It was an early wake up call for Barack Obama’s inauguration day, and I was assigned to photograph the enormous crowds on the National Mall in Washington. I left the office with New York City based photographer Shannon Stapleton, only to find out the crowds of people would prevent us from entering the National Mall. Even without media accreditation the amount of people trying to gain access to the National Mall became a giant obstacle.

After trying to gain access at all of the entrance points we realized that it may not be possible to get in and do our jobs. Stress levels quickly rose as we realized that our assignment would not be easy, or even possible. We were stuck in the streets with impatient crowds with all of our gear and computers strapped to our shoulders.

Shannon had heard rumors of an entrance at 3rd st while we were waiting in line at the 7th st entrance. We decided to split up, hoping that at least one of us would get in. Around 10 am, I got a phone call from Shannon and learned he had gained access. I quickly ran down to the 3rd st entrance, only to find out it was too late, the line up was too long.

It was 10:30 am, I knew I had about an hour as the swearing in ceremony was set to start around 11:30. I heard a rumor that they were letting people in at 18th st and I figured that was my last hope. Knowing it would be at least a 45 minute walk to 18th st, I hired a bike rickshaw driver with another photographer working for Polaris photo agency and made it to 18th street.

I made it just in time for Obama’s speech where people were gathered in front of the Washington Monument watching the speech on large video screens. The people were joyous in smiles and tears and the pictures were plentiful. Luckily the speech ran for about 20 minutes and I was able to do my job and come away with some pictures I am proud of.

When Ingolfur Juliusson's first pictures of the riots in Iceland came in to Your View we had no pictures by Reuters photographers or stringers on our professional picture wire. Seeing this and the quality of the images, I sent them along to our chief photographer of the region. In cases where we use citizen journalists pictures on our professional wire it is usually the chief photographer who negotiates usage and payment for the photographer. As our chief photographer was out of the office and knowing that Europe was on deadline for these pictures, I contacted Ingolfur directly and negotiated a payment for 5 pictures.

The selection was quickly moved on the wire and it wasn't long before we saw some online play.

This screenshot is from http://www.dn.se/

A number of Your View contributors have had their pictures moved on the Reuters Pictures wire.

Click here to view a slideshow and click here to view this week's showcase.

As I take my last pictures of George W. Bush as President just days before Barack Obama’s inauguration, I reflect on what it was like to cover the 43rd President of the United States for the past six years.

I would characterize President Bush as a person of single-minded determination, a man guided by a moral compass to protect the nation, all the while bringing a style of Texas swagger into the oval office. We shared a passion of mountain biking and on several occasions I was fortunate enough to ride on his ranch in Texas where, away from the prying eyes of the press, I witnessed a man who loved the sport, always rode fast at the front of the pack and showed genuine interest in those around him.

Two of my favorite pictures center around perhaps the most definitive legacy of  Bush’s presidency – the war in Iraq.

On an unannounced clandestine trip into the Iraqi desert province of Anbar in 2007, Bush is seen casting harsh shadows onto the desert sand made with dramatic side lighting in front of two humvees. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates appear to symbolically follow Bush into the desert night, both as second-term appointees following the controversial departure of Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld.

Another image that I think defines the man as commander-in-chief is this simple composition of Bush looking very presidential among heavily-armed soldiers during his visit to Fort Irwin in the Californian desert in 2007.

It was rare for Bush to let his guard down in public but if you follow one of the most photographed people on earth long enough, it’s just a matter of time before an unguarded moment presents itself and you have to be ready to capture it. Bush’s goofy facial expression as he strains to open a locked door following a press conference in Beijing was a fleeting moment that I wasn’t even aware had happened until I looked at the back of the digital camera moments later. At the time I got a lot of grief from Bush’s press staff for putting it on the wire as they tried to protect ‘the honor of their president” but it occurred in front of the world’s cameras so it was my duty to record the moment, which later was the fodder of late night talk shows everywhere. The man is only human.

Dancing with Senegalese performers in the Rose Garden of the White House during a cultural event was another rare instance when Bush let his guard down. After being encouraged to get up on stage, he proceeded to lead the group in a silly dance which he may or may not have regretted later, after seeing our pictures.

In photographing President Bush, I learnt to never drop the camera from my eye, because the very next moment could be one of those that will define his presidency for all of history.

Bush has faced many battles in his tenure. Record low approval ratings, a failing economy, the September 11 attacks, a war with no near end in sight, and for the last year, most of the world was looking more to his successor, than to the sitting President himself.

But when I look back over my three years here in Washington, I come away with two impressions of the man in the office.

