By Gary Hershorn

For thirty-four years I have been a photojournalist covering events the world over, but never have I had to live within a news event in my hometown. Too many times to count in my 28 years with Reuters, I have packed my bags and flown off to cover the news but never have I looked out my window and seen a story unfold before me. It is an indescribable feeling watching waters rage and rise in the street below, feeling as helpless as one can be.

Saturday:

It was a perfectly normal day in Hoboken, New Jersey. I was out and about knowing that forecasters were calling for Hurricane Sandy to come ashore somewhere between Cape May and New York late Monday night. By mid-afternoon I walked to a pier that juts out into the Hudson River to see if I could get some pictures of Lower Manhattan with gray clouds looming in the sky. I was fortunate to have some newlyweds walk out to the pier to have their wedding pictures taken using the New York skyline as a backdrop. The contrast of the white dress and the dark gray skies made for a nice photograph.

The only thing out of the normal was making sure I had the supplies one is supposed to have if a storm of this size hits. However, my biggest concern was if I was going to get wet covering Monday’s NFL game between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins.

Sunday:

Traffic was unusually light as I headed in to cover the game, the parking lots were still half empty when I arrived. This was the first sign that something wasn’t right in the New York area.

Sitting in the media workroom at half time I heard some photographers talking about the storm. One person declared that New York was going to get seriously messed up so he was planning on staying in a Manhattan hotel rather then going home to make it easier to work for the next few days.

In the third quarter with the Jets losing badly I noticed the seats were half empty. Clearly, concerned people were heading home to take care of their families and homes. The game ended and there was virtually no traffic when I left the stadium. Almost everyone was gone before the final whistle.

On my way home I decided to go to a lookout in Weehawken, New Jersey to take some twilight skyline pictures of New York with dark gray imposing clouds hanging over the city. I came across a couple of tourists from Latvia jumping up and down in front of the skyline taking happy snap pictures as so many people do from this location – two people having fun while the millions of people living behind them in New York were already bracing for the worst.

Then I saw a single man taking pictures of the skyline from a perfect place in the park so I stood behind him and did the same thing.

Monday:

I woke up to rain. Clearly the outer bands of Sandy were upon us so I decided to go to Sinatra Park on Hoboken’s waterfront. The gusts of wind at 8am almost knocked me off my feet. I was dressed in a heavy poncho that was flapping wildly in the wind until a woman came over and refastened all the snaps. She told me that she was a dresser for models taking part in runway fashion shows. I felt privileged that she took pity on a photographer who was clearly getting soaked. At 9am the police finally decided to close the park and told all of us to go home where it was safe.

So home I went to transmit the pictures I had taken of the morning skyline along with flooding already happening around the Lackawanna Train Station, next to the Hudson River.

Standing near the flooding with a city maintenance employee I was told to prepare for the absolute worst tonight if the river was overflowing its seawall already.

Next order of business was to get my car out of harms way. I packed my bike in the car and drove to a parking garage. The bike ride home in light rain was easy. Along the way I tried to get to the bicycle path along the river in Jersey City but every access point had a police car blocking the way. Back in Hoboken I rode past the waterfront again to take a few pictures and headed home to transmit a few more.

About 3pm I ventured on foot back to the riverfront for one last look before darkness set in. Unknown to me, the storm was going to hit about eight hours earlier then projected, at 6pm. A crazy game of cat and mouse ensued as an endless stream of residents walked to the waterfront only to be told by a roaming police car that the area was closed. Once the police car drove past everyone went back to the rivers edge only to leave when the car made a return visit. One couple went under a police barricade to go down a boat launch so a friend could photograph them next to the rapidly moving river. I couldn’t help but think they were crazy. One strong wave and it could have been over for them all for a picture.

Whatever wind I felt in the morning was nothing compared to the speed it was blowing now. I wanted to illustrate the wind but realized that was not such an easy thing to do in an urban environment. We are all used to the images of huge crashing waves on a beach or palm trees half bent over in Florida but in Hoboken there was nothing like that. I walked past a veteran’s memorial that had flags being torn to shreds. Finally I had something to show the force of the wind. It was now clearly too dangerous to be outside so home I went.

