We complain about our cameras, our laptops, our internet connections, our computer software, our hours of work, our assignments. We complain about our pay, politicians, press officers, security, traffic, our bosses, our colleagues, our allotted photo positions, and backgrounds in pictures. And we complain about the weather – the stereotype about Brits really is true! Too sunny, too wet, too bright, too dark, too windy, not windy enough…any excuse for a picture that was ALMOST there, but not quite…

However, whilst always somehow feeling relatively new to the job (not sure why, as I ‘officially’ started my career fifteen years ago at the not-so-tender age of 23 in regional newspapers in Bristol in southwest England, certain that I was following the right path after ‘dropping-out’ as a university undergraduate), rarely does a day pass when at some point do I think I am still in the best career in the world.

Where else can you access and shoot the best sporting events in the world? Where else can you get an insight to government machinations and cover the biggest political changes and upheavals in the world, shoot seismic shifts in the environment and similar seismic shifts in the global economic infrastructure? How many other careers allow access into an operating theatre to photograph emergency heart surgery on a child one day and on the next to dealers manically flailing arms on a City trading room floor, whilst also being able to get to go and shoot an athlete pushing human physical limits to the extreme in an Olympic final in Sydney, Athens, Beijing - and maybe a run–down area of the East End of London next?!

So next time I hear a photographer grumble about shooting yet another sign of a bank or brand logo suffering in this financial downturn, I will thank someone that it isn’t me working for that company going bust. I will thank someone that I am not cooped up in an office all day long. And I will be happy being the proverbial ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ wire-agency photo-journalist. I will remind myself of the far more hostile environments of war, conflict, disease and environmental catastrophe that some of my colleagues have to operate in to get a great picture in ‘their patch’. I'm not sure if the job has made me any wiser, but nevertheless I will thank someone that I am privileged to be paid to be seeing and reporting on small vignettes and episodes of what goes on around us every day…

To view a portfolio of Toby's work click here

I think various gems were omitted first-time round, so here are a few more:

"There are few professions where even when you are right at the top and a household name, you might still be standing on a draughty street corner with your feet getting wet and cold, waiting for something to happen." (Philip Jones Griffiths)

Above - A British Airways aircraft taxis past BA tail-fins at Heathrow Airport, west London. Photograph by Toby Melville

"When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls." (Ted Grant)

"I always believed the press would kill her in the end. But not even I could believe they would take such a direct hand in her death as seems to be the case...Every proprietor and editor that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her...has blood on their hands today." (Earl Spencer on his sister Diana, Princess of Wales)

"A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into." (Ansel Adams)

Above - A ballet dancer performs during a dress rehearsal for a new production of Swan Lake by The National Ballet of China at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London. Photograph by Dylan Martinez

"I never shed a tear while taking pictures or I couldn't have seen through the viewfinder to focus the lens. I guess if auto-focus was around then it could have been different." (Philip Jones Griffiths)

"The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth." (Harold Evans)

"If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera." (Lewis Hine)

"The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box." (Henri Cartier Bresson)

"A good photograph is knowing where to stand." (Ansel Adams)

Above - A man watches smoke from the Telegraph Fire near Yosemite National Park in El Portal, California. Photograph by Robert Galbraith

"The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt." (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

"I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness." (Don McCullin)

Above - A policeman stands guard as Shi'ite pilgrims march towards Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in preparation for his death anniversary during a sandstorm in Baghdad. Photograph by Ceerwan Aziz

"The first ten thousand shots are the worst." (Helmut Newton)

"What do you think has been your contribution to today's photography ? ‘Thanks to my effort in the last 40 years, there has been more paper and film wasted.' " (Man Ray)

"The photograph is married to the eye, Grafts on its bride one sided skins of truth." ( Dylan Thomas)

"A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever." (Mark Twain)

Above - A man sleeps during the final of the Gold Cup British Open Polo Championship match between Ellerston and Loro Piana at Cowdray Park near Midhurst, southern England. Photograph by Luke MacGregor

"I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job." (Don McCullin)

Above - A worker is silhouetted as he cleans the floor outside the National Aquatics Centre also known as the Water Cube in Beijing July 29, 2008. It will host the swimming, diving and synchronized Swimming competitions during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Photograph by Claro Cortes IV

"A technically perfect photograph can be the world's most boring picture." (Andreas Feininger)

‘A picture is worth a thousand words'....or so the saying goes. But sometimes authors, journalists, commentators, philosophers and heck, on occasions, even snappers, describe photography and the picture-taking process with a  memorable phrase or succinct saying.

