Today I photographed along the Nagar Kirtan celebratory procession route from North Street Gurdwara in Barking to the Seven Kings High Road Gurdwara in Ilford. I’ve photographed Sikhi events before in Central London and Southall, but this was my first involvement with the community near where I now live in East London.
I arrived early while some of the cars were being decorated and set up, but I didn’t make any images until the procession was underway. I was trying to get a couple of rolls out of my cameras from previous events, as I didn’t want to have disorderly negatives to file, so I was using a rangefinder with a 35mm lens and a Nikon SLR with an 85mm lens (close enough to my favourite focal length to not make as much difference). I also had a small digital camera with me, as I felt there would be good potential to file images from the event for wire service news reportage.
Aside from being digital and in colour there is a distinct stylistic difference between the images I make with the intention of filing for news uploads and the images I make for my own projects. I think this difference is lesser when working digitally for clients, but for an event like this you can tell that my attention is spent on putting a bit more thought into my film images, whereas the digital ones are basic, no complex compositions, just straightforward graphic elements arranged as simply as possible in the frame.
The procession maintained a really lovely atmosphere, starting out with a crowd of hundreds which grew to thousands as we passed through neighbourhoods where people would join from their homes, shops, or other Gurdwaras.
Street Dances 
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