City” demo.

After days of build-up from the media (damn their speckly hides), protestors and police, hyping the threat of violence, it soon became clear that 40% of the crowd were journalists with the slightest oddity being pounced on by gangs of photographers and TV crews within milliseconds. As police units began to close off roads and pen protestors into certain areas, scuffles began to break out on the front-line.  As is always the case with these events, a small group of people come to cause trouble and, combined with young kids who are out on their first protest and buzzing like tartrazine-guzzlers, flashpoints occur.

I’m a big supporter of the energy and belief that “the youth” and students are prepared to bring onto the streets during demos but it is thoroughly frustrating to see how insincere some of them are. I would never dream of telling them not to do it as it’s important to voice your feelings but their knowledge is so wafer-thin. I’m not joking when I say they had painted their faces, chalked “today capitalism ends” onto the Bank of England and ended the day discussing how they taught the world a lesson as they sip their latte in Starbucks around the corner.

One group I ran into later in the evening asked how they could get past the police blocks to get back into the protest as they’d been to the pub for a few hours but were now wanting to join in again.  They have as much passion to smash the system as an episode of Heartbeat.

Anyhow, inevitably the cocktail of testosterone, alcohol, bravado and a full compliment of willing press resulted in the first window being broken at the RBS bank.  Within minutes, a semicircle of TV crews and photographers had gathered as windows were smashed and the offices were raided with keyboards and monitors soon being waved in the air.  It’s difficult for me to write about the media’s part in this as it’s very easy to criticise it’s part in both encouraging violence and portraying the events in a twisted way.

My defence to this is that despite the recent march through London going smoothly with no violence, our coverage was just as in-depth with four photographers covering the route and rally to the end.  If I’m at a different event and it turns violent, I’ll cover that too but the pictures will be so much more dramatic that people will want to see them as they’re unusual and interesting.  Also, I’m guessing that the same people who were shouting about police brutality if they were pushed may soon cry of censorship if the smashed windows and violence had received no coverage at all in the news. Just a guess of course but it certainly seems a possibility.

Back at the demo, events soon calmed down again and the day-time protestors headed home leaving a die-hard group within the cordon.  Once the police were happy that the remaining people weren’t planning on going anywhere, they closed the area down again and penned them in.  By this point, I was outside the cordon sending pictures so on my return, I found myself blocked from entering.  Grrr.. People who asked were genuinely surprised to hear that I couldn’t come and go as I please with my media pass but that’s a thing of the past. With so many members of the press at events like this from all companies ranging from international agencies to local papers and campaign freesheets, if they allowed everyone with a presscard to move around as they wished, they’d have been no point in trying to stop anyone.  Very frustrating to us but there’s a part of me that understands.  I guess that’s what makes the cat and mouse side of getting back in so much fun..

After an hour or so of patrolling the perimeter, fortune saw me in the right place at the right time as another flashpoint erupted and I could slip into the frontline again.  By this time, the light was fading and as the protestors were herded through the Square Mile, fires were lit in the road and smoke filled the air.

As the police managed to dilute the crowds, I filed my last pictures of the day and headed back for a debriefing in the office.

With everything still in one piece, it was time to head home and get some kip before day 2 kicked off.