As I’ve said before, for me the best kind of news photography is down and dirty when the photographer has only seconds to react and has to depend on intelligence, skill,  instinct and sheer luck. Some times it all comes to nothing but it is amazing how often the same photographers come up trumps.

Anyone who has ever waited with the rest of the media pack outside the precincts of a court building hoping to photograph litigants arriving or departing by car knows how difficult it can be.  The chances of shooting clear images are stacked against you; TV lights, strobes, tinted windows, police and security running interference, colleagues/competitors blocking your shot, rain and the struggle to overcome all of these factors without spilling your coffee make good car shots a rare commodity.

But I love ‘em. When they work they can produce gloriously telling, candid images like this set from London photographer Toby Melville of Sir Paul McCartney and estranged wife Heather on their way into court and out again having failed to reach agreement in their acrimonious divorce proceedings.

Studio portraits they are not, maybe not even tack sharp but all the more powerful and evocative for it. 

Having been in Singapore for three months now, my wife and I recently joined the German Association a meeting point for some of the more than 5,000 Germans living and working in Singapore. The club was founded 1856 and is one of the oldest foreign clubs in town. Beside guided tours through various interesting areas of Singapore like Chinatown or Little India, there are coffee mornings, inline skating and Doppelkopf events (next to Skat probably the best known card game in Germany). The club also offers the preparatory classes required for those who wish to change an existing, valid international driving license to a Singaporean licence. Personally I see no reason for an extra test but it is mandatory for all foreigners and I will let you know when I pass it.

Last Friday the club organized an evening out to celebrate the ultimate event for fans of beer and group jollity: the Oktoberfest. Traditionally, Oktoberfest takes place during the 16 days up to and including the first Sunday in October. This year, the ‘real’ festival started in Munich on September 22. In Singapore Oktoberfest only runs from October 3 to October 9, although the city has plenty of places where thirsty people can meet at “belated” beer-festivals.

Our destination was the Paulaner Brauhaus, established in 1999, and located at the Millenia Walk – opposite Suntec in the city centre. This microbrewery offers freshly-brewed beer and traditional Bavarian cuisine. Beside the bar on the ground level it has a restaurant on level two with a traditional Maibaum (Maypole) in the middle of the room. Brew meister Alex makes two signature beers; Munich Lager - a bright, golden brew with a smooth taste and 4.7% alcohol and a Munich Dark which contains 4.8% alcohol with a full body, intense malt flavour and a deep dark colour. Additionally customers can get special seasonal brews like Salvator beer (in March), Maibock beer (in May) as well as the world-famous Oktoberfest beer. All the beers are brewed according to “The German Law of Purity” using only 4 natural ingredients; water, hops, malt and yeast. There are no chemicals or artificial enzymes added – and the only beer sold is freshly brewed in the onsite microbrewery.

Once our group arrived in the restaurant the first half litre Oktoberfest beer arrived ….. hmmmmm what a great taste. The waitress – definitely not Bavarian – was handing out the “Oktoberfest Dinner Menu”. We really enjoy the Asian food here and the more spice the better, but after three months my body was crying out for a real portion of meat. The menu was reassuringly familiar and wonderful - Wurstsalat (sliced Regensburger sausage), Leberknoedelsuppe (liver dumpling in clear soup), my favourite Schweinshaxe (grilled pork knuckle with sauerkraut and bread dumpling) – and Wiener schnitzel (breaded veal schnitzel and steamed asparagus and potatoes). Decidedly not for vegetarians …. but just the job for Bavarians and beer drinkers and there are many of both here in Singapore. 

My wife went for the Schnitzel and I ordered Haxn (knuckle). Seasoned drinkers already know this, but for novices I will repeat the one simple rule of Oktoberfest - “eat properly before you start drinking the beer”. With the right ‘preparation’ you can have one or two beers more …. if you can afford it - half a litre of beer costs 16.90 SG$, which is around 8 Euros. I am reliably informed that the average cost in Munich was this year between 7 and 8 Euro per litre!

As the evening progressed we learned that most of the other expats at the table were from southern Germany and familiar with Oktoberfest and Schweinshaxe. So it was no wonder they were completely at home when the Munich based “Scharivari Sextett” from Munich started with their oomph-pa-pa music . It felt just Oktoberfest in Munich – the food, the beer and the toasting “Oans, zwoa, drei – gsuffa” which means “one, two, three – toast and drink”. After each song and “Oans, zwoa, drei – gsuffa”, drinking a mouthful of beer lifts everyone’s spirits higher. The packed restaurant (half Germans and half Singaporeans) was turned into a Bavarian beer tent by the music and the toasting. Prost! is easy to understand and pronounce in most languages. Many guests were inspired to dance and some even attempted to join the band.

What a great atmosphere. Up to this point the Singaporeans I had met had been reserved and quiet but this was very different. It was ”Oans, zwoa, drei – gsuffa” PROST, until  early Saturday morning. Thank goodness I had swapped my early shift for a later one.  That reminds me not to forget the planning for Maibock beer days off ….  the brauhaus sells 30 litres kegs for home consumption. Break out the BBQ.
 

Het Algemeen Dagblad, the second largest newspaper in The Netherlands has a regular section in which they comment on a picture, old/historic or new/spot.

The text is usually divided into five segments with varying headings to suit the picture.

This time it’s Who, What, Where, Art and Winner. 

The headline shouts, “ THE ART OF ATTACKING”.

Who : Good question. According to the real experts these are the female fencers Ilaria Salvatori (left) and her compatriot and multiple World and Olympic Champion Valentina Vezzali.

What: The fencers are seen during their World Fencing Championships Quarter Final Match.

