An Afghan boy walks among U.S. Marines of the 8th Regiment, Second Battalion, during their patrol with Afghan National Army soldiers around Mian Poshtay area, in Helmand province, October 21, 2009.   REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

I was set to go with a reporter and a cameraman to join a company of U.S. Marines in a camp south of Helmand province. This, we were told, is where the action is, but now I know that action mainly starts when a new base is taken over from the Taliban. Did I say Taliban? I often don't hear the word from the Marines, they often use terms like "the bad guys" or "al-Qaeda".

So we were invited to join a company of Marines walking to a new base. We left from a small Patrol Base called Hassan Abad one morning last week. We were told it about a 3 km walk, and it was, but it took us almost two days to reach the place. We had to wait for Marines with sweepers to detonate about 24 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) on the road.

During those two days on the road, every once in a while, every hour or two, we were told to get ready two minutes before an explosion for a "controlled det". Then one minute then, 30 seconds.

I would get ready with my camera to get the Marines looking at the explosion, while my heart beat very fast. Often, I missed the shot because the smoke was far away and the Marines didn't actually look interested to see it. They have seen bombs so many in the last few months. And many of them told us later on camp about how many of their colleagues has been "blown up".

 Soon it was dusk and the commanding officers agreed it was better to keep the vehicles parked in the road, stay overnight inside them, rather than pass quickly through the IED-laced road of death.

 That night on the road, the three of us slept inside one vehicle - a Mine-Resistant Armour Protected vehicle, or MRAP - which has a good track record for resisting bombs, but is useless when faced with a rocket. Sitting up with sleeping bags stretched over us to keep out the bitter cold, we tried to sleep, aware that the Marines around us were keeping a look out in case insurgents in the fields surrounding us would take pot-shots at the convoy.

Suddenly at about 3 am, something burning, shaped like a bullet fell in front of us, through the gunner's hole in the roof of the vehicle. It was on fire. We all panicked; convinced it was a round from Taliban fighters in the field. The three of us clambered to the back of the vehicle to try and open the heavy door. Then the gunner laughed, told us to calm down and knelt down out of his position in the hole and with one quick breath blew out the flame. It was a flare which had fallen from his pocket. We were the butt of every joke the next morning.

As the sun started to rise, we moved again and finally, we reached our destination, a camp that they later called "Barcha". It looked like a castle from a few hundreds years ago. There were some children and goats when we first arrived but they soon disappeared, as they were asked to leave the place.

The Marines and Afghan Army were starting to take it easy and eat MREs when the Taliban, angry that one of their former hideouts was being taken over by Americans, started to shoot all around the place. The Marines started to shoot back from over the base, and down over some walls, and they didn't wait too long before helicopters came for help. That was mainly the Taliban's weak point. Just as the Marines have their M4 and M24 machine guns, "the bad guys; have their AK 47, but nothing can beat the helicopters", one Marine said.

I knew from an interpreter who listens to the Taliban radio that they call the helicopters "Mosquitoes" and when they often tell their guys to leave the area when they hear helicopters because "the mosquitoes are coming".

One interpreter had a microphone and he was asked to tell local people in Pashto that they had to leave the area. Then helicopters came and shelled the patch of land where the "bad guys" were fighting from. Three Marines were wounded in the gunfight after the insurgents hit their armoured vehicle with an RPG. They were evacuated shortly after.

We left Barcha a few days later, but the Marines said contact with the insurgents was likely again.

Reuters reports "A Malaysian Muslim woman who will be caned next week for drinking beer has defiantly asked that the punishment be carried out in public in a case that is fuelling debate about tolerance in this multi-racial country. Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno will be the first Malaysian woman to be caned under Islamic laws applicable to Malaysia's Muslims, who account for 60 percent of the 27-million population."

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno chats with her son (R) Muhammad Azfar, 7, and daughter Wann Kaitlynn Sari Dewi, 5, at her father's house in Sungei Siput, about 300km (186 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia's state of Perak, August 21, 2009.  REUTERS/Zainal Abd Halim

If Kartika is caned in public would you as a photographer (if it were up to you decide) go to the event and take pictures of this mother of two being beaten? And if you did how would you shoot those pictures, wide and in close, so close you could hear the crack of the cane on her body and hear her cries of pain? On a longer lens from a distance, more detached as a person but shooting tight pictures that you know will give the viewer every painful detail of the punishment? Or, finally, from a distance on a wide lens to show the crowd surrounding the scene? And once you have shot those images how will you edit? Would you sanitise them and not file the pictures that show Kartika suffering the most or would you feel that everyone should see what you had photographed, knowing that a morning daily family paper may not even use that image?

Sometime next week these are the decisions our editors and photographers in Malaysia will have to make.

A nice number 4.25, seems to sit easy on the eye, or should do except its 4:25 a.m. and the numbers are from my digital clock.

As Reuters’ chief photographer in Asia, I have a lot on my mind. The threat of conflict on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, floods in India and Bangladesh, a bogus trial of Suu Kyi in Myanmar, crashing economies, H1N1, claims and counter-claims of corruption and racism, insecurity in Nepal and Sri Lanka, global warming, the risk of unrest in Tibet and of course, China, where just about anything can happen at any time.

With the decline of the traditional news market, however, I sometimes wonder who still cares about news pictures and why should they be paid for.

How can you put a value to a news picture? You can’t eat it. A picture doesn’t move financial markets, so you can’t make money from it like you can on a news story. We hear the news through word of mouth, on the radio or even on the television. Most pictures have a lifespan of no more than 24 hours anyway, and everyone can take them these days (or so they think). So why bother?

Simple answer: when it comes to integrity, honesty and trust, seeing is believing.
It is rarely understood that people are smart and should be left to come to their own conclusions. A still picture shot by a Reuters news photographer gives the viewer time to see the truth.

