That Summer is over feeling has really been compounded by the departure from English Premier League soccer club Chelsea of the Special One, Jose Mourinho. Dark clouds had been gathering for quite some time but when the news came it was still a shock.

Love him or hate him he was impossible to ignore.

At his first London press conference he described himself as a special one among managers and from that moment on for press and fans alike he became The Special One. He brought a ray of sunshine to the touchline and with his energy and outspoken opinions he stood out like a beacon among the drab ranks of his fellow Premier League managers.

At Chelsea matches it became as important to watch the manager as the action on the pitch. He was as one commentator put it, mean, moody and magnificent, he was great story in himself and his antics always made good pictures.

His arrival at his next club is sure to be a bonanza for the local press and a shot in the arm for the local game.  

Parabens Jose!

Pictures by Mike Finn-Kelcey, Dylan Martinez, Dylan Martinez, Eddie Keogh, Dylan Martinez, Dylan Martinez and Mike Finn-Kelcey respectively

From Singapore-based “processors” Angie Tan, Janice Kaur, and Dharma Haroun

Konnichiwa!

We recently spent 10 days as part of the Reuters pictures team at the 11th IAAF World Athletics Championships in Osaka and what an experience it was! Osaka brought together Reuters photographers from all over the world and sub-editors from the Global Pictures Desk in Singapore.

The crew comprised of Primary Editors Tom Szlukovenyi and Michael Leckel; us, the Processors Angie Tan, Janice Kaur and Dharma Haroun; photographers Michael Dalder, David Gray, Issei Kato, Dylan Martinez, Kai Pfaffenbach, Brian Snyder, Ruben Sprich and Bobby Yip; remote editor Gary Hershorn in New York, sub-editors on the Reuters Global Pictures Desk in Singapore and last but not least technicians Matt Bowers and Duncan Alston.

The photographers are assigned various positions: in-field and out-field from which they covered the action and the reactions. Their pictures were transmitted to the editors and processors in the stand, who worked with the Singapore desk to ensure these images hit the wire in the best possible shape and as quickly as possible. 

The Editors kept an overall view of proceedings and ensured that the team were on top of the story behind the races too, but they were mainly occupied selecting and cropping the images for the wire from the 2,000-3,000 frames produced each day, which were then passed to us, the Processors for tone and colour balancing and captioning.  In between events, we compiled event listings for the following day and acted as extra sets of eyes for the editors, updating them on the latest results and flagging mishaps and controversies during the competition. During the events we also found ourselves acting as the middlemen between the photographers, editors and the Singapore desk, which kept things lively.

The Global Pictures Desk in Singapore received the ‘processed’ images from Osaka, double-checked the captions, ensuring they were factually correct and adhered to the Reuters style, add client address codes and transmited the images around the world within minutes of the event. Photos of record-breakers, photo finishes and finals being prioritised to ensure hit deadlines. 

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 Michael Dalder adjust his remote camera 

The team worked in the stadium from 7 a.m. until midnight on most days. The sweltering 35 degree Celsius heat was challenging and the glaring sunlight made things difficult uncomfortable for those working on laptops in the tribune, but it was the photographers we felt sorriest for, lugging their heavy gear around and standing for hours in the mercilessly scorching sun. But it didn’t affect their ability to work and the stream of images they delivered of the thrilling events unfolding on the field was superb, keeping the Editors on their toes as they tried to keep the file tight and numbers of images manageable.

The days were long for us but the technicians were always there before us and last to leave at night, however, a quick dinner and a cold glass of lemon chuhai, the drink of choice at this competition made from lemon juice and shochu, a distilled spirit, proved to be an effective remedy to most of our problems.  

Roll on the Olympic Games!

Sayonara!
Angie Tan, Janice Kaur, Dharma Haroun

Athletics pictures by Dylan Martinez, Bobby Yip, Dylan Martinez and Ruben Sprich respectively.

When two planes from the “Zelazny” display team collided killing both pilots at a weekend airshow over Radom in Poland, photographer Kacper Pempel nailed the full horror of the crash in a sequence which takes us from the moment three three planes converge to the violence of the impact and the aftermath as debris and a few recognisable components seem to hang in the sky and then rain down like confetti around the crippled remains of one of the aircraft.

Hats off to Kacpar for keeping his cool in horrifying circumstances. 

Digital cameras and clever software have liberated millions of people, conned for generations by indifferent holiday snap processing into believing that they always cropped off the feet and tops of the heads of their loved ones. Now everyone can make a sharp, well exposed picture, simply and inexpensively reproduce it using common domestic computer and printer equipment and cheaply and instantly disseminate it via the internet or mobile phone. Some of us have only ever known photography as digital and millions are coming to it for the first time through the ownership of mobile phones. A proliferation of websites host the results, pictures shot by my kids and their friends at a music festival last weekend were on the internet before the mud on their clothes was dry.

The potential practical, artistic and recreational applications are infinite and the ability of pictures to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers offers a thrilling prospect for the future as skills, and new techniques are developed and the technology is driven forward.

