Labor of love - covering what you truly enjoy.

There are some photographers who would endure almost anything rather than cover a tennis match…..let alone a two-week tournament. Fortunately for me, I had always dreamed of covering professional tennis and for the past 18 years my wish has come true a few times each year when I am sent to cover Wimbledon, the U.S. Open or other tennis events for Reuters.

I play a lot of tennis (mildly obsessed would be more accurate) and my circle of tennis friends are green with envy that I am sent to “work” at these events.  My tennis partners would kill for a seat in the courtside photographers pit where I spend a great deal of time. What they don’t realize is that covering a match is not quite the same as watching it while sipping a cold beer or enjoying a dish of strawberries and cream. Paying close attention to the flow of the match is crucial to getting the right images.  The reality is that you are watching the match through a lens trained on only one player at a time. You are not actually seeing the back and forth of the game like the folks in the audience.  In addition, you must spend a lot of time lugging your big lenses around the stadium to get different angles and different moods as the light changes throughout the day. Ah yes, and then there are the rain delays. Work, yes, but……

Through the years I have documented some of the great moments in the modern game. From McEnroe’s famous tirades, Jimmy Connors’ late career surge, the Navratilova vs. Graf rivalry, the reign of Sampras, Agassi’s tearful retirement and Federer’s attempt to be the greatest of all time. I’ve also met some great people in my travels and had a lot of laughs with colleagues along the way. Covering what you truly enjoy certainly blurs the lines of work and play. And yes, it also makes a nice break from my usual beat at the White House!

Top  picture:Fabrice Santoro of France sits with an ice bag on his head during a changeover during his match against James Blake of the U.S at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York, August 30, 2007.   Kevin Lamarque

2: A ball boy holds tennis balls during a match at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York, August 29, 2007. Kevin Lamarque

3: Nadia Petrova of Russia serves to Agnes Szavay of Hungary at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York, September 1, 2007. Kevin Lamarque

4 and 5: Roger Federer of Switzerland leaps to make a return to Nikolay Davydenko of Russia during their semi-final match at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York, September 8, 2007. Kevin Lamarque

6: Reuters photographers Mike Segar and Kevin Lamarque take advantage of an open court for their annual tennis match at the 2007 U.S.Open.

In this Reuters picture reproduced on newspaper front pages all round the world today, Japanese videojournalist Kenji Nagai lies dying in the street, still trying to record the scenes of violence after he was shot through the chest when soldiers fired live rounds at protestors in Yangon yesterday.

 It is a chilling image and yet another reminder, as if any were needed, of the risks faced by the thousands of journalists whose  job it is to bring us the news from areas of conflict and instability. At least Kenji Nagai had chosen to be there. He lost his life putting faces to what without pictures are just numbers.

My condolences to Kenji Nagai’s family, friends and colleagues.

Highspeed spills are an occupational hazard for motorbike racers and have produced some spectacular images which are rather more memorable than the standard knee-on-the-ground-diagonal-bi ke- frozen-action kind. This sequence by Toru Hanai of Spanish MotoGP rider Dani Pedrosa falling off his Honda bike during the Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi is a case in point.

Not only is it a toe-curlingly fascinating portayal of what happens to rider and machine when they part company at speed but it has great news value too because the rider concerned is a former World Champion, this year lying in third place behind Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi. Fortunately he limped away from the crash with little more than a suspected broken toe and while it may have dashed his hopes of victory it produced a very good result for Toru Hanai.

At the end of last week in among the hundreds of pictures moving through the desk in Singapore a few snapshot-like images from Myanmar began to appear showing small groups of monks demonstrating against their country’s military rulers. The scarcity value alone of this evidence of open dissent guaranteed inclusion in the 24 images selected for the daily Editor’s Choice showcase.

The rarest of these gems was this muzzy picture showing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, just visible beyond the riot  shields of the guards,  as she pays her respects to the crowd of monks gathered outside the villa where she is under house arrest. The picture seems to have been widely overlooked and while this may be due in in part to its poor execution it is nevertheless a powerful and significant image. In fact it is its technical inadequacies which so eloquently convey a sense of the furtiveness involved in shooting it, the risks taken by the demonstrators and by the photographer in bringing the image to the attention of the world at large. 

Over the weekend the quality and content of the images from Myanmar has steadily improved giving unprecedented insight into this real life cliffhanger. The gaggle of protesting monks has become a flood with more visible support from the public and no direct intervention so far by Myanmar’s military overlords. 

