David Viggers

With the Olympics now only a month away the search for scene-setting images to tempt the visual palate has begun in earnest. From the Beijing file Henry Lee gives us this to kick start the week - Wei Shengchu, 58, a supporter of traditional Chinese medicine, poses for photos in front of Beijing Railway Station with his head covered with acupuncture needles depicting 205 national flags and an Olympic torch, 7, 2008. Local media reported that Wei wanted to express his good wishes for the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games as well as to promote traditional Chinese medicine. 

And it is all his own work, all 205 and something more substantial representing the Olympic flame, painstakingly inserted into his head to the obvious entertainment of passersby. 

Even in this low resolution the Stars and Stripes, the Swiss, French, Canadian, Brazilian and a host of other national flags, are fairly easily spotted but not the Union Jack. 

Maybe he just forgot it, or perhaps it occupies a place in the shade where the sun has finally set on the British Empire.

These two headshots by Kai Pfaffenbach and Eddie Keogh from last night's Champions' League soccer final in Moscow between Manchester United and Chelsea show the joy of victory and anguish of defeat;

a defeat all the more bitter for John Terry the Chelsea Captain, right, who during the penalty shoot-out, slipped on the sodden pitch and miskicked the chance to seal victory for his team.  

For the victors, Manchester United, the rain became nothing more than a refreshing shower and Pfaffenbach shows team manager Sir Alex Ferguson's exuberance completely undampened by the deluge. 

By contrast in Eddie Keogh's picture of Chelsea manager Avram Grant, the rain seems to match the mood as he walks alone, defeated through the downpour.

From Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic who is near Garmser in Helmand Province, Afghanistan with the U.S. 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit come these 4 frames from a sequence taken when the unit came under fire from Taliban fighters May 18, 2008.

The Marine was uninjured.

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?collectionId=1864&galleryName=All%20Collections#a=1

I covered the aftermath of an earthquake years ago as a new-comer to the business. I was living in Rome and we had felt the quake as it struck a moutainous region of Southern Italy just before 8 o'clock on a Sunday evening in November.

It was first light by the time we got to the village of Balvano. As, I drove down into the valley, the village was blanketed by cloud. There was no sound, there were no lights but as we passed through the cloud, we became aware of an awful noise - the terrible wailing of the survivors.

Did my pictures convey the horror of it all like the ones we are seeing from China? Did they eloquently tell the story of the men, women and children of the village crushed when the roof of the Third Century Roman church fell in on them? No, I blew it. I was so completely overwhelmed by the scale of the suffering, by the death, destruction and misery that I blew it. Never having experienced anything remotely like it, I felt a complete interloper ashamed to be pointing a camera at people who had lost everything.  

When I finally got to sleep my nightmares were full of people but my pictures were not. They showed wreckage and desolation but failed to give it a face. In the misguided belief that I needed somehow protect what shreds of dignity the victims had left by not exposing them to wider scrutiny, I not only completely missed the point of my being there but also let them down.

Luckily, for me I was disabused, while there was still time to redeem myself, by veteran UPI (ultimately Reuters) photographer Luciano Mellace who, in the middle of all the chaos, took me under his wing and set me straight. He is still doing it. 

In such circumstances if you are not doing your job you are just in the way.

There is no way reporting the deaths of thousands of people can be made palatable and without a human dimension there can be no concept of scale. Pictures like these are 'upsetting' for everyone who sees them because the circumstances in which they were taken are 'upsetting'.

The subject matter is awful but these pictures from China brilliantly convey something  of that awfulness. They are not snap shots or random images plucked from the ether by picture editors, but the considered product of consumate professional photojournalists working in appalling circumstances to the very best of their abilities in order to communicate to all of us, the plight of the the victims of this terrible disaster, whether it is what we want to see or not.  

 Picture captions:

1) A father waits for his child, who has been buried for 33 hours in the rubble of a collapsed school, in the earthquake-hit Hanwang town of Mianzhu, Sichuan province, May 14, 2008. His son was found dead in the end. Picture taken May 14, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer (CHINA). 

2) A butterfly flies around the feet of dead students buried in the ruins of destroyed classrooms at a school in earthquake-hit Beichuan county, Sichuan province, May 15, 2008. The death toll from China's massive earthquake could reach more than 50,000, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, quoting rescue headquarters. REUTERS/Jason Lee (CHINA)

Thanks Paul.

The images of the earthquake relief effort in China have been horrifying and deeply moving and remind me what has always been so compelling about my job - the ease and speed with which still pictures can impart so much readily understood information to so many people.   

And what brilliant pictures they are.

It is a bizarre image - the red and white Formula One car hangs in the air above the black and white one in what appears to be an unconventional overtaking manouvre until you notice the loose bits. The caption reads, "Force India Formula One driver Giancarlo Fisichella of Italy (top) and Williams Formula One driver Kazuki Nakajima of Japan crash after the start of  the F1 Grand Prix of Turkey at Istanbul Park May 11, 2008. REUTERS/Karoly Arvai (TURKEY)".

Fisichella took off after shunting Nakajima on the first bend. The collision was dramatic but while it trashed the cars, neither driver was hurt although they couldn't agree about whose fault it was.  

It wasn't a complete disaster. Force India's sponsors must be very encouraged, their sign says "Fly Kingfisher" and it does guys, it really does.

The bad news is that chez nous we're using an ordinary road car getting to and from assignments this week - so the Williams is rather impractical, a bit of a devil to park, a real squeeze to get into with all the gear and fuel economy is an issue, but it is just so fast away from the lights.