With apologies if I have either misquoted or misattributed any of the following quotations, here is a selection of my favourites in no particular order:

‘One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.' (Diane Arbus)

‘Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.' (Tony Benn)

‘It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.' (Alfred Eisenstaedt)

‘Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.'  (Ansel Adams)

‘The camera is an eye that sees and records the lives of filthy people. Its pictures are hung in museums and published in thick books that future generations can see how horrible life was.' (David Shrigley)

‘If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.' (Robert Capa)

‘Journalists belong in the gutter because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.' (Gerald Priestland)

‘The photographer is like cod which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.' (George Bernard Shaw)

‘I hate cameras.  They are so much more sure than I am about everything.' (John Steinbeck)

‘I don't trust photographers. I'm now a relaxed, contented 60 year-old, but look at my pictures and you see a crazy, bug-eyed serial killer.' (Richard Ingrams)

‘The paparazzi are nothing but dogs of war.' (Catherine Deneuve)

‘My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.'  (Richard Avedon)

‘A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.' (Diane Arbus)

‘The press is ferocious. It forgives nothing, it only hunts for mistakes...In my position anyone sane would have left a long time ago.' (Diana, Princess of Wales)

‘Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.'  (Ansel Adams)

‘It's weird that photographers spend years or even a whole lifetime, trying to capture moments that added together, don't even amount to a couple of hours.'  (James Lalropui Keivom)

‘I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don't find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges.' (William Albert Allard)

‘Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography.  Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next.  Hunters, after all, aren't cooks.'  (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

....And finally, although an observation on a specialist area of our text colleagues and not  about photography, I chuckled anyway:

‘Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.' (Frank Zappa)

Heard the one about the bloke who gets a new job offer? He weighs up the pros and cons of whether to accept it: after all, it will mean moving to a bigger  town,  him and his wife getting to know new neighbours, the kids settling into a different school and finding a new nanny, and him forming  a fresh  circle of mates to shoot the breeze with after work. He ponders for a while, then thinks why not   a change is as good as a rest, and after all you only live once

A pretty normal tale of  middle-class family life decisions only, if the bloke in question is footballer - sorry, soccer player - David Beckham - any career move is a media event.  And so, finally, the Becks roadshow rolled into town at  Los Angeles International Airport late Thursday evening and he officially became a new signing on the L.A. Galaxy roster on  Friday 13...
Used to covering  big film premieres, festivals like Cannes and perennial UK awards like the BAFTAs and The Brits, even I was surprised by the scale of the media interest and the slickness of the PR apparatus, there to facilitate coverage.

 Indeed, at LAX airport, there was no bunfight -  no unsightly fighting between camera crews, journalists and photographers running backwards and tripping over bewildered passengers, in the pursuit of the picture. The LA Airport Authority had co-ordinated a press pen along a hundred yard long walk-through to the side of the Terminal. A press officer appeared with a tannoy  giving regular (and accurate) updates on arrival time, which appeased myself, colleague Danny Moloshok and twitchy media who had arrived many hours earlier to bag prime spots. The sharp elbows in the press but were familiar but Mr and Mrs Beckham did their catwalk thing and passed down the whole walkway together with model-esque  poses, giving everyone the required time to get the picture. No need to stake out different exits, no need chase the lmo trying to make car shots. The only thing missing was a red carpet.

To the LA Galaxy ground, Friday morning to find stage, photo positions, advertising banners with DBs face and VIP seats all arranged for maximum impact. Indeed, the PRs  were so obliging that the pragmatically brought forward the whole signing show by an hour to make UK deadlines. Posh arrived first (so as not to divert attention from the spectacle of the soccer player with his new number 23 shirt), she is wearing an all pink getup and tirelessly playing to the cameras,  even I cant miss her as I struggle with the menu settings on my new Canon cameras. 

Stage presentation, ticker tape, crowds, shirt signings are all shot smoothly by Reuters colleagues Lucy Nicholson and Mike Blake, she filing raw pictures via Reuters Paneikon software and he hard wired into his laptop, on high speed internet Sprint data cards to deliver images to the editor in New York so that many strong pictures are on the wires  before David has left the stage.

 ........and then it is over.

After all the hype, the choreography by the Beckham PR machine is impeccable and undeniably impressive. The range of interests from global news agencies, print, radio, televison and online media outlets which makes us all - including Reuters Pictures - complicit in also feeding and promoting  the Beckham industry, were matched and appetites, for the time being, sated.

But as with fast food (of which there is no shortage in L.A.) the pangs of hunger are only temporarily dulled. Aside from inevitable Pap coverage if the Beckhams pop out for a KFC Family Bucket between arranging the furniture and hanging the curtains, the next milestone will be the man kicking a ball.
 
His first predicted competitive (friendly) appearance, ankle willing, is scheduled for next Saturday against visiting UK allstar side Chelseahow coincidental is that? Not very, methinks.

Meanwhile I  am slightly baffled : Mr and Mrs Beckham were pictured leaving Heathrow on Thursday morning with three children in tow. Twelve hours later at Los Angeles airport just Mum and Dad appeared in front of the cameras. I do hope Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz arent left still trying to fill in their Department of Justice and Immigration forms. It took me long enough to get right and I've got qualifications....

Toby Melville is a Reuters photographer based in London