Where: The World Championships that will last until Sunday and are held in St Petersburg, Russia.

Art: Yes FOR SURE. Fencing is considered  an art, it is known as the “art of defending and attacking” and this picture underlines it.

Winner: As expected the champion Vezzali won this duel. But for us the man on the other side of the lens, photographer Alexander Demianchuk is THE WINNER!!!!

 A fantastically nice and touching way to see one of your pictures used isn’t it…?

Reproduced by kind permission AD
 

Photographers, like magpies seem to be attracted by anything shiny. Reflections in sunglasses, puddles, tables and highly polished automobiles are all regularly used in an effort to portray people or events in more interesting ways. Far more pictures are attempted than are successfully achieved and few of those are more succesful than this example by Damir Sagolj.

In Damir’s cleverly composed picture a rose lies on the bonnet of the hearse carrying the coffin of the late Milan Jelic, president of Bosnia’s Serb Republic, during his funeral.

The rose transects the diagonal division between the clean dark background and the reflected sky. Around the rose the faces of a group of mourners are reflected in the paintwork, crucially their expressions are too indistinct to distract attention away from the flower, they are the supporting cast to this single white rose.

It is a beautiful, sombre image which eloquently conveys the sadness and pomp of the occasion.

This picture from Barnaul in Siberia by Andrey Kaspishin was mentioned in the last blog but warrants a second look if only for its curiosity value. 

In it we see two babies; the one on the left an enormous howling child which the caption tells us is called Nadia, born to mother of 12, Tatyana Barabanova at the astonishing weight of 7.75 kilos (17.1lbs).  The one on the right, is a much smaller infant apparently staring intently at its neighbour. 

Of course it is highly improbable that a newborn would be focusing on very much at all, although I suppose its attention may have been drawn by the sheer volume of sound emanating from the robust Nadia, but it is hard to escape the impression that the poor kid is not unreasonably alarmed by the proximity of something that big and hungry.

After testing numerous Mooncakes I have come to the conclusion that most are delicious. The Black Forest Cherry Mooncake is a cracker, but I actually prefer the “original” style. Despite the immense number of calories I have consumed the process of sampling  mooncakes all over the place has been very enjoyable, particularly since my colleagues have taken to ensuring there are always fresh mooncakes around when I arrive at the office.

This week’s Tuesday afternoonshift was very busy with the top story being the protests in Myanmar (see previous blogs).  In addition to hard news pictures, the Singapore desk sees many other interesting images from around the world – sometimes just nice to look at, sometimes real eye-catchers.

Here are a few from that afternoon shift.

1. Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband listens to speeches during the annual Labour Party conference by Dylan Martinez, proving that although party conferences may be boring there is no reason why the pictures need to be. 

2. In the Siberian city of Barnaul, Andrey Kasprishin pictures an enormous baby girl Nadia (L), who weighed 7.75 kg (17.1 lbs) at birth.

3. With his image from the FIFA Women’s World Cup in China of an excited Anja Mittag talking on the on the telephone after Germany beat Norway, Alfred Cheng Jin shows us that a good soccer picture does not always need a ball in it. 

4. Max Rossi’s impression of the Roberto Cavalli Spring/Summer 2008 women’s collection from Milan is pure eye candy.

By the handover to the next shift at 2300 our team of Avantika, Deurborn, Janice, Kirk, Shilpa, Stanley and Yuen Hua had edited and moved more than 500 pictures to clients worldwide – a busy shift.

The following morning with those Mooncake calories in mind and needing to wind-down a little, I set off for the gym. As I was about to leave the apartment I became aware of a loud noise close by. I’d heard the noise in the distance before and sometimes noticed a wisp of smoke without paying much attention to it but at this range it was impossible to ignore. The noise became steadily louder, then out of a cloud of smoke a figure in a yellow mask appeared - I was face-to-face with the ExTerminator! He was walking from house to house, wreathed in billowing white clouds equipped with his portable “fogger” generating huge quantities of smoke and leaving behind a stink like diesel exhaust.

Once back in the office I learned from colleagues that in Singapore this kind of encounter is a regular occurrence. These ‘fog men’ are an essential aspect of life in residential areas, where their weekly visits help eliminate disease-carrying mosquitos in an attempt to control Dengue fever.

From the internet I learned that Dengue fever is transmitted to humans by the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Aedes aegypti, commonly known as the yellow fever mosquito, can host the dengue fever, Chikungunya and yellow fever viruses - and other diseases as well. The virus can cause flu-like symptoms of fever, severe headache, joint and muscular pains, vomiting, diarrhoea and rashes. There is no commercially avaialable vaccine for dengue.

Unlike malaria-transmitting mosquitoes that stick to rural areas and swampy waters, it prefers clean and fresh water. It breeds largely indoors, needing only tiny pools of water to lay its eggs. Under optimal conditions, the egg of an Aedes mosquito can hatch into a larva in less than a day. The larva then takes about four days to develop into a pupa, from which an adult mosquito will emerge after two days. Three days after the mosquito has bitten a person and taken in blood, it will lay eggs, and the cycle begins again.

In 2005, there were more than 13,000 cases of Dengue fever cases in Singapore from which 19 people died. The outbreak peaked in September and October, when it caused hospitals to cancel some surgery due to the need to allocate more beds for dengue patients. Singapore responded with public awareness campains and regular “fogging”.

Beside a lot of noise and smoke it made some interesting pictures of an aspect of life in Singapore of which I had been completely unaware and will hopefully have been of interest to Reuters readers elsewhere. 

One thing is certain, like the exTerminator, I’ll be back.