By Daniel Munoz 

After a 24-hour flight,  three almost deadly wrong-way turns while driving jetlagged in Sydney and a soccer game with the Thomson-Reuters team (of course we won 2-0), things are looking good in Australia.

When you come to Sydney from a country like Colombia your life changes in an unforgettable way, my first couple of hours here were full of exciting feelings. Tim Wimborne, my boss here, picked me up at the airport and took me and my wife straight to Lady Macquaries Chair, a park with the best view of Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. It was the best possible introduction to this city and filled our eyes with tears of joy.

Shooting is no less joyful here with four swimming world records, the Olympic torch relay in Canberra, Cate Blanchet, nice standalones and the fashion week in Sydney makes for a file rich in colour and makes me happy too.

Life is easy in this huge and green city, nobody is worried about something to eat or their own safety, you can find very kind people everywhere, nice buildings and landscapes, beaches each 2 kms long., exciting nightlife, lots of places with excellent international food, and an endless list of nice things. If you don't forget to keep left when driving and don't think about the cost of everything, you will be happy in the simplest possible way.

On first impression it's enough to put a nesting Robin off its stride for good and liable to bring other garden creepers into disrepute - but it's just the English celebrating Spring.

The caption to Toby Melville's picture informs us, "A costumed festival participant marches in the Jack In The Green procession in Hastings in southern England May 5, 2008. The traditional annual May Day festival has origins at least as far back as the 17th century, with hundreds of costume-clad dancers and musicians - many dressed in green foliage - marching through the coastal town and symbolically slaying a giant Jack at the finale.".

Some are more 'out' than others.

Elsewhere other revellers cover themselves in the remains of dead animals and 

there is evidence that it is something to do with fertility;

also that the Kruegers may have English country cousins.

Having grown up in the 'Green Belt' around London believing that 'rural' meant nothing to do evenings and weekends, I had always considered myself something of a country boy; however I was completely oblivious to any of this organised ritual fertility business. Of course it may just have been that I never got invited but surely all of us look pretty much alike after a couple of coats of green paint. 

As the song has it, "it's life Jim but not as we know it".

I wonder if it works with Magnolia emulsion paint?

 From Mabvuto Banda, Namitete, Malawi, May 2

 - Bernard Banda makes $5 a day carrying people on his bicycle, good money in a country
where more than half the 13 million people live below a dollar a day.
 
    "I charge MK70 (50 U.S. cents) per trip and on a good day I
make about MK700 ($5) or more," Bernard says.

 
    Banda is not the only one cashing in on a bicycle transport
industry now booming because of the rising costs of fuel pushed
up by strong global oil prices.
 
    Along Mchinji road -- the highway linking Malawi to Zambia's
eastern province -- colourfully decorated bicycles are neatly
parked, waiting to transport students to a nearby government
college, nursing staff to a hospital and visitors around the
area.
 
    The bicycles are remodelled to suit the business. A second
seat is attached to the bicycle behind the driver's seat. The
passenger seat is finished in colourful but cheap leather,
comfortably sized to accommodate any size of passenger.
 
    Stand by the roadside for just a few minutes and you can see
how important the bicycles are to the area.
 
    Bernard is hired to transport a bag of maize. Another 
driver picks up a new passenger and cycles off.
 
    "To do this you have to be strong because sometimes we ride
uphill carrying a passenger or hired to transport a bag of
maize," says Langiton Sitima.
 
    This form of transport is fast-becoming a common sight
across Malawi. In each province the bikers are called by
different names.

 
    "This form of transport is our future. I can no longer
afford to pay K150 ($1) a day for a one-way trip using public
transport," says Maggie Yotamu, a student at the College of
Natural Resources which is along the route the bicycles service.
 
    In the capital Lilongwe and its surrounding districts they
call the bikers "Kabadza", which means hard worker. In the
Northern Province they call them "Sacramento", named after the
Brazilian buses that ply the long routes across the country.
 
    To underscore the importance of the bicycle, police have
been organising identity cards for these bikers.
 
    "In most cases police have moved in because we recognise
that they are giving a very important service to the public and
therefore we give them identity cards for security purposes,"
police spokesperson Willie Mwaluka told Reuters.

Pictures by Siphiwe Sibeko

Yesterday May 1 saw voters in England and Wales go to the polls to elect their local authority representatives. Londoners will have to wait until this evening to know who will be their new mayor but it is hard to imagine that it won't be either the incumbent Labour Party candidate Ken Livingstone or the Conservative challenger Boris Johnson. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the other contenders, this has pretty much been a two horse race almost from the start. 

Some reports have said that Mayor Ken Livingstone has looked rather weary and Stephen Hird's picture (which appears on the front of  yesterday's FT), shows him taking a break from the last day of campaigning, at what is colloquially know in this country as a 'greasy spoon' cafe. Intended, I suspect, to demonstrate his 'just-like-us-ness'. It may in fact have succeeded rather too well because he does look just like any other tired old bloke.   

Traditional symbols have been mercilessly exploited. Boris, an old Etonian had as his campaign bus one of the famous old red Routemaster London buses that Ken, as mayor, banished from service (Toby Melville).

On Polling Day Ken donned the traditional Labour politican's garb of raincoat and Red Rosette (Toby Melville) and Boris seemed to complete the transformation into Winston Churchill that he had shown signs of earlier in the campaign (Darren Staples and Alessia Pierdomenico).

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.