“Goodbye, I don’t think we’ll miss you,” Cherie Blair told the assembled media in Downing Street as she and her family left Number 10 for the last time this week and she clearly meant it.

After ten years of close scrutiny through the lenses of the world’s press since the morning after Labour’s landslide victory when she was photographed with sleep tousled hair opening the front door to receive a delivery of flowers she had had enough of us.

Who could blame her? Some people the camera loves, others are less fortunate. It must be galling to be repeatedly made to look ridiculous, particularly for someone as eminent and accomplished in her own right as Cherie Booth QC. Whatever aspect of her character the cameras revealed, self consciousness or lurking neuroses, it certainly wasn’t stupidity but somebody should really have told her about the rugby balls.

Here’s a more flattering picture to go out on. She may not miss us but I think we might miss her.

(Pictures by Ian Waldie, Stephen Hird and Kieran Doherty)

Whether you view it as the height of Iberian culture or as a cruel, demeaning blood sport there is no doubt that bullfighting produces some very dramatic pictures.

The formal structure of the bullfight with its posturing toreadors, bright traditional costumes, choreographed moves and ritualised violence is a visual feast and the resultant images can be very beautiful in spite of the bood and gore, or perhaps because of it.

It goes without saying that the bull usually gets the worst of the encounter but it is not unusual for matadors to be hurt and modern camera equipment puts the viewer right at the heart of the action. 

The crucial difference is that unlike most “sports” action pictures, the lives of the subjects are in the balance. 

Playing with your food can be lethal.

(Photographs by Marcelo del Pozo, Javier Barbancho, Marcelo del Pozo, Jose Manuel Ribeiro, Javier Barbancho and Susana Vera respectively).

Technology. Who can knock it ? In the last ten years the advancements in the digital imagery revolution have transformed the way in which press photographers work, think and play. The Canon EOS focusing system was so advanced that overnight the sporting arena quadrupled in the amount of photographers now able to cover football. In fact digital camera technology is so good, even primates can use them. And to what effect? Well, in reality a digital camera is just another highly sophisticated tool they can play with and they are probably not that interested in the end result. It focuses, exposes, sharpens and saturates for them, all they really have to do is point the camera in roughly the right direction and hey presto they have a usable image of Prince Harry leaving a London nightclub at 3 am looking rather worse for wear. Then to complete the picture, money exchanges hands for the rights to publish and voila, we have a bona fide chimpanzee.

I have never really quite understood those whose thought processes creak to the conclusion ‘I have a camera therefore I am a professional photographer.’  It used to be that a portfolio of prints (which then evolved to a CD)  was an absolute neccessity in order to obtain work. The physical process of watching a picture editor flash through your 20 best prints in mere nano seconds and then to be told “don’t call us…. “ was a sight to behold and an experience never to be forgotten. It was such a shock to the system that it made you invent ways of trying to keep a picture editor hovering over your pictures for just a few more precious seconds. Nowadays it’s, “ have you got a camera and a laptop?”. And there you have it. Invest a couple of grand in some sophisticated equipment and you too can see your pictures in lights and call yourself a professional. I always wanted to be an RAF test pilot, so maybe if I bought myself a jump suit and a pair of raybans I could become a top gun? Being a musician, if I bought the right drum kit surely Paul Simon might let me take Steve Gadd’s drum stool for the forthcoming Royal Albert Hall gig? Somehow I think not……and so what is it that gives those with no experience or qualifications the right to assume the mantle of professional photographer?

Technology. It is our friend and our enemy simultaneously. It has totally changed the way we work as professionals in this industry for the better. It has made our jobs less stressful from a wiring perspective, it has lessened the load on our backs and given us the opportunity to see what we do instantly and just as importantly allowed our clients to have a ready to publish World Cup final trophy pictures within 4 minutes of the shutter being released. However It has also allowed those who with little or no skill or experience to downgrade the picture quality of our industry. As long as people are prepared to pay for these images, these so called photographers will continue to invest in the latest state of the art equipment and continue to tar us with the same brush.

We all chimp, but that doesn’t make us monkeys. 

What is the difference between Hackney and hackneyed?

Hackney is an underprivileged east London borough which it is hoped will benefit greatly from new facilities, infrastructure and jobs created as London prepares for the 2012 Olympics.

Hackneyed are the dreadful “photo opportunities” devised by PR specialists in London, like this one intended to promote the 2012 Olympics.

Even with Lord Coe, two other Olympians, Tower Bridge, a double-decker bus, a cabinet minister and a chorus of Beefeaters, this was never going to set pulses racing. So why bother to send a photographer?

Well, with IOC inspectors in town to report on Londons progress there was a very good chance that the unveiling of the 2012 Olympics tour bus would reignite furious local controversy surrounding the official logo.

Tower Bridge was already there, but it must have taken considerable organisation to get bus, Olympians, politician and press in the same place at the same time, without the lure of free food and drink.