One impression is that of a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, an insurmountable burden. As from my first image of Bush, making the long, slow walk back to the Oval Office, head and hands hanging low.

In November 2007, Bush met with Lance Cpl. Isaac Gallegos during a visit to the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. He met with many of the soldiers, visibly scarred and injured from the war under his presidency. Although he seemed very confident in his actions, you could not help but feel that it was a hard eight years as the 43rd President.

The other impression is the playfulness of the man. Fun-loving silliness. The next two images come from the same day on a presidential trip to Africa in February 2008. It was probably the most fun I have seen the President have, and it gave me some of my favorite memories covering Bush. Joining a group of singing and dancing Massai Warriors during a stop at school in Arusha, Tanzania. He really seemed to be enjoying himself, surrounded by people who really were making every effort to make him feel loved and appreciated. He could have been anyone that day, just a guy wrapped up in the beautiful music, having a great time, and living in the moment.

The last photo came on a tour of a plant that manufactured mosquito netting. The girls were working underneath the mesh netting looking for holes and Bush surprised them by popping up underneath the netting to join them. The girls looked up to him in admiration and they appeared to sway in slow motion, like moving through water, calm, and for a brief moment he seemed happy and playful, like the kids themselves.

As his term comes to a close, one wonders what the future holds for him, and the affect he had on the world over the last eight years. After spending months with President-elect Barack Obama on the campaign trail last year, I think we are all anxiously awaiting for him to be sworn in, and to turn a new page. I expect the next four years will certainly be interesting.
In the end, I come away with a greater understanding of Bush and respect for the office he holds, and not sure why anyone would want that job. But someone always steps in, and will continue to face the troubles of the world and maybe find a time to laugh and be happy, just like the rest of us.

Reuters Washington staff photographer Kevin Lamarque made the move to White House coverage in 1999. Before that, he was covering London politics spanning the end of Margaret Thatcher, the John Major years, and the beginning of the Tony Blair era.  Washington proved to be an interesting contrast.  He has covered the final two years of the President Bill Clinton, and all eight years of President George W. Bush.

As one of only two Reuters photographers covering the entire eight years of President Bush’s term, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Unfortunately, most of his time was defined by the latter two.

Early days in Crawford, with both of us looking much younger.

From the beginning Bush seemed a most unlikely President. I have often used the metaphor of a schoolboy who has not studied for an exam showing up on test day. He seemed as surprised as anyone that he actually was in fact president. He gradually grew into the role, though it could be argued that it never was a good fit.

The attacks of 9/11 defined his term in office. For photographers, this meant an end to the lighter side of things. There would be few photos of a President at leisure. No more golf outings, very few cultural trips abroad which are traditionally image feasts for photographers.  Everything took on a very serious tone, and our photos were generally limited to men in suits looking very grave about what was going on in the world.

At Bush’s last G8 summit, looking very much alone in the world.

While things may not have gone smoothly in a political sense, George W. Bush was very likeable as a person. He still goofed around like the frat boy he was portrayed of being. He was very much a regular guy and could connect with the man on the street. That was his strength. And he really believed in what he was doing. There were times that it was hard not to feel sympathy for him, and also times where you could not help but laugh, sometimes with, sometimes at.

Pardoning the turkey at Thanksgiving, Nov 2001. After this photo, the turkey was never allowed such free rein.

Larry Downing is a Reuters senior staff photographer assigned to the White House. He shares that duty with three other staff photographers. He has lived in Washington since 1977 and has been assigned to cover the White House since 1978. He worked for United Press International and Newsweek Magazine before joining Reuters as a stringer in 1997 and then as staff in 1999.

As the final moments of President Bush’s administration wind down, I look forward to Barack Obama’s historic inauguration. Having grown up in America as a child of the 50’s, I found the odds impossible that he, or any other African American, would ever win the presidency in my lifetime.

Early on election day last November I drove with my wife from the suburbs in Northern Virginia to Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in the Anacostia district of Washington D.C. to watch as thousands of African Americans stood in line to cast their vote on a cold, raw morning. It was heartwarming to watch.

Obama will be the fifth president I’ve been assigned to photograph at the White House in the last 32 years. Each presidency was unique and enjoyable to document. I remember flying back and forth aboard Air Force One with President Carter while he brokered peace between Egypt and Israel in the late 70’s. I then documented his success on the North Lawn of the White House with a three-way handshake between Egypt’s Sadat, Israel’s Begin and Carter.

Less than two years later, the American Embassy in Iran was overrun and embassy personnel were paraded in the street in blindfolds. Carter barricaded himself in the deep bunkers of the White House and lost his bid for re-election.

In came Reagan and the era of feeling good.

