After I finished writing my daily for the DNC coverage yesterday, I left the office and wandered around downtown Denver to see what I might come across. I happened upon this very intense protest against abortion and couldn't resist a chance to capture such raw human emotions and confrontation.
While several police officers flanked the perimeter of this scene, keeping a close eye on things, a large group of people crowded around this disturbing display of photos of allegedly aborted fetuses. I say "allegedly" because I've covered numerous abortion protests where I later discovered that the photos they were showcasing were not actually of human fetuses. I do not know about the legitimacy of these images; I only know that the response they drew from passersby was real.
To capture this shot, I used my 16-35 wide angle lens and placed myself directly between the protesters and crowd. While the poster itself is indeed very disturbing, I find my eyes moving around the image and focusing on each of the faces. Notice how the man in the right portion of the frame is lost in thought, biting his fingers. The woman with her hand on her hips is clearly arguing with the protester who is trying to argue her point of view. The other young protester isn't speaking, but his gaze is directly pointed at the woman confronting the protesters and their display. The young man in the yellow t-shirt directly across from me is caught in the middle, just like I am, but his gaze is on the woman as well.
One could argue that the image is too busy...that there is too much going on in the image for a viewer to be able to focus on. I say this is a pretty good example of photojournalism, capturing a moment filled with life and humanity. What do you think?
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