Hats off to Luis Vasconcelos for this powerful picture.

The caption says, “An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs. REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE (BRAZIL)”.

Images of heavy-handed oppression really don’t come much better than this - defenceless, screaming woman clutching naked child is shoved and beaten by faceless, armoured authority.

The symbols are reinforced by the strong composition. The woman and her child appear all the more vulnerable as the only elements of humanity and colour against the advancing wall of shields and boots.Such a potent image leaves very little room for any doubt. In such circumstances do we need to know the details of the dispute to have any doubts that what we are witnessing is wrong?

So you’re covering a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in the gym of the St. Clairsville High School when in your viewfinder the face of Old Nick or one of that ilk hoves into view behind the former first lady. What do you do?

Do you:  1 - Point, scream, run away?

               2 - Shrug, put down your camera and just wait resignedly because you’ve suspected for a while that you were due a visit?

               3 - Shoot only pictures of The Evil One because recorded public appearances are infrequent and even though it isn’t exclusive this is great archive material?

              4 - Ignore the distraction and concentrate on the candidate?

              5 - Not panic because you know it is only the symbol of the school’s Red Devils sports team, but include a couple of frames of it as part of a balanced report just like that produced of the actual event by Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton?

Are we suggesting that Hillary Clinton is in league with the Devil? No more than we are suggesting that Barack Obama has natural radiance or that light emanates whence the sun does not normally shine.

Allowing their charge to be pictured in the same frame as a Red Devil does not appear to have been something that troubled Senator Clinton’s campaign managers and media advisors, maybe they saw it for what it was - a virtually guaranteed front page picture.

They set ‘em up, we knock ‘em over.

As a child, the Chinese Lunar New year was “the” highlight of the year. There was no school, we could stay up all night, there was unlimited food and sweets everywhere, every adult we met would give us little red packets of money, cool long lost cousins would turn out of nowhere and we would play and watch TV all day long. Most importantly, there would be no mention of homework. It was like Disneyland every year.

As with most festivals, Lunar New Year would tend to lose its magic as we get older, especially when we have to start helping out, and conversations with long lost cousins go from who gets to be super duper Ultraman to who is making more money. Celebrations this year for my family was especially quiet as my grandmother just passed away and we would be in mourning for three years. We are, however, still allowed to celebrate a toned down version of it.

This is a Singaporean traditional Lunar New Year salad called “Yu Sheng”, or raw fish, to symbolise “Nian Nian You Yu”, or years and years of excess. 

There is an elaborate ritual to eating this dish, one of which involves getting the whole family together to mix the ingredients and shout auspicious phrases. Through years of experience, I have learnt that this is one of the most inefficient ways of mixing vegetables with dressing as the dish inevitably ends up being too sweet on one end and sour on the other.

As we are still in mourning, there would be no elaborate four-hour prayer session to the Heavenly God to welcome the New Year. We had a short prayer to the God of the Earth to ask for simple blessings instead, and instead of the usual stacks and stacks of incense paper money, this is all we are burning for the year… all folded by me, hence the intricate craftsmanship.

The paper money is burnt, prayers sent out, all we can do now is keep our fingers crossed.

The big day itself. At first light, we would take turns to offer tangerines and blessings to our parents, wishing them good health and good luck. In return, they would give us red packets and a short friendly lecture on working hard and being nice. “Friendly” being the operative word because harsh words and scolding are considered to be inauspicious. Doing chores and running errands are all disallowed too. During the New Year, one is only allowed to have fun and nothing else, just like in college. Also, notice my parents are both in green, not the traditional auspicious red. This is because they were both born in the Year of the Rat.

Being in mourning also means no visiting of relatives, which also means a substantial loss of income for us kids. To cheer us up, my dad decided to take us to the “River Hongbao” festival organised by the various clans in Singapore. Since young, we have always been too busy visiting relatives and/or playing to go for events such as this, and I always thought they were quite lame. But being in the thick of the action, getting squashed with the crowd, and watching young attractive women haggle with storekeepers does get me into the festive mood and put a smile on my face.

Here’s wishing all Gong Xi Fa Cai - Happy Chinese New Year!

The caption from Barcelona didn’t mention it but it looks from this as though Robert Redford may be trying to work his way into the role of Jerry Springer. We’ve already had ‘The Opera’ so I guess it was only a matter of time until we got The Movie, although in truth Redford may not have been my first thought for the lead.

Then again maybe it’s Jerry Springer who is trying for the lead in the Robert Redford Story…

I’ve been trying to write about some sport images that caught my eye while trawling through the Reuters file but I keep getting hung up on our pictures from Kenya.

George Philipas

They are so raw, so powerful and uncompromising that even the most accomplished images of cossetted sportsmen performing in completely controlled circumstances seem insignificant in comparison.

George Philipas

What they portray is just hellish - a pile of charred bodies in a church, a young mother lying dead in her home while her distressed toddler wails unattended, a bright-eyed teenage boy with the shaft of an arrow sticking out of his head. 

Peter Andrews

People, dirt poor inflicting unimaginable cruelty and suffering on other equally poor people, the motivation for it really doesn’t matter, it is an appalling human tragedy.