I remember laughing out loud when President Reagan traveled to Berlin in 1987 and he stood next to the Berlin Wall, at The Brandenburg Gate, and under the watching eyes of East German guards declared that Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down” this wall!

President Bill Clinton was good for the news industry. How often can you cover an impeachment proceeding against a sitting president? He provided 8 years of learning to stay on high alert, anything could happen. The picture I’ve included was taken aboard Air Force One, right in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The movie playing aboard the aircraft was one of the Austin Powers movies.

President Bush’s eight years of office offered many unforgettable moments, some from very early on. Every political junkie in the world now knows the expression “hanging chad.” The usage of the expression “9/11” sums up tragedy, grief, and loss into three simple numbers. That day and his response may end up being the defining moment of his entire two terms as president. My picture of the Pentagon sums it up nicely.

President Bush has a tremendous sense of humor and demonstrates it often when the cameras are off. Occasionally, he would let himself go, if only for an instant, when they were on. I’ve included two pictures to demonstrate his humor. Both the umbrella picture, and the one with U.S. Olympic team members, happened at lightning speed. He is quick to seize a moment and go with it. News photographers must be ready to seize the moment too.

I’ve also included a picture that I really like of a cicada buzzing the president. Simple, but humorous. He appreciated that picture.

I like the Mount Rushmore picture for the same reason.

President Bush could be very gracious. Like his father, Bush learned the names of every news photographer assigned to the White House early on. To document Bush’s graciousness, look at the picture of the elderly woman seated next to him. A perfect stranger, Ruth Harris was seated in a chair along a motorcade route, with a sign next to her stating it was her 91st birthday. Bush stopped the vehicles, got out, then posed with her. They look like lifetime friends.

One of the most touching moments I experienced during my travels with Bush was when he secretly sneaked out of the United States, flew undetected, and landed in Baghdad to visit with U.S. military personnel on Thanksgiving evening. I was honored to be included on that super-secret Air Force One travel pool and I watched as he stepped out from behind a curtain and immediately warmed the hearts of hundreds of American GI’s waiting for their Thanksgiving dinner.

When I asked a young GI seated at a table if he knew who was coming out to speak he replied, “They told us the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are here.” God bless those innocent, young, GI’s stranded thousands of miles from home on perhaps their first BIG dinner away from mom and dad.

Bush walked out, and they went nuts.

I sat in their chair almost 40 years earlier as a young GI and It was the loneliest time of my life; I couldn’t help but tear up when Bush appeared.

Tuesday ends an era and brings in new change. The White House seems different today, more like the last day of school. All the seniors are ready to graduate and the new class of freshmen are moving in.

Fasten your seat belt because Tuesday starts a new semester.

Gary Hershorn is the Reuters News pictures editor for the Americas

It was another ordinary Thursday in the Thomson Reuters building in Times Square.

I was spending endless hours at my desk on the 19th floor, helping to work out the logistics for next week’s presidential inauguration and talking with photographer Eric Thayer.

The quiet was broken at about 3:30pm when a colleague yelled out to the newsroom: “There is an airplane in the water!”

Photographer Brendan McDermid and I jumped up and ran twenty feet to the window and saw a plane floating in the water, with some people on the wings. Eric grabbed his cameras and laptop and ran to the river. Someone ran into a training course and notified photographer Mike Segar about the crash; he also headed to the river. Chip East, who was at home, followed them to see what he could get.

Brendan had a camera on his desk and a 400mm lens on the floor. He grabbed them and started shooting. I had to dig into a drawer and find a camera, a battery and a compact flash card. I had a 500mm lens in a case under my desk.

By the time I got it all together and headed back to the window, the plane had drifted out of sight behind a water tower. Brendan ingested his disk into our remote photo editing system and ran out of the office to the river. I stood at the window and within a couple minutes the plane drifted back into view, just as a ferry arrived on the scene. While this was happening, photo editors in Washington started to edit Brendan’s pictures.

While looking at the plane I was shouting out info to the journalists who were writing the story: “It’s a big plane, looks like a US Airways plane I think, lots of people on the wings.”

It took about a minute for the plane to drift behind a building. I only shot about 30 frames before it disappeared from sight again. At that point I ingested the images, made a selection, blew one up huge to confirm it was a US Airways plane and sent the first picture to our picture desk in Singapore for transmission to the wire.

Within minutes it seemed Brendan was back in front of me with pictures from ground level. He was able to shoot some pictures of passengers and grabbed a pedicab to take him back to Times Sq. His pictures kept the flow of fresh images flowing.

