Instagram is mainly a tool for young people to take pictures and catch up on things; situations that they missed out on, either because they weren’t yet born or because they just weren’t there.

It is a fascinating tool, however it’s not real photography, it’s an illusion. Listening to an explanation on what Instagram is, it appears that anyone can become Ansel Adams (who I studied at the Fine Arts faculty 30 years ago). Just with a touch of technology one can skip all the creativity that we had to develop or study for and just pick up an iPhone and become an artist. One may look at it as the end of photography (and most photographers who make a living by taking pictures would say that). But if you look at it from a different point of view, it is the beginning of a new era in photography and photojournalism as this global tool turns image-taking and sharing into a worldwide diary of everyday life.

Myself, as a professional photographer who has made a living by taking images for 28 years, I have a tear in my eye when I look back at the romance that film photography was able to give me, in the same manner that a painter who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century would say about his passion and profession. I recall taking pictures, followed by developing film by hand, breathing fumes in the darkroom, spending evenings making prints as perfect as possible and then sometimes a few hours later looking at a product with satisfaction.

Times are changing and the new generation that have missed out on all that now with the touch of a button using Instagram can transport themselves a few decades back to feel as if they lived through an experience that they never had…

Instagram and other technological developments are inescapable and for those who were able to live through the previous times – cherish those moments but move forward. And for those who are new to the world of photography, use the tools wisely and enjoy.

When asked which Polish athlete has a chance at the London Olympics I immediately thought of the shot put champion Tomasz Majewski.

For those who have never seen Tomasz in real life, it can be a bit intimidating. I have always considered myself tall at 192cm (6 feet, 3 inches), but when I first met Tomasz I suddenly felt very small. With a height of 2.4 meters (7 feet 10 inches) and weighing 140 kg (308 pounds), Tomasz is overpowering. He reminded me of Hercules with his long dark hair up in a pony tail. He also has a nice warm smile he puts on easily, so being around him is relaxed and easy right from the first handshake.

I wanted to photograph Tomasz training for the Olympics and he was kind enough to let me just be around him during his daily training and routines. So for the next few weeks I was watching him shot putting, running, jumping, lifting weights and preparing for the biggest sporting event, held every four years. With just one arm he lifted more than I could bench press with all my strength.

I also accompanied him during family moments with his wife Anna and their newly born son Mikolaj. One of the most touching moments was photographing Tomasz holding, with so much care in his huge hands, tiny Mikolaj. The bare torso Hercules was morphing into a gentle giant in front of my eyes.

Tomasz would only agree to this picture after consulting with his wife – another example of a gentle spirit in this massive body that forced me to extend the background I had prepared and brought along for the portrait.

Surprisingly, as a child Tomasz wanted to become a writer and cut sports classes. Then, at the age of 15, he changed and wanted to train in basketball. But his cousin talked him into athletics so he started with the triple jump, moved to discus and only later discovered he really belonged to shot put.

In 2003 he joined Poland’s national team with 20.09 meters in Florence. Two years later he was already among the best in the world and has held this position ever since the 2005 University Games in Izmir. He won a gold medal at the 2008 Olympic games Beijing with 21.51 meters, becoming the first Pole to achieve that since Wladyslaw Komar in 1972.

Photo courtesy of Kai Pfaffenbach

Last Friday our long time Sarajevo photographer Danilo Krstanovic passed away unexpectedly. He was buried on Monday in Sarajevo.

Danilo began working for Reuters at the start of the siege of Sarajevo. His images were extraordinary and touching. There are many photographers who would brag about their war adventures, about what they did and how brave they were, but not Danilo. He would quietly go to take his pictures, endangering his life on a daily basis for four years. He always came back with amazing images, never complaining or boasting about any situation he was in.

Danilo is survived by his wife and daughter.

- Pawel Kopczynski

Danilo’s colleague Peter Andrews offers his thoughts below.

SLIDESHOW: PORTFOLIO OF WORK

People say that it always hurts more when it is close to home and it is very true. Our group, who have spent almost 20 years in various dangerous places, is used to seeing death and dead bodies and somehow have become totally accustomed to that. We do not cry when we see destruction and mayhem and we work calmly. Perhaps each of us processes each situation in a different way inside but we all stay calm outside… unless we don’t.

Still, when it comes to the death of people who were dear to us, it always hurts and leaves a huge void in our souls. It is hard to even speak about that. Danilo was one of us, taking pictures in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. That is where I met him and had the privilege of working with him for two years. The difference between Danilo and us (photographers who come from abroad) was that we, once in a while, were able to leave Sarajevo and rest in a normal place not touched by war and destruction filled with death, suffering, crying and funerals. Funerals that happen every day. Danilo did not have this kind of luxury as he was not allowed to leave Sarajevo for he was Bosnian. So what he did was walk the streets of Sarajevo every day – putting his life on the line to bring amazing news pictures showing the horrors of the siege. He never complained as he was probably the most modest and quiet man I have ever known and have worked with.