So what was supposed to happen? What was the concept behind it, the message they hoped to convey? Would everyone get a ride on the bus? Would the Olympians set it alight and dance round it. Would it be floated down the river with Lord Coe at the helm and the minister water-skiing behind or was the bus a cleverly fashioned hot air balloon which would, on cue, rise gracefully into the sky and float over the City of London carrying the Olympic message to the nation? 

Not a bit of it. The concept was, this is the 2012 Olympic tour bus. Not sparkling, but pictures might still have made the papers with a strong enough news hook to hang them on, except for one thing. At no stage during the planning of this coup de théâtre does any practical consideration appear to have been given to what the whole sorry shambles was supposed to look like through a camera.

Double-decker bus with Olympic logo, Tower Bridge, beloved British Olympians, head of the Olympic bid, cabinet minister and Beefeaters (sorry Beefeaters have cancelled, the Yeoman Warders are available); on paper it would have sounded like the picture on the lid of a souvenir biscuit tin, all it lacked was Mary Poppins.

Unfortunately the way things were staged it was impossible to make that picture or anything like it.

Would it have been so hard to seek the advice of a professional at the planning stage? There was a clue at the top of the e-mail sent by the PR team to all the picture desks it was a photocall.

They obviously know where we are, now to persuade them to talk to us.

Los Angeles Senior Photographer Lucy Nicholson reports back from the 2007 NBA Finals

Growing up in England with 4 tv channels, I didn’t get to watch much
basketball.

The first game I ever saw was during the 2001 NBA Finals when I worked
as a runner for Agence France-Presse in Los Angeles, taking disks from
the photographers and keeping the editors happy with beer.

Allen Iverson was darting all over the court for the Philadelphia
76ers.  I was mesmerized by his energy and acrobatics and quickly
became hooked on the game.  With its breakneck pace and emphasis on
rhythm over rules, it was instantly more attractive to me than reading
through ‘The Complete Idiots Guide to Baseball’ and ‘American Football
for Dummies.’

I’ve photographed every subsequent NBA Finals as basketball trickles
its way across the Atlantic.

There are now three British players in the NBA - Ben Gordon, Luol Deng,
and Ugonna Onyekwe, all on the Chicago Bulls - as well as a smattering
of talented players at U.S. colleges and Spanish clubs.  They add up to
potentially the first-ever remotely competitive British basketball team
at the London 2012 Olympics.  Former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman even
played last year for my hometown Brighton in the British Basketball
League.

First stop for the 2007 NBA Finals is San Antonio, Texas.  First
challenge is to carry most of my camera equipment onto the plane as
hand luggage.

Fortunately U.S. airlines don’t yet weigh hand luggage, so I walk past
the boarding gate pretending my bags don’t weigh more than I do and
then find a guy to lift them into the overhead bin.

Straight to the arena to set up remote cameras…

These finals orbit around Cleveland Cavaliers player LeBron James.  The
U.S. media are crowning him King James and hailing him as the next
Michael Jordan.  If Cleveland wins (or even if they dont) the Reuters
photo report will be heavily weighted with pictures of LeBron, so
shooting multiple angles of him in action with remote cameras makes for
a varied edit.

On an overhead catwalk I mount a 400mm lens which I will trigger when
players jump for a rebound via a button attached to one of my hand-held
cameras.

Dallas-based Reuters photographer Jessica Rinaldi (top) holds a
focus card.

Photographer Mike Blake set up an overhead remote during the recent NHL
playoffs with a Canon 5D camera and a USB cable attached to a computer
running the Reuters Paneikon editing software.  I decided to try the
same thing so that the editors could have a live feed instead of having
to wait until the late-night end of the game.  We used Paneikon for the
first time at an NBA Finals with Gary Hershorn, Peter Jones, and Mike
Blake editing from New York, Toronto and San Diego respectively, and
everything ran really smoothly.

The Canon 5D, 400mm lens and pc computer set up with a Sprint card
& Paneikon.

The story of Game 1 was how the Spurs Tim Duncan dominated LeBron
James and the overhead camera came through with a good illustration of
his aggressive defense.

Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James (L) is fouled by San Antonio
Spurs Tim Duncan as he goes up to shoot.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The NBA only allows one camera behind the glass for the finals (in
addition to the NBA & Sports Illustrated cameras), so Reuters, AP,
Getty, EPA, and AFP take turns to set it up and we pool the images.  We
shoot Game 2, which produced a photo of finals MVP Tony Parker.

Lucy setting up the camera behind the glass.

San Antonio Spurs Tony Parker goes up to score during Game 2. 
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

I was shooting with the new Canon Mark III cameras for the first time
and they were pretty impressive in low light.  This is a crop of a
third of the full frame of LeBron James sitting in a dark corner
waiting to be interviewed, which I shot at 3200 ISO.

LeBron James at 3200 ISO.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

This finals was one of the dullest, most unemotional Ive seen.  It
ended abruptly in Cleveland as the Spurs won four straight games with a
defensive lockdown on LeBron James magic.

 
Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James reacts during their Game 2 loss
to the San Antonio Spurs.   REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

The only spark came from Tony Parker, the diminutive point guard from
France, who energized Game 4 as he became the first European player to
earn the NBA Finals most valuable player award.