Whether they want to or not now everbody knows what is happening in Myanmar.  

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

What is the price we are ready to pay to get the picture? When do we say stop, enough, it is not worth it? When the danger and the price are too high no matter what the picture could be? Remember the frog in hot water? In Iraq I feel like that frog, somebody has turned up the heat and the water is beginning to boil.

Unless you are totally crazy or one of those larger than life war photographers, the only way to document the biggest running news story of the last decade or so is the famous ‘embed’, the U.S. military program which allows journalists to live with and shadow their soldiers on the ground 24/7. Forget about trying to operate on your own as a unilateral as the new vocabulary styles it. Working with just a driver, a fixer and yourself may seem like an option only if you havent been around there recently, are seriously deluded or harbour suicidal tendencies. No, in circumstances where even local photographers with small cameras cannot operate safely, the embed offers the only possible way to document the mayhem of Iraq.

So, this is how it works. You apply through your Baghdad office and the YES reply comes in a couple of days, together with the first set of ground rules for you to sign. It is essential to know what you are applying for. If you dont specify the unit you want to stay with, then its pure luck, a lottery. It could be very good unit, active, not too dangerous allowing you a chance to have good and varied images every day. Or you could end up in a corner of the big story, patrolling around in tanks or armored vehicles all day long, fishing for IEDs and a picture or two, maybe. Knowing what you want is very important.

Now, who has all the most up-to-date information,who knows where to go and all the small secrets that could save lives? Our Baghdad people of course, they really know what is going on, but you need to actively seek their advicet. If you don’t talk to them they will quite reasonably assume that you already know what to do and you are straight back in the lottery again. So to the internet where you trawl the agencies’  websites, photo forums and portals, checking blogs and following the usual suspects. There are a very small number of news photographers going to Iraq nowadays and it is easy to contact them. They will willingly share information, give you tips and make your choices easier. To minimize the danger and maximize the results, preparation is extremely important.

But, the logistics. Man, how I hate even looking at the bags I have packed for Iraq. All the body armour, satellite modems, long cables, sleeping bags, spare lenses, entertaiment for the long nights of waiting for something to happen. Ive been there many times and packing should be easy because I know exactly what to take. Maybe just another book, loudspeakers for iPod, couple more DVDs, extra torch Then just before flying out, another look at the four huge bags, remembering where Im going to, I decide to re-pack. Everything goes, leaving just two cameras, two lenses, armour, laptop and basic hygiene. OK and a small fancy film camera for a black and white project thats never going to be finished.

The U.S. army provide everything. Maybe not for free, but their camps are small towns built for pampered soldiers and you can get everything you need. Cheap army shops are very good. For small change you can turn your corner of that huge army tent into a nice, private room to live in for next couple of weeks.

So, now Im outside the wire with troops and its time to take pictures. Knowing what the mission is for the day will help. In the beginning the platoon leader does not trust me and I work at getting to know him. Talking about the wars I have covered, other experiences and travel does not impress them much. But a double page spread of one of my old pictures of Jennifer Lopez in a sent from home magazine they keep under seats of their Humvee does the trick. I explain that we do cover other things, not just conflict and big news stories. They like sports and they like gossip about celebrities even more. Now, they talk to me

And the talk is about what theyll do after the war is over and then about their worst nightmare, an enemy no army ever fought on this scale before  improvised explosive devices. They talk about the fear. They say the third vehicle in a convoy is more often hit by IEDs then the others, they say Iranian-made roadside bombs are killers. Not long ago they found an old fridge, filled with explosive, buried under the road targeting convoys of humvees. They say they look for a small box by the road with a video camera that the bad guys place near the bombs to film explosion.

Soon afterwards, I experience my first IED targeting the convoy, just as everyone else taking chances with the U.S. army in Iraq probably will. Local Iraqi police have informed the U.S. military about the device and the bomber appears to have run away without detonating it. I am in the second vehicle as we stop close to the suspicious yellow bag. We wait for twenty minutes but nothing happens. ”Okay, hes gone”, says the officer calling for a disposal expert to diffuse the bomb. The robot comes, cuts wires attached to a mobile phone and detonates the bomb. “It’s a small one”, they say, “no need to take cover”. None of the windows in the neighborhood survive the explosion of the small one.

And the pictures of the blast? No pictures, only portraits of soldiers happy that another day has passed.