I remember the last massacre in Sarajevo which happened on the 28th of August 1995. Danilo and I left the office in an armored Landrover and went to the center of the city. After we parked our car we went for a stroll. Sarajevo was quiet for a couple of weeks prior to that and people began walking on the streets feeling safer and more relaxed. We went for a coffee and then strolled by the Indoor Market and were just around the corner near the Cathedral when we heard a loud explosion. We were not sure where it had happened but we ran there and what we saw was horrifying; dead bodies everywhere, people running in panic, screaming for help. We both began taking pictures as there were many other people that were already helping the wounded. I do not remember how long we stayed but both of us decided to leave after a while and take some wounded to the hospital in our car. Danilo was very calm throughout the whole situation, talking to the wounded despite the fact that several more mortar rounds had landed nearby and that we had just walked in front of the entrance to the Indoor Marked few minutes earlier. After we drove to the hospital and helped the wounded that we had brought in, we went back to the office. Forty people died in that mortar attack and over 180 were wounded. We did not talk much about what happened, we just looked at each other.

Some photographers are very active in promoting themselves saying how great they are but not Danilo. He was always quiet, modest, just doing his job… My thoughts are with him and his family. I shall miss him….

For a complete slideshow of danilo’s work click here.

Through my Polish police contacts, I learned that members of various SWAT teams and the border guards would hold a special training exercise in the town of Zamosc. The exercise was conducted as part of preparations by the Polish special forces leading up to the EURO 2012 soccer tournament, to be held in Poland and Ukraine this summer. This training event was to be observed by various representatives from different countries.

As I arrived at the military training ground, I realized that some of the instructors were my old friends whom I have known for as many as eighteen years. It helped me immensely to be accepted by people who were being trained. The forces were divided into three teams of SWAT and border guards being trained on different public transport vehicles, in various techniques of approaching a hijacked bus followed by mastering the techniques of entering and rescuing hostages from inside the vehicle.

Witnessing dozens of similar exercises I’m always amazed by the speed and agility with which these men can move. It also helps me understand how much time, effort and dedication they have to invest to be able to work with such precision.

The first part of the day consisted of moving in and rescuing hostages from a stationary bus under various scenarios. The objective of the second part of the day was to rehearse a scenario where the hijacked bus was moving and had to be suddenly stopped and boarded by the rescue team. If you think that this looks great in a movie, you should see the real thing, or at least in practice. Even if it is only an exercise, it feels real for the special teams. These men know that if this were to really happen, they would risk their lives without hesitation. Each exercise was discussed ahead of time. Afterwards, everybody shared his take on the completed mission.

What makes these men special is that they can adapt to different situations and always look for the best possible way to complete the mission, changing along the way to what the mission throws at them.

On the second day, the objective of the exercise was to rescue hostages from a city bus that was hijacked by a group of unknown terrorists. The situation was as real as possible with terrorists armed with sub-machine guns holding a large number of hostages on board.

Over 250 members of various police units and emergency services took part in the scenario, treating everything as if it was happening for real.

First there were reports that a bus was hijacked in a certain part of the city, which was followed by a response from SWAT teams, fire department emergency and medical services along with a large team of negotiators and plain clothes police.

With adrenaline pumping, I arrived with my instructor friends and the members of the SWAT team at the scene. The situation was tense, on the verge of chaos. Traffic police were quickly relieved by members of the SWAT teams with snipers. The area was gradually contained as parameters were set and command established.

As negotiators began trying to secure the release of as many hostages as possible, the fire department set up tents as a command center. As the bus was located snipers began to collect visual information and the SWAT began rehearsing the best possible way to storm the vehicle. More units arrived on the scene; just as they would in real life. The exercise lasted from when the bus was hijacked at 10am and ended late in the evening when all negotiations failed and the special forces were sent in to storm the bus.

Even though it was just an exercise it felt and looked very real, with decoy explosions, windows smashed and blanks being fired from a heavy sub-machine gun into the bus’s front windshield. The final operation was conducted very quickly, with adrenaline saturating the air. Afterwards, the forces had to separate the hostages from the bad guys. In the end, I noticed that many of the people that took part in this exercise were as tired as if it had happened in real life.

Even though I, too, was very tired, I was also grateful to my friends for allowing me to see these elite teams in training. They trust me because they know I will never show their faces in my photos.

I woke up on the morning of August 19, 1991 after staying at my friends’ apartment in Warsaw. I was on my way back from holidays in Canada and had just sold my car before departing to the Soviet Union to start my new job at Reuters in Moscow. Previously, I worked for the Associated Press in the then-Soviet Republics of Lithuania and Georgia as well as in Moscow itself where Reuters’ former Chief Picture Editor Gary Kemper and Moscow Chief Photographer Frederique Lengaigne recruited me for Reuters.

