People duck as gunshots are fired from inside the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008. REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe

Indian commandos take positions outside “Nariman House”, where armed militants are believed to be holed up in Mumbai November 27, 2008. REUTERS/Arko Datta

An employee (C) of the Taj Hotel (seen in the background) comforts foreign guests in Mumbai November 27, 2008. REUTERS/Arko Datta

Police escort a stranded guest from Taj hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008. REUTERS/Arko Datta

A policeman gives water to an injured child at a hospital in Mumbai November 26, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer

A policeman walks with an elderly man after shootings by unidentified assailants at a railway station in Mumbai November 26, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer

Pigeons fly near the burning Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008. REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe

KSC Photo Blog from Scott Audette on Vimeo.

Reuters photographer Scott Audette documents the Reuters crew braving alligators and snakes and long hot days as they prepare for the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Photographers moan: boy do they moan! Indeed a regular conversation between myself and colleagues whilst chewing the fat on another wet dark doorstep around Downing Street in London is what the most appropriate term for a collective of news/sports photographers should be. And a ‘moan’ or ‘grumble’ is often the most popular choice as a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for the ‘pack’.

We complain about our cameras, our laptops, our internet connections, our computer software, our hours of work, our assignments. We complain about our pay, politicians, press officers, security, traffic, our bosses, our colleagues, our allotted photo positions, and backgrounds in pictures. And we complain about the weather – the stereotype about Brits really is true! Too sunny, too wet, too bright, too dark, too windy, not windy enough…any excuse for a picture that was ALMOST there, but not quite…

However, whilst always somehow feeling relatively new to the job (not sure why, as I ‘officially’ started my career fifteen years ago at the not-so-tender age of 23 in regional newspapers in Bristol in southwest England, certain that I was following the right path after ‘dropping-out’ as a university undergraduate), rarely does a day pass when at some point do I think I am still in the best career in the world.

Where else can you access and shoot the best sporting events in the world? Where else can you get an insight to government machinations and cover the biggest political changes and upheavals in the world, shoot seismic shifts in the environment and similar seismic shifts in the global economic infrastructure? How many other careers allow access into an operating theatre to photograph emergency heart surgery on a child one day and on the next to dealers manically flailing arms on a City trading room floor, whilst also being able to get to go and shoot an athlete pushing human physical limits to the extreme in an Olympic final in Sydney, Athens, Beijing - and maybe a run–down area of the East End of London next?!

So next time I hear a photographer grumble about shooting yet another sign of a bank or brand logo suffering in this financial downturn, I will thank someone that it isn’t me working for that company going bust. I will thank someone that I am not cooped up in an office all day long. And I will be happy being the proverbial ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ wire-agency photo-journalist. I will remind myself of the far more hostile environments of war, conflict, disease and environmental catastrophe that some of my colleagues have to operate in to get a great picture in ‘their patch’. I’m not sure if the job has made me any wiser, but nevertheless I will thank someone that I am privileged to be paid to be seeing and reporting on small vignettes and episodes of what goes on around us every day…

To view a portfolio of Toby’s work click here

Reuters Boston staff photographer Brian Snyder traveled with Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain through election day. He and his colleague Jason Reed who traveled with the Obama campaign posted daily blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage. Brian’s final blog entry on covering the McCain campaign follows.

I don’t think it can be said that Senator John McCain’s loss of the U.S. presidency to Barack Obama was for lack of trying. Senator McCain campaigned hard in the final two days before the election.  On November 2 and November 3 we went to 11 rallies, in 9 different states, and worked 45 out of 48 hours.  We flew more than 4,000 miles over those two days. At each rally I shot a picture from the same spot in the buffer in front of the stage.  What you see in this combination of pictures are those images, one from each of the 11 rallies.  The covers of our schedules are at the end of the sequence.  While in the end past decisions and this unique moment in history may have stopped Senator McCain from becoming president, he certainly gave it one final, strong push.

 Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed has been traveling with the campaign of Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama. He and his colleague Brian Snyder traveling with the McCain campaign have been posting daily photographers blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

In the past year and a half I have been priviledged to have a front row seat to American political history - on a personal journey as a Reuters photographer on the road to the White House with Barack Obama.
 
In the first 24 hours that we have all had a chance to absorb the historic election of Democratic Senator Barack Obama to become the 44th president of the United States, I have finally had time to catch my breath after an incredible 21-month journey photographing his unlikely rise on the political world stage, alongside my Reuters photographer colleagues. From the very earliest beginnings of his campaign, at his announcement speech on those frozen steps of the State House in Springfield, Illinois to the grand stage in Chicago’s Grant Park where he delivered his victory speech last night, I feel incredibly privileged to have gone along for the ride and witnessed one of the great ascensions to the U.S. presidency in history.
 

 
Of all of those who aspired to the highest office in the land, from the early days when we chased many Republican and Democratic candidates from coffee shop photo-ops to town halls across the state of Iowa, it always seemed to me as a photographer that it was Barack Obama who stood out from the crowd. This was not at all just because of the color of his skin, although the press has made much of his race as the first African-American candidate to go all the way to the White House. When I was taking pictures, it was in observing his quiet grace, the way he engages people from all walks of life and of course his famous ability to crystallize into words the hopes and aspirations of millions through his campaign for ‘change’. The reactions he evokes from his followers and supporters are like no other recent candidate’s I have seen. I have tried to convey this through my pictures on the wire.

On the eve of the election on Monday night, the very day that he had just lost his grandmother to cancer and on the back of his final grueling campaign push through Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in one day, Senator Obama walked to the back of his plane en route to Chicago and personally thanked every one his staff and then the independent traveling press corps for their hard work during the collectively long journey to election day. I thought that showed a lot of character and class. The long, arduous road to Washington appeared to have taken its toll on Obama himself just an hour before our encounter with him on the flight, as he showed a rare display of emotion and broke down in a few tears as he mentioned the death of his grandmother while addressing one of his final campaign rallies. 

 
We have made many classic images of Obama at campaign rallies which, with the help of the campaign prop department and lots of red, white and blue flags, show Obama looking presidential as he speaks at the podium.

But among my favorite pictures are those that show the human side of the story, the faces of the people who waited up to six or seven hours to watch Obama walk onto the stage and chart a path for the country over the next four years. Often, I would come across people from all walks of life who appeared mesmerized by Obama’s words as he addressed rallies, spoke in Union Halls and bumped into people on the street.

 
It has been once-in-a-lifetime experience documenting the presidential campaign of Senator Obama, but while it’s easy to think that the road to the White House has been covered and it’s all over, the focus is now on the coming transition period until he is sworn-in to office on January 20, 2009 and then the critical first 100 days of his new administration. The American people and the world will be waiting to see how or if Obama can start delivering the change that they put him into office to create. He now has to prove that he can live up to the lofty expectations of an American public weary of a floundering economy, a war in two countries and other political strife. Reuters photographers will be there every step of the way to record the key moments as history continues to unfold before our eyes and our cameras.

Reuters Boston staff photographer Brian Snyder is traveling with Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain through election day. He and his colleague Jason Reed traveling with the Obama campaign have been posting daily blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

In my past campaign coverage experience U.S. presidential candidates do not often continue to campaign on election day. Instead they do a long series of satellite interviews with local television and radio stations in battleground states. But, after a seven state, 24-hour day of campaigning, Senator John McCain dropped off his ballot at his local polling place and headed back out on the campaign trail with a flight to Grand Junction, Colorado for a campaign rally, the final rally of what has been a long presidential campaign. Senator and Mrs. McCain climbed the steps to their campaign plane after that final rally, turned, and waved to the crowd gathered below for a final time as the McCain 2008 presidential campaign wound down. Hours later McCain would call Senator Barack Obama to concede defeat and congratulate the new president-elect.

