Optics and Exposure

Statues at Carnegie Hall are shrouded...the city is prepared for the worst...

The G20 is in Pittsburgh, right here. The leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies, in our city. I have a camera, and consider myself an amateur hobbyist with a little bit too much disposable income. What does that all mean? There is no way I was going to sit at home and play video games this week. I went downtown.

I made plans with a group of about 8 guys from flickr to meet downtown and photograph the going’s on. We were apprehensive, careful, uncertain of what to expect. Alarmist warnings abounded in the city, and in our discussion. But, when the day arrived, we were a little disappointed.

If you are tuned into the news media, you may have heard about the violent protests in Pittsburgh yesterday. In the late afternoon, anarchists protesting in a neighborhood called Lawrenceville (about 15 blocks north of the convention center hosting the summit today) threw a few rocks and bricks at police officers, who responded with a small amount of tear gas, and some rubber bullets. I don’t have any pictures of this because I was downtown, 5 blocks south of the convention center.

Long Live the Dalai Lama!

I was excited to see a well-organized, meaningful protest marching downtown demanding that China be forced to leave Tibet before free trade agreements were signed with them. This is not a new demand, but they were here to make sure the world’s leaders knew that it was still a relevant demand. They were loud, they were coherent, they had a message, and they were peaceful. It was everything a protest should be.

The lines are drawn...

After marching around downtown for a few hours, they were heading up the main street (Liberty Ave) towards the protests. The police made a cordon 1 block from the secret service security perimeter and tried to tell the protesters to turn down a side street. Instead, the protesters stopped marching and drew their own line.

If this were any other group, I would have been worried about violence, but it was very peaceful. A few times, some groups of onlookers started rival chants. A few Steelers chants, and a Penguins chant, happened, there was a group across the street chanting “G420″ and holding a giant marijuana banner, and some overly-dramatic kid with a white t-shirt wrapped around his face walked up between the Tibetan protesters and the police and was yelling about abortion. I think he missed the memo…his group was about 10 blocks away.

All in all, an interesting day, and I got some better shots than I expected.

Everything was peaceful, but they were wary b/c it only takes one idiot.

This fan was returning from the game, and we asked him to pose as if he were protesting. Funny shot, IMO.

The riot police don their gas masks.

Members of the Resist G-20 movement protest in Lawrenceville, 20 blocks from the summit's venue.

This armored truck had a directional loudspeaker used to dissipate crowds with an extremely loud warbling noise.

For more shots, be sure to check out my G20 set on flickr, as well as those for some other flickr users who were around, like joey kennedy, superchou, blindspot, and frndrfo.

-aigulf