 
The pictures come later. I manage to get into a combat hospital, an embed I had pursued for a long time. This is the place where all the wounded from Baghdad area are brought. It is a fantastic opportunity for a photojournalist and probably the most frustrating. Some of my best, most telling pictures still sit in my laptop, waiting for military approval to use them because of concerns that a tattoo or the faces of a screaming soldier may be recognisable. There are things I was not allowed to shoot or even speak about.

So, the cost of telliing the story of Iraq gets ever higher and part of that price may be that our best shots have to remain silent, unseen. Still, being with coalition troops is a safer bet than the alternatives  just ask our Iraqi colleagues!

 Damir Sagolj

Maybe I slept a little too long last night? Nah..couldnt be, but one things for sure, all of a sudden an era seems to have come and gone without so much as a by-your-leave.

Up until just last Friday, most of the photographers on the street seemed pretty much in agreement that, technology-wise, they had it made. But today I had the pleasure of chatting with a very young personality photographer who, toting his tiny HDV cam and custom-made mini-shotgun mike,  told me, straight faced, that carrying all those digitial still cameras, lenses and laptops was too cumbersome and a thing of the past. Ahhh, youth!!

Those of us who have been in the newspictures business for many years have seen tremendous technological change, nearly all for the better. Few photographers in their thirties knew the era of film and analogue pictures transmission and the woes it entailed. A young sports photographer we recently spoke with simply refused to believe that in the olden days photographers had to manually follow-focus soccer players and manually set the exposure. Surely everyone knows that all you have to do in order to get a high-speed internet connection is to hang out in your nearest MacDonalds or Starbucks right? After all, hasnt it ALWAYS been like that?

Well, I was rummaging through some boxes of old photo prints today and came across a picture I had taken in London at the royal wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981. There was nothing extraordinary about the image itself, but what made it interesting was that it came in the form of three 10 x 8 inch black and white prints of the same image, a colour separation. Each b&w print represented a colour: Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta. At one time converting a colour image to three black and white printers was the only way  to transmit a colour image (until both AP and UPI later developed a drum transmitter with a built in colour filter to handle the transmission of a colour print) .

It occurred to me that I had never seen this picture reassembled as a full colour image, save for a few newspaper clippings and so I decided to do this y means of today’s digital technology. I simply scanned the three prints and aligned them in Photoshop. The results were surprisingly good considering that the very long and tedious separation process (sometimes taking up to three hours for a single picture) was done totally by guesswork. AP, with a rather larger budget than UPI (for whom I was working at the time) had the luxury of a “densitometer” to calculate the tone of the three black and white printers., while we had to guestimate what the final colour project would look like at the receiving end. 

The amount of mobile gear needed to handle analogue colour transmissions on the road was enough to make the Rolling Stones roadies go on strike. A wire service photographer had to lift over a hundred kilos of gear on and off planes and spend hours locked in the darkest space available in many a god-foresaken place just in order to produce one colour project to satisfy the demands of the very few newspapers experimenting with colour at this time.

The equipment came in three or four large cases, One case contained a large plastic basin with hoses to connect to the hot and cold water taps in a hotel room. The basin was filled with warm water in which the stainless steel developing tanks were immersed. Another case contained an enlarger, film dryer and other printing material, including special registration frames and a special registration hole puncher, The last, and largest case, contained dozens of bottles of (very heavy) liquid chemistry (which would never be allowed on planes nowdays). This was all in addition to the photographers cameras, lenses, typewriter, analog picture transmitter and personal bag.

The separation process was finicky and frustrating with each of the three black and white renditions of the colour image having to be done one at a time. The first printer had to be dried very slowly to avoid shrinkage, then under the enlarger, matched and overlayed within a millimeter to the next, otherwise the picture would be out-of-register when reassembled. After several hours the photographer would appear, disheveled and cursing from the darkroom bearing the prized three printers. But even then, the hassles were far from over. Each of the three black and white printer took 15 minutes to transmit and with often noisy analogue telephone lines, many repeats would be required until all three printers had been successfully received. Quite often (invariably just as the only restaurant for miles was about to close for the night) the print would become loose on the transmitter drum or the adhesive registration marks would progressively peel off the print as the drum turned requiring the whole process to be repeated. 

But here we are heading for 2008 and it looks likely that pretty soon all we need to do our job will slip neatly into a large belt pouch.  Funnily enough sound, which for wire-service photographers all those years ago played such a big part in transmitting images as their pictures beep-beeped over those flaky phone lines as analogue noise, is back again. This time as live sound and commentary to the moving images we now produce as we adapt our product to the multimedia demands of the internet.