Eric Thayer arrived at the river and saw a group of firemen running to a big ferry boat. He asked if he could go aboard and was told yes, as long as he stayed out of the way. Eric was able to get up close to the plane and take some of the most dramatic photos of the day, of passengers in life rafts waiting to be rescued.

Eric was able to send a few pictures from the boat, on the river, thankfully having taken his laptop with him.

“The passengers looked scared, and fatigued. It was pretty cold, and many of them weren’t wearing coats, since most of their jackets were probably underwater in the overhead bins,” he said.

Once Eric was back on shore he ingested his pictures into our editing system using a wireless connection and I transmitted while sitting in the office.

Mike Segar walked along the river staying with the plane as it drifted farther and farther south. Chip East did the same, stopping to file some quick pictures.

Just as the stars aligned — a plane crash without loss of a single life — our coverage all fell into place with the extreme good fortune of us being able to see the plane from our newsroom window, and Eric arriving at the river just as rescue crews were loading onto a boat. Images were sent to the world within minutes of the plane hitting the water.

You can’t plan for a plane crash like you can for the inauguration of a president. Everything is based on luck and quick decisions. Thursday it all fell into place for us.

Looking at the pictures in newspapers on Friday morning,  three of our photos got major play:

• one by Brendan McDermid of the plane in the water with passengers standing on the wings,
• one by Gary Hershorn of a ferry pulling up next to the plane
• one by Eric Thayer of passengers sitting in a life raft looking at a diver

It was a complete team effort to get those images to the world.

Shepard Fairey’s posters of Barack Obama became the iconic image of a historic campaign. After a bit of digging by a photographer and a blogger, it turns out that Fairey’s source material was a photo by Reuters’ veteran photographer Jim Young.

UPDATE, Jan 21: Or perhaps not. A flurry of online interest has resulted in the discovery of another photo from the Associated Press that may be a better match. Read about it at the blog run by Tom Gralish of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has covered this story extensively.

Our original blog post continues below.

Blogger Michael Cramer created the composite photo above after sifting through countless images to find a match. The poster has Obama facing the opposite direction; Cramer flipped it to correspond with the original source photo.

Young, who took many thousands of photos of Obama on the campaign trail, was pleasantly surprised when told of his contribution to the iconic image. The original picture was taken in 2007 during a Senate confirmation hearing.

“I saw that poster all over the place, all year. For a lot of people it symbolized the campaign. It meant so much to so many people,” Young told Philadelphia Inquirer photographer and blogger Tom Gralish, who has led the search for the photo.

“I’m honored, but I’m glad it didn’t come out until after the campaign,” Jim added. “I think even if I had known it was mine, I would have kept quiet. It would be just my little secret.”

Ironically, Young unknowingly took several pictures of the poster on the campaign trail, including one through a window when it was flipped to match the orientation of his original photo.

Fairey, an artist who first came to fame for an altered picture of wrestler Andre the Giant, has said in interviews that he found the Obama source photo using Google Image Search and then “did his thing to it.” His “Hope” poster is now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

“You’d think a whole bunch of photographers would step forward,” said Gralish in his blog post. He compared it to the Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photograph of a V-J Day kiss in Times Square, which has spurred dozens of people to come forward over the years, claiming to be the kissers in the picture.

More on the Fairey/Young image:

Washington Post graphic about how Fairey created the poster

Time magazine video on Fairey and the Obama poster

Make your own “Obamicon” poster

Do you remember the days of black and white film?
Life before digital and the preview screen?
How about shooting one frame per minute?

I have made several trips with U.S. President George W. Bush to his ranch in Crawford, Texas over the last couple of years.

Crawford is a small, sleepy town, population 705, a place where time has seemed to have passed them by. There are no hotels, one small flashing traffic light, and definitely not a Starbucks to be found.

A Holga is a $25 toy, plastic, medium format rangefinder camera with one fixed exposure, and I have been using it for about 7 years. I brought some 120 Tri-x film on a visit when we had a couple days with no planned coverage of the President, just to kill some time and have some fun.
But I realized that a lot of the images that I was trying to make had more of a horizontal look than the traditional square 6×6 images produced by the Holga, and thought they might work better as “sprocket” pix. If you put 35mm film in a Holga, it will expose the entire negative, including the edges numbers and sprocket holes.  I thought it might be an interesting photo project to shoot some views of this town whose notoriety is home of the “Western White House” and the impact his presence would have on their town.
I wanted the images to have an old dusty, historical look to it. And with Bush nearing the end of his presidency, it might be interesting to make a picture package on the town that will probably slip back into its quiet world, probably losing its most famous resident when he retires down the road to Dallas.

