March For Our Lives was a phenomenal grassroots organised demonstration held on Saturday, 24 March 2018 in Washington D.C. and in over 800 sibling locations across the United States and around the world.  The March For Our Lives movement was primarily organised by students turned activists.  Their mission, to demand comprehensive and effective reforms which addresses rampant gun violence and gun related issues.

 

The March For Our Lives movement was a direct response by students from Stoneman Douglas High School located in Parkland, Florida where on Valentines Day, 14 February 2018, seventeen people were massacred and seventeen more were wounded when a 19 year old former student entered the school, activated a fire alarm and began indiscriminately shooting at students and teachers.

 

In central Illinois, local organisers including Voices of Reason and Indivisible McLean County staged a March For Our Lives event in Bloomington, Illinois at the McLean County Museum of History.  Organisers and volunteers arrived at 10:00 to prepare for the 11:00 start of the rally.  Most of the speakers were students who attend four area high schools, are homeschooled or attend nearby universities and participate in speech teams & Not In Our Schools programmes.  After nearly 90 minutes, the event concluded when demonstrators marched to the Bloomington Centre for the Performing Arts.

 

Based on Facebook Events, the number of demonstrators who planned on going or were interested was at least 1,200 people.  However, adverse weather conditions certainly prevented many from attending as an early spring snowstorm with high moisture and gusty winds swept across the state.  During the event, the temperature averaged 1°C (34°F) with wind speeds reaching 43 kph (27 mph), and mixed in with snowfall were ice pellets.  Regardless of the weather conditions, it has been estimated that between 500-600 people attended the March For Our Lives event.

 

To stage a grassroots rally & march in this community and have such numbers of people be supportive and attend, especially in such adverse weather conditions, is quite astounding and saying something momentous about the gravity of the issue.

 

 

About This Photograph

The above photograph was taken about half an hour after the March For Our Lives rally began.  This view shows demonstrators closest to the museum entrance where spokespersons gathered to address the crowd.

 

Photographing this event was one of the trickier sessions I have undertaken, partially from of the weather conditions, but moreover because of the ever changing light meter readings of each scene and constant readjustments of exposure settings.  The sky provided a constant bright light source and the snow covered ground reflected much of that bright light which lessoned high contrast areas between the snow and shadows.  However, in order to set an accurate exposure for the crowd, highly reflective bright areas such as the snow or protest signs became blown out.  Throughout the course of the event, I would estimate that I made average shutter-speed and aperture adjustments between 3-5 stops and for some scenes as much as 7-8 stops.  Overall, I tried to keep a small aperture in order to retain as much sharpness throughout the depth-of-field while having a faster shutter speed to minimise motion blur from an ever changing situation.