Rest assured, my colour separations have now been safely returned to a box in the cellar. No looking back. Hold on for the ride, its going to be fun!

After several combinations of team working various morning and afternoon shifts, this week was time for a whole new experience: The main shift of the day: our night shift which begins at 1500 gmt/2300 local time. From 2300 until early in the morning there at least one EiC is on duty awith typically from five to seven sub-editors. The night shift is most certainly our heaviest shift with up to 1000 pictures landing over an eight hour period on a busy nights.

I arrived at the office at 2200 to give me plenty of time to read in, look through all the pictures moved during the day and catch up on our top-stories.

And sure enough we had one : The Indonesian island of Sumatra ihad been hit by a powerful earthquake, which toppled hundreds of buildings, killing at least 10 people and burying many others The previous shift already moved pictures and taken some TV grabs from remoter areas. In addition to our pictures wire I  monitored the file of our TV colleagues so as not to miss any potentially useful images fthey may have.

So my first overnight began shift began busily but I was to find out very quickly that this was just the beginning. My colleague Altaf was quietly getting on with editing and processing the file from the ICC Cricket World Cup Twenty20 from South Africa while the rest of our team was filing the pictures from some 22 Euro 2008 qualifiers and friendly soccer matches (Germany beat Romania!!), European Basketball from Madrid, US senator Obama giving a speech, military bands performing in Red Square , a huge file from New York fashion week, a boy practicing boxing at ” Fights for Peace project ” at a slum in Rio de Janeiro, pictures from the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival and preparing the images to accompany stories from the Reuters features desk . did I already mention England beating Russia 3-nil?

At about 0600, an hour before the end of the shift the incoming flood of pictures began to slow down. Thanks mainly to sub-editors Altaf, Deurbon, Gary, Jacinta, Kerk, Rina, Tom, TZ, and Wei Yang who are incredibly fast we had processed and filed more than 900 pictures in a single shift.

It was time to depressurise and relax a bit after seven hours non stop, without a break.

While drinking a coffee I find a nice story in a local magazine about ‘moon cake’. No big deal you may say, but I read that there is a local hotel making Black Forest mooncakesle which is irresistable for a boy from the Black Forest, like me.

My colleagues explain the mooncake, is a significant part of Chinese culture playing an important role in the lunar Mid-Autumn Festival, which this year falls on September 25. Usually packed in a box of four, the palm-sized round moon cakes symbolize perfection and family unity. Most mooncakes are baked and consist of a thin tender golden brown skin enveloping a sweet, slightly oily filling. It may contain one or more whole salted egg yolks in its centre to symbolize the full moon. The saltiness of the yolk balances well with the sweet filling in the mooncake.

Traditional mooncakes are decorated with the Chinese characters for longevity or harmony on top, along with the name of the bakery as well as additional imprints of a moon, a woman on the moon, flowers, or a rabbit for additional decoration.

Over the years, mooncakes have slowly evolved from a Chinese delicacy to something as common as any other cake. Adjusting to Westernized lifestyle many bakeries offer miniature mooncakes as well as a fat-free version. Some are made of yogurt, jelly and fat-free ice cream. To be competitive, bakers boast about how little sugar and oil they use. Customers can pick and choose the size and filling that suits their taste and diet. However, the traditional bean-paste filling with egg yolk mooncake is still very popular. According to an analysis a baked mooncake with four egg yolks contains some 975 calories and 46 grams of sugar which is half the recommended daily calorie intake for an adult .

However, the launch of a champagne truffle snow-skin mooncake in 1994 by a Singapore hotel triggered a wave of modern mooncakes and ended in a Black Forest Cherry Mooncake.

Which reminds me, I must go as I have an important errand to run before the Black Forest Cherry Mooncakes are all sold out!

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. 

.

 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.

Washington to Sydney Australia via….. Al-Asad, Iraq on Air Force One

It was supposed to be a quiet weekend in Washington before next week’s scheduled trip to the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation) meeting in Australia with U.S. President Bush.  I had just put on my mountain biking shoes, ready to clip into the pedals for a ride around the forest near Andrews Air Force base outside Washington, when I got THE CALL. It was a White House staffer, asking that we meet in three hours at a secret location known only to Reuters correspondent Matt Spetalnick and I, where we were to be told details of a special secret visit by U.S. President Bush to Iraq. All
14 of the travelling press pool (writers, TV crew and photographers) had taken part in their own secret rendevous and were now sworn to absolute secrecy, packing sunscreen for the 100+ degree heat of a destination “somewhere in Iraq”. An important report on the status of U.S. troops in Iraq was about to be released to Congress so the trip could not be more timely for President Bush.