Shooting with a Holga is a very patient process. The viewfinder is nowhere near the image you end up with, especially with sprocket photographs. The angle is much wider than it looks, having to correct for the parallax error, mentally blocking out the top and bottom thirds for the 35 mm film….ughhh, never mind, click! F/8 @ 1/100th second. Turn the winder knob 36 clicks, and you are ready for the next frame.
Sometimes that is the best thing to do with a Holga, just trip the shutter and move on. Don’t over analyze it.
It is after all… a toy camera!

But what I love about it is the simplicity of it all. Film, plastic lens, and a black box.  The basics of photography.  It’s not 10 fps, 15 second photo ops, or rocket science for that matter.
The anticipation of the film to come back from the lab days later, getting a loupe and seeing what happened. Isn’t what this is all about? A simple image from a moment in time. Trying to create something from nothing, and having some fun in the process.
If you don’t slow down every now and then, the world just might pass you by…..

Click here to view a slideshow of the images.

In the history of embeds, this one has been pretty unremarkable so far. I kicked things off in Dubai with an impulse purchase of a Canon 5D Mark II. Stills and video ! ASA 6400 ! 20 MB files ! It seemed like a great idea until I dropped it in the mud on a patrol. So much for the resale value.

After getting to Bagram Air Base, it took a while until I was able to test out the new gear. We had a four-day wait due to rain, which delayed or cancelled flights and gave me plenty of time to indulge in the ice cream bar at the dining hall.  On day five I got a late-night flight to Jalalabad, where I received a briefing about my embed area and made plans to get further north.  Finally, a week after my embed had officially begun, I took a 20 minute ride on a Chinook helicopter and arrived to Foward Operating Base Bostick, located in Kunar Province about 10 miles from the Pakistan border.

The view from the base is stunning. Snow capped mountains to the east mark the border with Pakistan, the Kunar River runs through the valley, and at night the stars in the Milky Way seem close enough to touch.  This being Christmas, there was a candle-lit church service in the chapel on the 24th, followed on Christmas Day by caroling and hot chocolate. The war seemed pretty far away.

Even though the base at Bostick hasn’t been attacked recently, the area isn’t exactly safe. The only road leading up the Kunar Valley is a dirt track, hardly big enough for a humvee in places, and during my stay two local trucks were stopped and burned, one driver was killed and another kidnapped.  Whether this was insurgent related or the work of criminal gangs wasn’t immediately known, but it did send a strong message to other drivers who were bringing goods into the valley.

The area of my embed extends from Bostick up to a couple of small combat outposts in Nuristan Province, and January 5th, after two weeks at FOB Bostick, I finally got the helicopter up to Combat Outpost Lowell. Lowell has the dubious honor of being one of the most heavily attacked US military bases in Afghanistan. It is located in a strategic position at the intersection of two valleys, and as such, is an important checkpoint for deterring insurgent movement north to south and east to west. It unfortunately also sits in a natural bowl, surrounded on all sides by tree covered hills, which make excellent cover for the local fighers to fire down from with their AK-47’s, RPG’s, mortars and so on.

Generally speaking, the further you get from headquarters, the more austere the living conditions become, and COP Lowell is no exception. The Afghan dust has turned into mud with recent rains, and the paths between buildings are a quagmire deep enough to ensure that nobody walks around with clean boots. The ice cream bar is gone, along with gatorade, Cokes and Red Bulls. No PX if you run out of cigarettes and no cable TV. But there’s no shortage of hospitality, and I’ve been given my own room complete with a heater and a desk. It could be much worse.

Journalists are no strangers to the soldiers of Apache Troop at Lowell. The New York Times was here in November and as the men have been telling me, at the time there was plenty of fighting.  They point out the bald spots on the surrounding hills where fighter jets dropped 500 pound bombs during firefights, the holes in the outhouse from a Dushka anti-aircraft machine gun, and mention the laundry boy who lost an arm when an RPG round came through the roof of a nearby building.

But this week it’s been quiet. So today we walked up to the nearby village of Kamu for a weekly meeting with the local shura, or tribal council. Captain Frank Hooker, Apache troop commander, along with members of the Afghan Army and US Marines, sat down with three men from the shura to discuss current issues and future projects. Sitting outside in a circle of chairs, the men talked in turn about local security, food shipments, construction projects and other topics. The atmosphere was cordial, and after tea was served, we all gathered together for a group photo and shook hands.

We walked back to the base and I went up to my room to file a few pictures.  As I started writing this story someone came running up the stairs shouting “contact” and all the soldiers rushed to their fighting positions. It turned out to be a false alarm, but I’m sure it won’t be the last time they get the call.