On the way I saw a large tree that had fallen across First Street crushing a car. I couldn’t help thinking this was not going to end well tonight.

About 7:45pm, shortly after finishing transmitting my last set of pictures I lost power. I looked outside only to see a raging river flowing under my second floor window. I have lived in Hoboken, a city notoriously prone to flooding, for over seven years and been through many floods but nothing came close to this. Water rose to a level of 4-5 feet in what seemed like seconds.

I set up a camera on a tripod in my window and spent the next few hours photographing the water rising. I used a BMW car unfortunately left in the street as a gauge for the depth of the water. When the water came up to the hood of the car I knew this was going to be the worst Hoboken had ever seen. With no power I was forced to transfer the pictures to my iPad and use its data connection to email photos to our editing desk.

It was now time to get some sleep since I thought I would have to work a long day the next day covering the flood.

Tuesday:

I woke up about 6:30 and before getting out of bed I just laid there wondering what I was going to see when I looked out the window. I was hoping to see a water level low enough to go out and work in, but remembered the night before listening to the radio describing how water never leaves as fast as it comes.

When was the last time you relied solely on radio to get all your information? It was amazing to listen to the radio for hours; the reporting was fantastic but weird that I, a visuals person who is used to watching an event play out live on TV, had absolutely no visuals of what was going on beyond what I saw out my front window.

It was nothing short of a shock to see the river, lake or whatever you want to call it when five feet of water is still in your street. It was even more of a shock to the journalist inside of me that I was for all intents and purposes trapped in my apartment. I went downstairs to see what the lobby was like and found almost four feet of water there.

Feeling very much like Jimmy Stewart’s character in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Rear Window”, I took pictures out my window of the submerged BMW and a few people wading through the waist-deep water, including a couple floating their dog in a plastic container just to get out of the area.

Unfortunately by late morning, all my internet access had been shut down as cell towers powered down when their back-up batteries ran dead. Frustration set in at having no way out of the building and no way of transmitting the few pictures I had taken.

In the end, not being able to send my pictures didn’t really matter because listening to the descriptions on the radio of the fire in Breezy Point, the flooding in Staten Island and the destruction at the Jersey Shore made me think people walking through water in Hoboken were not the pictures the world was waiting for.

Sitting in my front window, day passed into night and off to sleep I went hoping for a chance to get out and work on Wednesday, wondering what did I miss photographing all day in my city.

Wednesday:

I woke up early again. Amazingly I could see the yellow line down the center of the street so I knew I could get out of the building and get to work. I turned on my mobile phones and to my surprise service had been restored. I found a couple of inches of water and sludge on our lobby floor and took a ride on my bike around the areas of Hoboken where the water went down.

Riding around the riverfront the damage didn’t seem so bad at first sight but it was eerily quiet. People were coming out of their homes and walking in complete silence. It was the exact same sense of shock and extreme quiet I experienced in New York the day after the 9/11 attacks. I never thought I would experience that again, let alone in the city I live in.

I made my way to the back end of Hoboken, the area that traditionally floods the worst and only one word can describe what I saw, crushing. My town looked and was destroyed. People were carrying their wives and children on their backs out of the floodwater and I thought how could this have happened here.

Stores I shopped in, dry cleaners I had clothes washed in, restaurants I ate in and a furniture store that I bought so many pieces in were wiped out. This was not a place I flew into to photograph unknown people grieving what they lost, these were people I knew, my neighbors. There are no words that adequately describe the feeling of seeing people dazed and confused in those first moments of realization they have no home left. By now the water was down to about 2 feet but it was contaminated beyond anything Hoboken had seen. Heavy black oil hung on top. I kept hoping no one lit a match because the whole town might burn.

As disgusting as I felt walking through this mess, it occurred to me every house and store at street level had this water inside.

What I also found was how hard it was to turn the camera on my neighbors. Pictures that I would probably take if flying into a hurricane in another state are not the ones taken in a place that you have an emotional attachment too. You could tell in seconds some people just wanted you to keep on walking with no words needing to be spoken. Others like the couple hugging and crying outside their destroyed home didn’t deserve to have that moment interrupted by the clicking of a camera and others were happy to have someone walking by to talk to, I imagine to divert their attention away from the mess they were starting to clean up. There was the man trying to bail out his front door stairway filled with four feet of water one trash can at a time even though the water was at the same depth all the way through his basement apartment.