Upon arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, just south of Washington on Sunday afternoon, the pool were relieved of all communication devices by the secret service. Notebook computers, cameras, and other recording devices were taken away to deny us the tempation to blow the lid on this secret, unannounced trip. As we rode in an unmarked van into the cavernous hanger where Air Force One is meticulously maintained, I couldn’t help feeling as if we were in an espionage movie.

Up the backsatirs of Airforce One we went as Air Force technicians and crew prepared for the 12 hour flight behind closed hangar doors. None of us had felt quite so ’naked’ before, equipped with nothing more than the clothes on our backs. All the window shades were drawn adding to the eerie mood - this was not just another daytrip to Ohio!

We were renunited with our equipment some way into the flight, 35,000 feet up and out of mobile phone range! Normally, the three travelling “pool” photographers representing Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France Press and a magazine photographer from either Newsweek or Time each carry 2-3 cameras with various lens ranging from 16mm to 300mm as well as laptop computers with aircards that allow us to transmit a picture from almost any location are essential and on foreign trips, a small wheely case with clothes and toiletries.

Corralled into the press cabin with no view of the outside world, we could not even confirm that President Bush was on the plane until we were in the air, with “wheels up” at 8.05pm Washington time. It was rumoured that the President had left the White House in just one solitary vehicle, normally it’s the Marine One helicopter but I suppose that would have drawn too much attention.

Flying through the night, most of the writers began crafting the opening lines of their stories that were to alert the world that President Bush had arrived in Iraq for just the third time during his presidency. As we hit the ground at Al Asad Airbase in Anbar Province at 3.45pm local time, there were no wireless communications in the Iraqi desert so our mobile phones were useless to call in the urgent newsbreak. It was to be a phone in the press cabin, hard wired into Air Force One and connected via satellite, that news first got out from Reuters that the President had touched down in Iraq. We could only wonder what the folks aboard the press charter, a planeload of White House correspondents bound for the APEC meeting in Sydney, were thinking when they touched down to refuel in Hawaii and had their blackberries ringing with the news that Bush had just landed in Iraq, clear over the other side of the world!

As we left the plane the blazing heat of the Anbar province’s desert air blasted at us like that of an opened kitchen oven door. At the bottom of the stairs where Bush was about to step onto Iraqi soil were almost the entire U.S. military leadership in Iraq lined up at the bottom of the aircraft steps as though they were at a red carpet film premiere.
Once President Bush was off the plane, it was handshakes all round for the benefit of the cameras, setting off a six hour marathon of photo opportunities between Bush and U.S. marines, Bush and top members of Iraq’s cabinet, local tribal leaders and finally a rally for the troops which drew visual parallels to a U.S.-style election campaign event.

 If running around the in Iraqi desert chasing the “leader of the free world” was not enough to get your blood flowing, feeding the insatiable appetite of our newspaper, magazine and online clients really piles on the pressure and is always in the back of your mind. Competing directly with other photographers trying to put themselves on the world’s front pages, it now becomes a race against the clock, where seconds count.

I learned a long time ago that any photographer can have great pictures from a news event but if you can’t get ‘em out to the world, you might as well have stayed at home. So after the first pictures are in the bag, it becomes a logistical game. You calculate that you have a five minute drive from one event site to the next, so you reckon that should give you enough time to load what you have already shot onto your computer, sort the top images (the transmits) from the rest of your pictures, crop and tone the transmits in photoshop, add a caption to each image (free of spelling errors, of course!) and queue them up on FTP software - all for the moment when you arrive in a dingy, dusty room in the middle of the Iraqi desert to find the holy grail for a photographer on a deadline - a high speed ethernet line! On the road with the White House, if you are not shooting pictures, you are editing and transmitting. If you are not shooting, editing or transmitting, you agonise whether to eat something or hit the bathroom - often you don’t have time to do both. Today, for the six hours we were on the ground in Iraq, there was no time for either.

So next stop Sydney, bring on APEC, but first would someone please feed me and show me to the nearest bathroom!

 Jason Reed is Senior Photographer based in Washington