I went, took copious photos, including of the AV Press reporter whom, I believe, took the photos for todays paper. I did introduce myself to her afterward so she didn't get too nervous about a stranger with a camera.

What I learned:

- Not everyone, even those in a public protest march, appreciates their photo being taken. No one said anything but it was obvious looking through the viewfinder that some of them were not happy with a long lens pointed in their direction. Maybe they thought I was FBI, INS, or one of the other infamous "feds." This especially goes for the law enforcement, which was out in force, carrying guns, and had no qualms giving me threatening looks. I have very few photos of them.

- There were two groups, the main group was the protesters and the much smaller, but quite vocal, counter-protesters. The photos used in the AV Press were probably selected for emotional impact when, in fact, most of the protesters were as calm as if they were walking into church on sunday.

- I had a hard time deciding where to start and what lens to use. I knew that they were starting on the North side of the street walking toward the sun but then were to cross somewhere to the South side and over to the park. I started on the South side to get the light behind me and at first I had my 70-210 lens but immediately ran into some counter-protesters up close so I switched to my 18-55. Right after that the protesters showed up and I had the wrong lens, but not too bad. After they passed by us (Julia and me) we drove down to the park and got in front of them again and got more photos. Then I switched back to my 70-210 so I could stand around the outside of the group while they were giving speeches.

- Meanwhile I had Julia doing street photos with her point and shoot Canon. She seemed to be taken less seriously than I was. A couple of times I had to put up with people trying to get me to take sides in the subject matter but I remained the neutral "photojournalist" and they went away.

- At the end I thought there might be an altercation when a couple of protesters took unappreciative notice of some of the counter-protesters but, with three sheriff cars and six armed deputies between them it quickly dissipated.

- Since this was late in the afternoon (started at 4 PM) the light was low with lots of shadows, especially on the people listening to the speeches. The speakers, however, were facing the setting sun and were well lit up. For a while there was someone waving flags off to one side of the speakers so I was able to get photos of the speakers with the flags waving in the background. I haven't looked at them yet but I think those are going to be my most interesting shots.

We had fun.