Thursday:

I woke up and simply had one goal in mind; go to the office in Times Square to charge up every device I own. New York was a chance to clear my head, a diversion from the water in Hoboken, a chance to get something decent to eat and to see coworkers who had been out working since Monday in New York and hear their stories.

At sunset I went back to Weehawken to photograph the skyline of New York showing the darkened area of Lower Manhattan. No matter what you have to do, a desire to document something in a story this big does burn inside you.

Friday:

Friday morning was my last opportunity to photograph the flood around Hoboken as I was leaving for Russia the next day. I met the owner of a web design firm whose office was gutted by the water. I will never forget his words as he cleaned out some belongings, “It’s just stuff, we will rebuild”. I looked at his expensive Apple computers and monitors that sat on tables where the water went one foot higher then the table tops and thought, he is right, it is just stuff but for others it was their life, their memories, their irreplaceable possessions. I guess disasters like this have a different meaning to everyone.

I photographed postman Mike Conroy delivering mail to a flood ravaged pharmacy who shook his head and said it’s the first time the postal service had lost four consecutive days of mail delivery in Hoboken.

For me the hardest part was seeing people I know suffer the way they did while I was one of the lucky ones having no personal loss. It seemed so unfair or random that in an area of such extreme pain some of us only had to deal with a few nights sleeping in a cold apartment, dealing with no power or sitting for an hour and a half in the cold at a charging station so we could communicate on our mobile phones.

Saturday:

Here I am on a plane to Russia bound for a meeting to discuss the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Life goes on as we start planning a future event that many of the photojournalists who covered this week’s storm will attend. I left behind Hoboken, a city still with half its residents powerless as of this afternoon. I sit here hoping the power comes back to everyone this weekend and to my apartment by the time I return from this trip.

I wished everyday I had been able to contribute more to the overall effort of our coverage but in the middle of a flood in your own city you realize there are things you have to do for yourself, things you have to do to help friends and time you need to just think about what else you have to do other then running around taking pictures.

That being said, while sitting at the charging station on Friday, someone showed me pictures they took with their iPhone out their window on Tuesday of national guardsmen performing a rescue of children and a pregnant woman from a building just around the corner from my apartment. I couldn’t help but think how much there was to photograph in my town that day that was never documented.

It almost feels like yesterday, sitting in the United Press Canada photo office in Toronto in April 1981 watching that first launch. I was a young freelance photographer about to be hired into my first staff job at the news agency when Columbia blasted off on mission STS-1.

I watched the wire photo machine with wide eyes that day as images taken by UPI photographers were transmitted to the world, thinking I hope someday I would have the chance to photograph a launch. Little did I know then it would take me 30 years to the final shuttle launch last Friday to actually see a rocket take off.

Over the past 30 years I could probably come up with 100 reasons for never having had the chance to see a launch. In 2005, my only previous trip to a shuttle launch, I was at Cape Canaveral for the Return to Space flight but as luck would have it, the first attempt was a scrub and I was unable to stay for the actual launch.  The past few months I have been anxiously counting down the time to July 8, the launch date of mission STS-135 and one I could actually stay at the Cape for if the first attempt was a scrub.

I arrived at Cape Canaveral on Wednesday and met up with Joe Skipper, our staff photographer from Miami who has photographed well over 100 space shuttle launches and who coordinates our crew of photographers at the Cape.  I was immediately taken out to the area around the launch pad where we had about 20 remote camera’s set up to photograph the launch. Our remote camera crew of Scott Audette, Pierre Ducharme and Scott Nesius showed me all the locations the cameras were positioned in to photograph the launch.

Between the three of them they had every conceivable angle covered. We had discussed previously the need for photographs we refer to as “for the record” images that clearly show the shuttle lifting off from the pad and others that would be more artistic in nature. These included cameras that shoot through brush, that are positioned near a beach, that showed a stop sign in the foreground and others that reflect the shuttle in water. Like any remote set-up where camera’s are triggered by sound or movement, some will work and some not.