Millions of private citizens are now in possession of mass media communications technology with speed and range previously accessible only to global media organisations and the military, which brings us round to “citizen journalism” again.

In its simplest form it is the visual equivalent of the kind of ‘vox pop’ eyewitness contributions which have always accompanied radio and tv news reports. The news media are not ubiquitous and routinely seek local eyewitnesses and potential sources of stills and video from anyone at all on the spot be they amateur or professional. In the days of film, as young photographers arriving at the scene of a news story, we were always told to be on the look out for “punter pix”. One such was the picture of Concorde on fire over Paris, picked-up from Hungarian plane spotter Andreas Kisgergely. It didn’t matter that it was a huge pull of a small part of the original negative; it wasn’t even the best picture of the doomed aircraft, that was shot by a Japanese passenger on a plane waiting to take-off for Tokyo, but none of that mattered because for 24 hours as far as the world’s media were concerned Andreas Kisgergely’s picture was all there was and it played on front pages everywhere.

The first time I became truly aware of the universality of the cameraphone was when new elected Pope Benedict left the Conclave to visit his apartment just outside St Peter’s. All the media were there, photographers with long lenses standing on ladders and low walls ready to shoot over the heads of the public. What none of us had bargained for was that as soon as he appeared, every member of the waiting crowd raised their mobile phones above their heads to shoot what we used to call a “Hail Mary”, completely obliterating the view of most of the waiting pros.

 A simple internet search shows the enormous number of committed and accomplished amateur photographers out there shooting wonderful pictures. It is them I would encourage to contribute timely pictures to the daily news and sports file. With good file sizes now possible on cameraphones there is no longer any excuse for those, “I wish I’d had a camera with me” moments.

Not everyone is going to win a coconut but everyone now has the potential do so.

There is no doubt that some of our best conflict photojournalists are locals who have had the story thrust upon them. They are often highly sophisticated individuals who in happier times would be pursuing careers in business, teaching, law or whatever. They have the language, local knowledge and contacts, experience and street smarts to enable them to operate and survive. Anybody coming in from outside has to be able to at least match this with an equivalent contribution. In a conflict zone or a disaster area anyone who is not effectively reporting the story is in the way, an unnecessary drain on scarce resources and a potential threat to themselves and their colleagues.

No picture is worth a human life. The challenge is judging just how far to push the limits and still be able to go back and do it again the next day and the next. Even those operating in “embeds” should undertake basic hazardous environment and first aid training. Languages too are very, very useful. Even so too many clever, well prepared photojournalists without a reckless bone in their bodies have already died just doing their jobs.

Physical location is also important. Unless you have a local story which can provide you with a living there is no point in kidding yourself that you can live in the Scottish Highlands and commute to London for work. If the story and the market are in Tokyo, go to Tokyo.

In practical terms experience generally wins out over qualifications. Photographic qualifications may equip the wannabe with a structure on which to build a career but  equipment alone does not make a top flight professional news photographer. Qualifications are a guide but they are by no means a guarantee and it is the pictures that count.

The maintenance of high professional standards does not mean you have to sacrifice yourself on the altar of technology. Adapt. Embrace new technology, master it, exploit it. If you get bored, reinvent yourself and the rules by which you operate. Don’t be a one trick pony. If you have a style develop it and when there is nowhere else to go with it do something else, don’t stand still. Experiment, take risks with your pictures.
 
Don’t be a victim, be a consumer - consumers have rights, if you see media which use pictures badly then complain, threaten to withdraw your readership, better still offer to do better.

“Citizen journalism” isn’t a threat to professional news photography, it is just another potential source of images in an ever more image hungry world. I have no doubt that the business will continue to rationalise as stills from video becomes the norm for routine press conferences and the like but video does not tend to produce the same kind of interpretive images that still photographers do and as long as we have something unique to offer there will be a market for it.

Despite the doom and gloom this is a real and thriving business. Come on in, the water’s lovely!

We are not alone! It is very good to know that out there somewhere are sentient beings looking to become photojournalists.

Photojournalism is a truly broad spectrum job description. It encompasses those who are almost all photographer with just a smigeon of journalist, those who are almost all journalist with just a hint of photographer and all stops in between. At the risk of stating the glaringly obvious being a professional photojournalist entails earning a living by shooting news pictures that people are prepared to pay for, with great enough frequency to make existence financially viable. There are many ways to achieve it, some easier than others all equally valid.

If the letter disclosing that your greatest wish is to become a photojournalist with an international news agency begins, “Dear Sir or Madam”, save yourself the cost of postage and the effort of walking to the mail box. Let’s face it if you can’t find out the name of the person who runs the operation you’ve set your sights on joining then maybe journalism really isn’t your thing at all.

More than once I have heard, “my passion is to become a photographer but I am just waiting for the opportunity to cover a big story somewhere exciting”. Again, don’t kid yourself, unless you are someone like Scarlett Johannson no assigning editor in their right mind is going to take a punt on sending a wannabe into a high value, high cost, competitive situation. Of course some of us have no choice because we live where the big stories are happening, but more of that later.

