Eyeballs on sticks, a beheading, 12-foot Roman soldiers: photographing the St Albans Alban Day Pilgrimage
Community and festival event photography in St Albans, Hertfordshire
There are not many events where you find yourself photographing enormous detached eyeballs bobbing through a crowd of Roman centurions, watched by a pair of giant peregrine falcons, while bishops wilt gently in the heat nearby.
St Albans, you never disappoint.
On Saturday 21 June I photographed the annual Alban Day Pilgrimage and Festival, one of the most visually spectacular community events in the Hertfordshire calendar and, I would argue, one of the most underappreciated. The weather was extraordinary: 30 degrees, blazing blue sky, cotton-puff clouds and enough heat to test the commitment of anyone in full Roman costume. Several appeared to be regretting their life choices by mid-afternoon. I photographed them with great affection.
What the Alban Day Pilgrimage actually is
The Alban Day Pilgrimage marks the story of St Alban, Britain's first Christian martyr. During the Roman occupation of what is now Hertfordshire, Alban sheltered a persecuted Christian priest and, when the Romans came looking, offered himself in the priest's place. He was executed on the hill where St Albans Cathedral now stands, probably around 304 AD.
The legend surrounding his martyrdom is vivid, dramatic and, by any standard, extremely photogenic. The executioner who beheaded him was said to have been struck blind immediately afterwards, his eyes falling from his head. This is where the eyeballs on sticks come from. History, it turns out, has an excellent sense of theatre.
Every year the city commemorates Alban's story with a procession through the heart of St Albans, winding past the open-air market, which has been running on that same site since 860 AD, and finishing at the cathedral. It involves giant puppets, pipe bands, children in Roman costumes, community groups from across the city, and a scale and colour that would look at home in any major European festival. That it happens in a Hertfordshire market town on a Saturday afternoon in June is quietly remarkable.
The giant puppets and what makes them extraordinary to photograph
The visual centrepiece of the procession is the giant puppet company, and they are genuinely spectacular to photograph.
Twelve-foot figures of St Alban, Roman centurions, angels and chariots move through the crowd accompanied by drummers and dancers. The scale of them relative to the people around them creates immediate compositional drama that requires almost no effort from the photographer. You simply need to find the right angle and wait for the right expression from a bystander.
The enormous eyeballs on sticks are the strangest and most memorable element, a surreal, symbolic reference to the executioner's fate that manages to be simultaneously unsettling, funny and somehow moving. Photographing them against the blue sky with the cathedral in the background is the kind of shot that needs no explanation. The image tells its own story.
There were also huge animal puppets including wolves and a magnificent pair of giant peregrine falcons named Alban and Boudica, paying tribute to the real falcons that nest on the cathedral roof. The symbolism of pilgrimage, vision and freedom felt right for the occasion. The falcons also made excellent photographs, which is never a bad thing.
The children: where the best images often come from
Children dressed as Roman soldiers, marching with complete seriousness alongside adults who are doing their best to keep straight faces. Children in carts, waving flags. Children watching the giant puppets with an expression that sits somewhere between wonder and mild alarm. Children who have clearly forgotten they are supposed to be part of a solemn commemoration and are having the time of their lives.
These are the images that make a community event worth photographing properly. The procession itself is the spectacle. The children are the heart of it. Getting both in the same frame, when the moment is right, is what community event photography is actually about.
Photographing in extreme heat: the practical reality
Thirty degrees on a June afternoon with no shade and a procession to follow through the streets of St Albans is not the easiest photographic environment. The light was intense and directional, which creates harsh shadows on faces and blows out lighter costumes if you are not careful with exposure. Working quickly, adjusting settings constantly, and choosing angles that put subjects against the sky rather than in direct overhead sun made a significant difference to the quality of the images across the day.
Events in extreme weather, whether blazing heat or the kind of persistent British rain I encountered at Goodwood, always test a photographer's technical adaptability. The best images from difficult conditions are never accidental. They come from understanding the light, anticipating where it is going to work, and moving to be there before the moment arrives.
Why this event deserves better photographic coverage
The Alban Day Pilgrimage is one of the oldest and most historically significant community events in Hertfordshire, and it is consistently underserved photographically. Local newspaper coverage tends to produce a handful of images. Social media produces phone photographs of variable quality. The event itself deserves a complete, properly shot set of images that does justice to the scale, the colour, the history and the human warmth of the day.
This is true of many local community and religious events across Hertfordshire and St Albans. Civic ceremonies, local festivals, church events, charity marches, community celebrations: these are occasions that matter to the people who organise and attend them, and the photography that documents them should reflect that.
As a St Albans-based photographer who has lived in the city for years and genuinely cares about its character and community, photographing events like this is some of the most satisfying work I do. Not because it is the most commercially lucrative, but because it produces images that belong to a place and a community, and that will still mean something in twenty years' time.
If you are organising a community event in St Albans or Hertfordshire
Whether you are running a civic festival, a charity event, a religious celebration, a community fair or any occasion that brings people together, professional photography ensures that the effort and care that goes into the day is properly recorded.
I cover community events, festivals, civic occasions and public celebrations across St Albans, Hertfordshire and London. If you have an event coming up and want photography that captures the atmosphere and spirit of it properly, I would love to hear from you.
Get in touch with the date, location and a brief description of the event and I will come back to you with how I would approach it.