The guys warned me in advance of the mosquito infestation and they were not kidding. Life in the swamps setting up cameras in 90 degree heat and 100 percent humidity means wearing long sleeve shirts and long pants and broiling under the hot sun. They also warned me to watch out for spiders, big ugly spiders called “banana spiders”. They said there is no feeling quite like walking into a web and having one of these things crawling around under your shirt. It took me about a minute of being in the bushes to encounter a banana spider. I photographed the spider and transmitted the picture only to endure the wrath of our photographers wondering why I sent out as clichéd a photograph as there is at a shuttle launch. Trash talk and thick skin is clearly a big part of being at the Cape.

We were welcomed to day two at the Kennedy Space center with rain. Our mood clearly was a bit down as the group of us never thought we would see a launch on Friday. Watching the weather radar we saw a tropical wave had moved over Cape Canaveral which likely meant a scrub would happen. Regardless, NASA moved forward with the rollback of the Rotating Service Structure that covers the shuttle for the weeks it is on the launch pad before blast off. The structure is as big a moving piece of metal that you could ever imagine. It swings open in about 20 minutes moving on a train track like rail exposing the rocket for all to see.

I was the lucky Reuters photographer Joe asked to be one of only 8 photographers who could be on the actual launch pad for the rollback. It is truly an awe inspiring moment when slowly the orbiter is exposed for us to see. Standing about a half a football field away, you immediately are struck by the size of the entire rocket, the shuttle, the large fuel tank and the solid boosters. As it is opening you are photographing as much as you can with three lenses, a fisheye, a 16-35mm zoom and a 70-200mm zoom lens. While I was working, I was also thinking I never imagined being this close to the shuttle the day before it is supposed to launch.  Looking back over my shoulder I saw a large group of people outside the launch pad photographing the rollback thinking just how lucky I was to be this close.

Day three, launch day, started for us with a wake-up call at 330am for the 1126am liftoff. With over one million people expected to watch the launch, those of us going to the launch site on Cape Canaveral needed to beat the traffic in order to make a 530am bus NASA used to take us to the traditional walkout of the astronauts as they leave their quarters headed to the shuttle.

In addition to Scott, Pierre, Steve, Joe and I, we had Michael Berrigan, Molly Riley and Molly Skipper on the base shooting from alternative angles. We also positioned four photographers, Lucas Jackson, Brian Blanco, Hans Deryk and Chip Litherland in places like a beach, Jetty Park and NASA’s Visitor’s Center to combine the shuttle lifting off with spectators watching it.

Once the astronauts were taken to the shuttle we were ready for our final preparations for launch as they were strapped into their seats. There is a final 3 hour period where we coordinate with editor Peter Jones, set up our gear at the press viewing site and just wait for the countdown to hit zero.

I woke up saying I had a good feeling about the rocket going up today while just about everyone rolled their eyes at me. They have been here before; they know all there is to know about scrubs and big gray clouds do not make today ideal for a launch. Basically they were resigning themselves to spending the weekend at the Cape waiting for the weather to clear. We talked about the previous launch and how they took off with a high cloud cover so I just kept thinking this day would be no different. I so wanted it to go, I just didn’t want to sit around for days waiting for this to happen. When you get to launch day adrenaline is pumping and you just want to carry that feeling all the way through a launch. I really didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of a scrub.

It’s a dilemma that runs through your head. Launches are not particularly pretty when there is cloud cover. Everyone loves a sunny, blue sky day to show the shuttle in all its beauty but on the other hand no one likes sitting around for days waiting for the weather to clear. Cloudy days mean seeing the shuttle for only about 20 seconds rather than minutes before it disappears. Personally it didn’t matter to me at all, after 30 years of waiting to see a shuttle blast off; I just wanted it to fly.

An hour before launch I set up a camera on a tripod with a radio receiver positioned to show the rocket and the countdown clock. I moved around the viewing site which is approximately 3 miles from the launch pad, looking for an angle that I would shoot from, placing a group of spectators watching the launch at the bottom of the picture and the shuttle lifting off in front of them. When it would come time to fire the camera I was looking through with a 400mm lens on it, the camera with the radio receiver would fire at the same time.