San Antonio Spurs Tony Parker of France kisses the NBA
Championship trophy as he holds the MVP trophy in the locker room
defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 4.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

San Antonio Spurs Tony Parker (R) celebrates with owner Peter Holt
(C) and Fransico Elson (L) after defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in
Game 4.  REUTERS/Hans Deryk

Lucy Nicholson
www.lucynicholson.com
 

Sam Mircovich Reuters LA-based Senior Editor in Charge, Entertainment Pictures reports back from the recent NPPA Multimedia Immersion bootcamp. 
“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium / that is, of any extension of ourselves / result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” - Marshall McLuhan
 
To hear the National Press Photographers Association tell it, still photojournalists must adapt to the demands off the new medium - online journalism - or risk losing their jobs in a Web 2.0 world. Earlier this month, the NPPA held its Multimedia Immersion boot camp in Portland, Oregon, where traditional still photojournalists were faced with the reality that their role in the newsroom is changing.

Among the new skills photojournalist must possess are the ability to shoot video for the web, gather clean sound, and program flash multimedia presentations. Many photojournalism students in the United States are being schooled in these programs already.

Rich Beckham, a professor of multimedia design and production at the University of North Carolina, put it bluntly. “Still photojournalists have been whining about video for years’ he said, “Shut up and get over it and learn Final Cut Pro (a video editing program) and get back to journalism and story telling.”
The Immersion program offered a 4-day hands on workshop for still photographers, who put down their Canons and Nikons in favor of video cameras and sound equipment.
 
For newsrooms struggling with their web presence, Regina McCoombs from the Minneapolis Star Tribune offered tips on how the photo department can lead the way rather than follow. She suggests the photo departments must collaborate more with print reporters and web designers, and build good ideas from bad ones. Richard Martinez from the San Jose Mercury News and multimediashooter.com ( http://multimediashooter.com/ ) also suggests that the photo department ‘be the bridge to build relationships” to share information, train and communicate. He warns photographers “…don’t be an ass…(the idea) that photographers driving news scares the crap out of the newsroom…”.

Jim Seida, senior multimedia producer for MSNBC.com, gave tips to how photographers should collect good audio on their subjects. “When you read a caption (on a still image) you read your voice into the caption, not your subjects voice.” Clean audio allows the subject to tell their story, which he feels is more important than the same story being filtered through a reporter. He also suggests that pictures have inherent sound, and photographers should chase down that sound to lead to more pictures.

Veteran White House photojournalist Dirck Halstead, editor and publisher of The Digital Journalist ( http://digitaljournalist.org/ ) feels photographers have the opportunity to move from their “second class citizen’ status.” In this new mode of visual storytellers, (photographers) “could be the saviours in web transition.

Tom Kennedy Managing Editor for Multimedia for the Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and cited the work of communications theorist Marshall McLuhan and is blown away by his vision 50 years ago, which predicted web story telling “with accuracy and fidelity” “We are creating and reviving an alternative language… telling stories with a minimum of filtration.”
 
 
So what do you think? Is this the end for still news photography as we know it? Is video just a faster motor drive or is this the dawn of a new age of visual story-telling?

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

Most horrible of the pooled photo opportunities is the grip and grin.

The grip and grin is where, for the benefit of the cameras, two people pretend to be meeting for the first time that day by shaking hands. Gripping one another by the right hand in front of cameras is something politicians appear to do as a reflex, like kissing babies at election time, but for the news photographers I know asking two people to shake hands is an absolute last resort attempt to salvage something from an otherwise hopeless assignment.

The meeting above was clearly a significant encounter but I feel for the Korean photographer faced with the responsibility of trying to make it look interesting.

Never mind the lack of visual impact, feel the symbolism — and the doors look good.

There are always one or two examples on the wire but a G8 Summit, with its rigidly controlled, pooled media access spawns more grip and grins than an arm-wrestling contest and the Heiligendamm conference has been no exception.
I dislike them because they are clichéd visual spam, badly conceived, poorly executed and offering little if any insight into the personal or diplomatic relationship between the subjects. 

There are of course glorious exceptions and this is one of the best of its kind.

Shot on the White House lawn it is constructed like a Renaissance painting of the Good Shepherd. The old enemies Rabin and Arafat shake hands in front of the benignly smiling President Clinton, enclosed within his sweeping gesture and the photographer Gary Hershorn nails it.

It was an event conceived to produce a memorable and lasting image, a landmark for posterity. There is nothing at all spontaneous about it, nothing left to chance and in fact represents all the things I most dislike about photo opportunities and grip and grins in particular, except that it works beautifully. It really does deliver the goods.

If only they were all this good.

Jockey Frankie Dettori yells in triumph as he crosses the finish line on the favourite Authorized to win the Epsom Derby on his 15th attempt, in this one of a series of beautifully lit images from Kieran Doherty shot on a Cannon EOS 1D Mark III.

While Authorized was the betting publics favourite, Dylan Martinezs picture, again on the Mark III, strongly suggests that Dettoris victory may have been less than universally popular with Epsom punters.

I trust it didn’t spoil the entire weekend.