A neighbor stopped me on the staircase saying: “Do you know what happened in Moscow?”. There was a military coup and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was overthrown by Soviet Vice President Gennady Yanayev. It seemed impossible to me, I had just left Moscow two months earlier. Nevertheless, I immediately arranged the first available plane ticket to Moscow. The plane was almost empty and the only people on board were my colleagues from Poland with whom I had spent the previous year working with in Vilnius. The atmosphere on the plane was tense, but full of excitement. The change was happening in front of our eyes, but not the way we were expecting.

Upon landing at the Shermetyevo airport in Moscow I went straight to the Reuters office which was then on the Sadovaya Samotechnaya Ulitsa part of the Sadovoye Koltso in the center of Moscow. We exchanged quick greetings and I was on my way to the White House, a building which then housed the country’s parliament, where everything was happening. The Reuters picture crew already working on site included Sean Ramsey, Michael Samojeden, Genady Galperyn, Grigory Dukor, and Viktor Korotayev.

In those days we were working with film and, as far as I can recall, Frederique was in the office all the time processing our pictures and sending them to the world. The atmosphere was intense and strange as there were thousands of people on the streets of Moscow protesting against the military’s presence in the center of the city. Sean Ramsey was taking incredible risks and getting amazing images, as did the rest of the team. Michael took a great picture the next day of Yeltsin on the balcony of the White House.

Armored vehicles were traveling up and down the center of the city with some trolleybuses burning. The next day was more peaceful but still intense with tanks surrounding the parliament building with hundreds of people walking in between them, putting flowers on the APC’s and waving victory signs. I was amazed to see my picture on the front page of the International Herald Tribune on August 21.

It depicted a soldier sitting on top of a tank, smiling, with flowers next to him. It somehow became a sign that the coup had failed. Boris Yeltsin, who seemed to be supported by the part of the military opposing the hard line generals orchestrating the coup, had emerged as the new leader of the country. The coup was over and so was the Soviet Union as it took only four months to transform into CIS, with all the republics gaining independence.

In many ways it was the moment I was waiting for all my life, having grown up in communist, Soviet-satellite Poland. I had to defect from my homeland and take off to the West in 1981 with the feeling of never being able to return to the place where members of my family lived, including my mother and my brother. But with events like the Polish Solidarity trade union, the Berlin Wall collapse, the Lithuania uprising and the failed Yanayev coup in August 1991, the totalitarian system, that keep millions of people oppressed, had ended. It was my quiet moment of glory.

It was June 28, 1995, when Sean Maguire and I arrived in Sarajevo for another few months of covering the conflict in the Bosnian capital.

The drive was uneventful as we left Split on the Adriatic Sea and drove overnight over Mount Igman. As always, Sean drove the car. Upon arrival in Sarajevo we went to sleep to be woken up by huge blasts. Two aircraft bombs attached to four rockets were launched from the ground from Serbian positions towards Sarajevo. One of them hit the TV station where all the local and foreign TV crews were working out of and the second an apartment block nearby.

Still half asleep we jumped into our armored Land Rover and drove in that direction, only to find another tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes. “Welcome to Sarajevo again”, I said to myself not knowing that it was going to be a very long and eventful summer. Almost every day we took pictures of one tragedy or another, as people tried to cope with life in the besieged city.

The month of August 1995 was quieter as there were fewer bombs falling on the city. People began to walk outside, feeling safe enough to visit local cafes and markets. They seemed to enjoy the feeling of life returning to something close to normality.

On the morning of August 28, 1995 Reuters photographer Danilo Kristanovic and I left for a drive in an armored car through the city looking for feature pictures in the center of town. When we arrived at our destination, we parked our Land Rover on one of the streets. The city center was full as people were sitting in cafes enjoying sunny weather while others were shopping for food at the outdoor and indoor markets. We passed by the entrance to the local market and walked towards the Cathedral, a few hundred yards away.

As we turned the corner we heard a loud explosion. We knew that the sound of the incoming round meant a mortar attack. We turned back and began running towards the place where the round fell. The view was horrible as people ran and screamed. Usually in a situation like this my first reaction is to help people but in this case it was overwhelming. Bodies and body parts were lying everywhere and the wounded were screaming for help.

We took pictures for maybe ten or twenty minutes and even today I don’t remember how I managed to work. Afterward we ran to our car and drove some of the wounded to the local hospital. Then we went to our office to develop our pictures and transmitted them on the wire. I had never seen anything like that before.

A few hours later some members of the U.S. Embassy arrived at our office and took some copies of the pictures that we had taken. Within two days, NATO began its bombing campaign against Serbian positions around Sarajevo, which was the beginning of the end of the war. In fact, the war was over.

The pictures we took that day were some of the most important pictures in my life but I would never like to repeat them again.