As I stood there I kept wondering what this was going to be like. All the intensity of liftoff, the fire, the sound and the force of a rocket taking off that I had seen on TV more than 100 times was surely going to be one of the most spectacular events I had ever photographed. I was in a position where I could not see the actual countdown clock but could hear over a speaker mission control talking about the countdown. At 30 seconds the count stopped, “oh well I thought, the weather got the best of us today” then unexpectedly after a short delay, the count restarted as the decision to launch was made.

In a short period of time I saw a puff of smoke and thought, where is the rocket, then ever so slowly the orange tank appeared behind the people in front of me. I was struck by how slowly the rocket lifted up and wondered why I couldn’t hear anything. It seemed like I was working in complete silence.  I saw this enormous vehicle moving but it seemed so quiet. Behind me I heard a spectator shouting to someone, “just wait, the sound is coming” and did it ever. It took about 5 seconds before the roar of the propulsion rockets reached us. As it flew high in the sky you could feel the full intensity of the shuttle. It seemed like the rocket was right on top of us blasting its full power right back at us.

In less than 20 seconds it was gone, never to be launched again. The morning was actually surreal to me. I photographed the astronauts waving to a crowd after appearing from their quarters at 730am only to see them on NASA TV being strapped into their seats minutes later. I saw the rocket lift off only to watch NASA TV and hear audio of them shortly thereafter performing maneuvers long before we were finished transmitting images of the shuttle actually lifting off. The speed by which they got to where they were headed seemed impossibly fast. We had so many more pictures to send to our clients around the world and they were already so far out of the world we were working in.

Clearly the 30 year wait was well worth it. I am already looking forward to the start of the next phase of the U.S. space program and the first launch of the next manned space flight.

“By now you have all woken up Monday morning having dealt with the news on Sunday that our colleague and friend Shaun Best has passed away.

We have all been running through our heads today Shaun’s passing, trying to make some sense of something that has hit so many of us so hard.

First and foremost today we stood together in shock, thinking of Shaun’s partner, Denise and his parents and how they were coping with this tragic event.

Then there were dozens of us who have talked today, sharing stories, moments and thoughts of our time with Shaun, remembering him as the friend and gentleman he was before we even mentioned the impact his passing will have on our world of photojournalism.

I was reminded today no matter how a photographer leaves this world of ours, it is a tragic moment causing another blow to be felt by all of us who work in this business. It’s hard on all of us to lose talent of the kind Shaun possessed.

From a pure work perspective Shaun stood ahead of so many. As I read in a Montreal Gazette story today, he was our go to guy for so many things. He shot every assignment well and never hesitated to lend a hand editing whenever possible. We will miss his hands on approach to the file.

We all should consider ourselves lucky to have had Shaun on our staff at Reuters. We benefited from his talent, friendship and willingness to help so many people in so many ways.

I suspect Monday will be hard for all of us, the shock will wear off somewhat and we will be left to grieve and try and find a way to deal with the loss.

While many a tear will be shed, many a smile will be smiled as we think about what he meant to us and how simply fortunate we were to have had him in our lives.

I think we stand united in understanding the loss we are suffering through. I hope you all find a way to remember a moment you spent with Shaun that made you proud to have had him as a friend and co-worker.

He will be missed by us all.”

View a gallery of Shaun’s work here.

Wednesday finally saw the culmination of a 30 year dream of mine to shoot a match on the famed center court at Wimbledon. After 30 years of being a photographer, 25 of those spent with Reuters covering every conceivable sports championship around the world, there were still two things I always wanted to photograph, but for one reason or another never had the opportunity to do so. One was shooting a match on center court and the other, covering a British Open golf championship at St. Andrews.

This year is not my first at Wimbledon, I have been here a number of times editing the great pictures our photographers take during the fortnight of tennis. There is no tennis tournament that produces the beautiful images that Wimbledon does. From the simple white clothes that the competitors must wear, to the light that seems to illuminate the court in a magical way, to the darkish backgrounds of spectators the perfect distance away from the player and to the history that has played out on the grass year after year, one can only describe the chance to be here as special.