Take as an example when Sri Lanka declared that it had beaten the Tamil Tigers and a quarter-century war was over. A counter claim was made: “No its not, we are fighting on,” said the Tamil Tigers. The government said that rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was dead. “Oh no he’s not,” countered the Tamil Tigers.

A day later Reuters News Pictures get exclusive pictures of Prabhakaran’s corpse being carried through a crowd of government soldiers. A close-up image of his face told the indisputable truth – Prabhakaran is dead.

A colleague, who works in the financial news section of Reuters and was born in Sri Lanka wanted to study the picture for quite some time. His response after a few minutes of close scrutiny was “Oh my God! It’s really him. That man has impacted my life for over 20 years and now he is dead”. The undeniable truth. No-one can ever tell my colleague different, it’s a fact.

The story in a news picture taken by a Reuters photographer is irrefutable, unbiased and will form part of history for others to believe in too. This truth, like integrity, cannot be bought but has to be earned and then maintained at all costs – once lost it can never be replaced.

My fear, at 4.25am, is that not enough people value this precious commodity – maybe I should get back to sleep and not worry.

Before I start please spare a thought for the thousands who died when Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar and the thousands more affected by it, who have lost loved ones, their homes and their livelihoods.

For a news pictures editor in charge of Asia yesterday was a tough day. The death toll was rising steadily as the enormity of the tragedy slowly unfolded and we worked hard at getting pictures from staff and stringers. Handout pictures from pressure groups were scrutinized and checked for usage rights usage and potential bias. We had staff waiting at airports to speak to tourists who may have had images of the scene as the cyclone struck.

The day was a stream of planning meetings, coordination with text and TV meetings, safety meetings, negotiations with wide eyed tourists all believing they had shot a million dollar picture, editing and captioning the results, trying to find staff with the requisite experience for the conditions, stroking those who had volunteered but lacked the experience and speaking to the photographers on the ground (compared to whom my day was a walk in the park - no power, no water, no food was the least of their worries).

So what was all this stressing about? The bottom line is to tell the story, honestly, fairly and objectively so the rest of the world can see something of this disaster in one of the most closed and oppressively run countries in the world.

At the end of yesterday I went home believing that a caring world knew about what was going on.

Once at home, after explaining to my 12 year old son why so many had died in a cyclone, I browsed a few of the international news sites to see how the world was reacting to something I felt  was the most important news event of the day.

The first blog I read under a slide show of pictures on a major US news site read (I paraphrase as it has been removed now) "why should we care about this dirty little washed up country and who gives a damn anyway"

This comment on the blog chilled me, not because it was there but because it was supported by many other comments.

But I care and so do the team who will deliver today's file and tomorrow's. 

Am I just shouting into the wind? Should we all become wedding photographers?
 

This is my favourite painting by Matisse - The Dance. It displays a perfect balance of colour, tone, line and shape. Looking at this picture you can hear the music, feel the movement, almost taste the wine the dancers have consumed and the sexual tension is almost palpable - all this from just paint on canvas. 

Good news photography captures the moment of an event and potentially evokes emotion that goes far beyond what is possible with paint and canvas.

Yesterday I spent the time looking at pictures on the wires not for news content but just in terms of the balance of shape, tone, colour and line. While a few sang out their song of pictorial balance, many sat silently, dull and flat 6 x 4 boxes of colour where composition seems to be an out of fashion and dirty word, shape a forgotten skill, line and design discarded for cramming the picture into the convenient proportion of one by one and a half.

Potential bloody noses lurk in portraits as faces of actresses, politicians and news makers crash into the borders of the frame in uncomfortable space; limbs are amputated, toes cut off full lengths; dead space or unnecessary highlights lead the eye away from the point of the picture; pointless deliberate or hopeless accidental skewing; words and letters from advertising hoardings draining the grace and power from a winning goal shot skillfully from the far end of the pitch in driving rain; intrusive shapes and incidental lines left in. So many visual blunders which could so easily be corrected by the juidcious application of a sensitive crop.

With a little more time spent listening to the shapes, tone, line and colour that scream out how to crop a picture there would be far more strong resonant images and fewer that lay silent and dull. The world does not fit neatly into "one by one and half" proportions. There is a place for the letterbox crop, the tilted image, the long thin upright, the image with acres of space or so cropped so tight that the viewer feel claustrophobic. There is of course room for the 6 x 4 but only when the voice of the dance permits.

Photo: Visitors to the preview of the "From Russia" exhibition of French and Russian master paintings 1870-1925 at the Royal Academy of Art in London view "Dance II" by Henri Matisse January 22, 2008.  London's Royal Academy unveiled a blockbuster exhibition of paintings from Russian galleries on Tuesday, relieved the show has gone on despite an ongoing row over ownership of priceless works that threatened to derail it.       REUTERS/Stephen Hird     (BRITAIN)
 

The difference, only visible on closer inspection, is the intention of the picture. The first is a picture of film idol and heart throb Johnny Depp arriving to the cheers of waiting fans. The second shows fans waving to film idol and heart throb Johnny Depp. The difference is the focus of the picture, in terms both actual and intentional.  

The first is of Depp arriving in Japan. He is in focus, you can see his face, his fashion and his body language. You can see where he is - a Japanese airport - it's very much a news picture about the arrrival of a film star.

The second shows the fans clamouring as their hero arrives. They have prepared messages of love written on white gloves, their camera phones are charged, their autograph books ready to be signed. They have waited hours to catch a glimpse of the star, who in comparison to the tack sharp fans is shown slightly soft

However, given their apparent similarity do we need both versions? Do these pictures justify their place on a crowded wire as complimentary alternative views with real commercial value? Or is this just an overfile?