If you want to work in the news business it really does help to be an avid consumer of news media.

There is invariably a photographer credit on pictures, contact them and ask them how they did it or why. If they are sensible they won’t believe their own publicity but we are suckers for anyone who demonstrates a genuine interest in what we do.

If you are not already shooting pictures of everything that moves do so. Learn how to use your gear, learn about depth of field, backgrounds, how to light your pictures and practice until it becomes second nature. Try to make pictures like the best of those you see in print or online, then try to make yours better. Practice on local sports and news events, try and get your pictures published. Learn how to edit your own material honestly, learn from your mistakes and most importantly learn how to come back from them and still deliver the goods .

Most of the photojournalists I know started as freelancers operating in orbit around  assigning pictures desks at local newspapers or local agencies, doing things that other people couldn’t or wouldn’t do and doing that more often, more successfully and more cheerfully than anyone else day or night. Never work for nothing, never come back without a picture and if you are Scarlett Johannson we could offer you a few Premier League soccer shifts towards the end of the year…….

I must admit I didn’t notice it at first but the patter of tiny feet seems to have all but died away. Where did they go to? What happened to all the young wannabe news photographers touting their portfolios on CDs and websites around the picture desks?

The business has changed radically in the past 10 years; in the UK numbers of staff photographers at national newspaper have drastically diminished, but those papers are still full of pictures as are the online news media.

Maybe it’s just a capital thing, perhaps the cost of life in the big city is prohibitively expensive and they’re all out there in the provinces somewhere learning their trade.

I certainly hope so because without new blood coming into the industry we have a problem.

If the wannabes aren’t wannabes anymore, what do they wannabe instead?

Motion blur is a technique best applied sparingly, particularly in a news context. It is often the sign of a “soft” assignment, where the photographer has the luxury of enough time to experiment such as during the eliminatory rounds of a sporting event and not something you would expect to see from a breaking news story or on the trophy presentation picture unless the “bread and butter” pictures were already in the bag.

When it works, it looks great and there have been three good examples on the wire in the past 24 hours by Andreas Stapff, Carlos Barria and Bruno Domingos from the Pan American Games in Rio, all of which feature on today’s Editor’s Choice

There is a lot of it on the wire at the moment although the last time I can remember seing one in print was Mr January in the Reuters 2007 calendar - this year we will have more than enough for the other eleven months too. 

Joseph Davies won the under-16 photographic section of the British Library Front Page competition. His prize was work experience as a photographer with the Evening Standard newspaper in London.

Working for a week as an Evening Standard photographer certainly exposed me to many experiences I do not think I will forget - my first press scrum when Pete Doherty arrived at West London Magistrates Court, witnessing a bishop abseil from the Tower of London and stalking Sarah Brown at the European Women of Achievement Awards. It may not sound all that exciting to an experienced photojournalist but for me, a sixteen year old student seeking a career in press photography, it was a compelling start.

The picture below was taken in the City of London. After the foiled terror plots in previous days the brief was ‘heightened security’. This was taken outside the Old Bailey where it may be a fairly routine procedure, but it has some rather important looking armed police officers and enough police cars to be illustrate the point.

 On Tuesday I went with Jeremy Selwyn to West London Magistrates Court for Pete Doherty’s latest appearance. He was late by a few hours which gave me a chance to observe the way the paparazzi operate and also talk to a few other photographers. Eventually he arrived, skipping childishly up to the doors of the court I felt lenses in the back of my head. I managed to get a few of him but this one below was the most interesting. Not the most conventional image there is too much noise and empty space. It was an exciting thirty seconds, which left me saying to myself ‘if only I had’, but I guess that is the way it goes.

Later on in the week, I was asked to get some pictures of affluent middle eastern shoppers outside Harrods, after spending about an hour hovering around outside without much luck I got this one below.

On my last day I went with Jeremy to the European Women Of Achievement Awards 2007. The picture below of Moira Stewart and Sarah Brown (who were among the winners) managed to make the West End Final. It was a fantastic end to an amazing week. Seeing my picture and name in print was such a great feeling and something I hope to see again soon.

Joseph Davies

I don’t know whether Brendan McDermid knew when he moved it that his picture of a shocked woman covered in muck and blood at the scene of a steam pipe explosion in Manhattan was the “iconic image” of the incident but he must have had an inkling by the time he saw it on the cover of The New York Post, USA Today, splashed across five columns in the New York Daily News and inside the New York Times next day. The New York Times online even wrote about it - http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/200 7/07/19/a-bloody-face-in-the-blast-and-t he-man-who-helped-her/.

It was only part of a wider team effort, of course, some of which can be seen here - http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/sli deshow?collectionId=778 -  and included valuable contributions from non-editorial staff, but that this picture was also one of the first frames moved on the story that day would have helped keep all eyes on the Reuters feed. As Senior EIC Jim Bourg in Washington commented wryly, “always lead with the iconic images”.

Further images can be seen at http://www.msnbc.com/modules/interactive .aspx?type=ss&launch=19838329,19844481&p g=1 (if you set your browser to accept pop-ups).