Reuters Boston staff photographer Brian Snyder is traveling with Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain through election day November 4. He and his colleague Jason Reed traveling with the Obama campaign are posting daily blog entries on the Reuters photographers blog sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

The final day of campaigning before election day and we are scheduled to have rallies in 7 different states: Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona.  Most of the rallies are airport rallies which means the campaign plane lands and taxis up to a hangar that has been set up for a rally.  This saves a lot of time since there is no motorcading. Visually, several of the rallies have been inside the hangar, with the open side of the building serving as one of the backgrounds, making silhouettes a natural way to photograph them (top image).  When Senator and Mrs. McCain took the sage in Blountville, Tennessee, they were silhouetted against the open side of the hangar, waving to the crowd on opposite sides of the stage (bottom image).

Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed is traveling with Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama through election day November 4. He and his colleague Brian Snyder traveling with the McCain campaign are posting daily photographers blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

When people ask me what its like to cover a presidential election campaign, traveling with Democratic nominee Barack Obama over the past months, my standard reply is it’s like going to three or four rock music concerts a day, every day, for weeks on end. The adrenalin rush you get from the thousands of excited supporters in the crowd is infectious, even after a 14 hour day on the road and you are suffering a nasty case of severe sleep deprivation.

The rock concert analogy played out more literally on Sunday, as American popular music legend Bruce Springsteen headlined for Obama at a campaign rally in Cleveland, Ohio. Throwing his support behind the democratic nominee, Springsteen fired up the crowd with some of his songs, most with a political flavor, ending his set with a spoken political speech accompanied to the strumming of his guitar.

In a few carefully chosen words, Springsteen summed up the historical significance of Obama’s campaign, and its unusual path from community organizer in Chicago, to a state senator, to U.S. senator, to possibly the next U.S. President.

Springsteen’s message drew a lot of emotion in the crowd, crystallizing the hopes and dreams of thousands who have followed Obama’s path in this election campaign which began an incredibly long 21 months ago, where he announced his candidacy for president in February last year.

The mini Springsteen concert was one of the more memorable rallies that I have covered in all the months that we have been on the road and it was great to get a front row seat to the spectacle. With one day until the U.S. presidential election, the excitement is infectious.

Reuters Boston staff photographer Brian Snyder is traveling with Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain through election day November 4. He and his colleague Jason Reed traveling with the Obama campaign are posting daily blog entries on the Reuters photographers blog sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

One of the first town hall meetings that Senator McCain ever held in New Hampshire at the start of his failed presidential nomination bid in the year 2000 was in the town of Peterborough. He returned there as the 2008 Republican presidential nominee with less than two days to go before the 2008 general election. The overflow crowd of thousands of people stood outside to listen to the Senator speak on a cold, damp New England night in the center of Peterborough. Senator McCain climbed onto a small stage to thank the small town New Hampshire crowd for their enthusiasm and support.

Reuters Washington staff photographer Jason Reed is traveling with Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama through election day November 4. He and his colleague Brian Snyder traveling with the McCain campaign are posting daily photographers blog entries sharing their experiences and favorite pictures of the day from their campaign coverage.

Following an election rally in the small town of Pueblo, Colorado Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took his family for a meal at Jorge’s Sombrero, a Mexican restaurant in the quaint desert town. Accompanying the Illinois Senator were a gaggle of dozens of traveling press, who managed to squeeze their way between the tables of diners, who I am sure had not expected their own meals to be interrupted by a sudden horde of tv cameras and correspondents charging in among the waitresses.

Obama, who it appears may be getting a little tired of the intense media attention that now follows his every move, this time played nicely for the cameras, following the previous day’s incident where he appeared to run from the press on his way to a Halloween party in his Chicago neighborhood (previous blog entry). As eight traveling photographers managed to shoehorn their way into the four person booth opposite that of the Obama’s, I thought this is appeared to be about as natural a scene as it can get, considering the popularity of the subject matter and the sheer number of press in that room.