Special in the same way it is to have a chance to photograph the Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club. Wimbledon and the Masters are ageless events played out in a similar way with no commercialism and lots of green as backgrounds. They are both considered ultimate events to cover as a photographer. The Masters I have been fortunate enough to attend 20 times.

Growing up a huge sports fan and then becoming a sports photographer, Wimbledon was a place I wanted to see. The first tennis final I covered as a professional photographer was the Canadian Open final between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe in 1979. I don’t think I ever missed watching the men’s or women’ finals at Wimbledon enjoying the yearly Breakfast at Wimbledon TV broadcasts. Yes, my favorites were like everyone’s, the Borg-McEnroe marathon and the Nadal victory over Federer 2 years ago.

Arriving at the All England Lawn and Tennis Center yesterday, it was suggested to me by my colleagues and Bob Martin, the photo manager for the tournament, that today was the day that I should leave the confines of the editing room and photograph the first match of the day between Roger Federer and Tomas Berdych. If you are going to take pictures it might as well be of a six-time champion who was expected to win his quarterfinal match and move into the semi’s on his way to another final.

After a little hemming and hawing I grabbed the cameras of our photographer Phil Noble, who graciously agreed to take over the editing and made my way to the court. Luckily our photo messenger escorted me out as I had no idea how to get to the photo positions at the side of the court.

Walking out a tunnel and arriving on center court for the first time was definitely a wow moment. Standing there you instantly take in the sights that you have seen in pictures but never with your own eyes. First you notice how intimate the stadium is. This is not Arthur Ashe stadium at the tennis center in New York. This is lower, more compact and with a very clean look. Not an advertisement to be found anywhere except a few unobtrusive corporate markings on a wall and a couple of corporate names on the umpires chair.

Then you notice the grass, the new roof tucked away at the ends of the court, the Royal Box, the families box, the pre-match scurrying around of people measuring the net, stocking up the refrigerator with water for the players, positioning the players chairs just right, and so on. Then slowly the grandstand starts to fill up, actors, today, Sir Michael Caine and Ben Stiller take their seats in the Royal Box, Federer’s wife and father arrive, ball boys and girls appear, line judges, the umpire and then finally the players walk onto the court to a loud round of applause.

Within a few minutes, play begins following a short warm up. The last full tennis match I shot was the final of the U.S. Open two years ago. Needless to say, you expect to be a little rusty shooting a sport you haven’t covered for awhile but it doesn’t take long to get your timing down and take pictures consistently with the ball in them.

It is hard to describe how exciting it feels to see balls whizzing back and forth. The sound of the ball hitting the racket is different. I don’t remember a court being so quiet while play was on. The US Open never seemed to be like this. Visually, looking through the camera it seems easier to pick up the ball coming into the frame as the backgrounds are solid green, the yellow ball vividly stands out unlike other tournaments where you have to pick it out of a host of advertisements in the background.

It didn’t take long to realize this was not going to be a normal Roger Federer three set match. Berdych came out strong and in the fourth set it was apparent Roger was not going to win today. That is when it hits you that there is a news story happening here, a six-time champion who has been in the past seven finals bowing out in the quarterfinal round. As the fourth set progressed I could feel my heart beating a little faster with each game Berdych won. Match point arrived, Berdych won and with heart racing, your mind remembers to photograph everything you see, the winners celebration, the losers walk to the net, the handshake, the after match waves of the winner and the players departing the court together.

All in all it was far more than I expected. I started off thinking I would be photographing just another tennis match but left wondering if I had photographed a bit of history, a great champion exiting a championship earlier than expected and wondering if he would be able to win this great event again. While Federer will make a return to center court I knew when I walked out it was doubtful I would ever be back to shoot a match in this stadium. Walking down the tunnel I looked back one last time, thinking how my dream to photograph a match on center court completely lived up to the billing I gave it in my own head.

The British Open will be played in 2 weeks at St. Andrews and finally, I will get to live out that other dream of mine and help cover that event.

Two dreams completed in less than one month is more than anyone can ask for.