Excellent capture. There are many things I like about this piece. The placement of the subjects is interesting, the angle provocative and the creases in the flags, indicating that they had until recently been in a package, folded neatly, and perhaps bought only an hour or so prior to the demonstration, all speak volumes about the time, the place and the emotion.

I have two suggestions, the first would be to crop out the fellow in the green on the left who is looking away from the picture and sort of breaks the emotional potency of the piece. The second, which you can't really do anything about, would have been to have had the flag-bearer tilt his head at less of an extreme angle so you could have caught his expression.

All in all, a very well-done piece of photojournalism.

Cheers, R

Thanks for your thoughts.

As a general (moral) rule I don't crop my photos unless the photo absolutely won't work without; and even then I usually just decide not to use the photo. Though I agree the green is out of place.

That so? Do you think it is somehow dishonest to crop?

In my experience (I'm a writer and photographer for a particular Alaskan newspaper) cropping is necessary, particularly at athletic events. Even when submitting to the Associated Press, most rejection notices site "should have a closer crop" as one of the reasons for not accepting a photo.

Just curious.

I find it more dishonest to myself as I would have rather had the skill to crop in camera rather than in post.

Ah, well, if that's how you feel. I would agree, if the situation were more controlled, but, for the most part, the most compelling shots seem to come just out of a perfect frame in camera, particularly, again, at sporting events; post-processing is a good way to yield more powerful results, but of course there is a bit of a gray line regarding an allowable amount of post-processing in a journalistic effort.

indeed, thanks for the discussion