Peter Andrews

When I was a kid I remember a truly shocking Oxfam poster with an image of a starving Biafran child, huge wide eyes, tormented by flies, stick thin and with an impossibly distended belly.

In the intervening period the image of a shocked, wide-eyed innocent has become an overused cypher for suffering in every subsequent African disaster, natural or otherwise, but there is nothing innocent about the look in this child’s eyes, rather there is mistrust and deep, deep hurt. 

Georgina Cranston

Given the scenes of mayhem which preceded it I was surprised to find this quiet image and amazed by the potency of the simple gesture of affection. I’ll get back to the sport pictures.

Photographers John Gress and Jeff Haynes with some observations on how they covered and survived football below freezing point.  

John Gress

Before moving to Chicago from Portland in 2003, I had joked with my friends about getting to see football games at Green Bay in January.

Since then I have covered four games in the land of the’ cheese heads’. The first three, in sub freezing temperatures, were a picnic compared to what we had to endure January 20 during the NFC Championship football game. I never expected to be shooting a game taking place in weather below 10 degrees Farenheit, let alone a game below zero. At kick-off the temperature was 0F and by end of overtime, it was -2F.

New York Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes celebrates after kicking a 47-yard game winning field goal in over-time to defeat the Green Bay Packers in the NFL’s NFC Championship football game in Green Bay, Wisconsin January 20, 2008.          REUTERS/John Gress (UNITED STATES)

What do you wear to a game that cold? One of my colleagues remarked that in such circumstances it’s really not about fashion and another one added that its not even about making good pictures, it is purely a matter of survival!

Before heading down the tunnel to the field, I put on two pairs of socks, foot warmers, snow boots, long johns, felt lined jeans, a ski bib, a thermal top, a long sleeve shirt, two fleece jackets, a ninja mask, an Elmer Fudd hat, two pairs of gloves and a Parka. Just moving was a problem, which became abundantly clear to me when I placed  a camera around my neck and tried to slide it under the hood of my coat - the camera flew up into my face, split my lip and chipped a tooth. I had no choice but to head out to the game with blood oozing from my lip, hoping that it wouldn’t freeze and make things worse.
Surprisingly enough I was warm.. warmer than I had been the previous week when it was 30 degrees and snowing, only this time I was more padded than the Michelin man.

New York Giants players huddle in front of the heat-blowers to warm up during the NFL’s NFC Championship football game against Green Bay Packers in Green Bay, Wisconsin, January 20, 2008.     REUTERS/John Gress (UNITED STATES)

However, within the first few plays I encountered something I had not anticipated - I had to learn how to breath. Every time I exhaled through my mask, warm air would go everywhere fogging-up the view finder and the back of the camera. Not only could I not see, but I had to worry that the condensation would crystalize into ice before my eyes. I found that if I pulled the mask down to my chin and exposed most of my face to the arctic air, I could exhale downward while shooting, keeping the viewfinder free of fog, however this meant that with every breath ice would form on the back of the camera.

The cold was a true test of our digital cameras. My newest body wouldn’t focus and every time I wanted to review images on the back of a camera, it would take three times as long and the freezing liquid crystal display would fade from one image to the next rather than making the blunt transitions I was accustom to. Batteries died right and left, it took forever to change them wearing two pairs of gloves and pulling cards out took an eternity.

A Green Bay Packers fan cheers before the start of their NFL’s NFC Championship football game against the New York Giants in Green Bay, Wisconsin January 20, 2008.     REUTERS/John Gress (UNITED STATES)

With the game about to end, I put a wide angle lens on the camera around my neck and checked it to make sure it was set up correctly. When I ran on to the field and found Brett Favre, I put the camera up to my eye, pushed the shutter and nothing happened. The display on top was blank, and the camera wouldn’t even light up or take a picture for that matter. Two hours later once it warmed up inside, the display looked fine, but I still had to press the shutter button three times to get it to fire.

We survived but next day I had to call my dentist and realized that I had sustained mild frost bite on six of my finger tips.

Jeff Haynes

There is cold weather everywhere, whether you live in the North, South, East or West but then there is cold weather like that at Lambeau Field cold weather in Green Bay, Wisconsin during the NFC Championship game. 

I have worked in the cold throughout the world but the temperature in Green Bay that weekend where I spent five hours outside was the coldest I have been in for that amount of time.  It was cold enough it would freeze my breath right to the back of my camera. Causing a frost build up on the back of the camera and on my eyeglasses. The cameras worked well, but every function was slowed by the cold.  Another factor working against us was the game was at night, a dark cold night. Most other times while working in the cold, whether standing on the side of a mountain covering downhill skiing or even during the second coldest NFL game in Buffalo before this one, it is usually sunny outside, but this was night.

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning (lower right) is sacked in the second quarter by Green Bay Packers defender A.J. Hawk during the NFL’s NFC Championship football game in Green Bay, Wisconsin January 20, 2008. At left is Packers defender Nick Barnett.     REUTERS/Jeff Haynes (UNITED STATES)

Layers, layers and more layers along with those chemical hand and toe warmers placed in other places besides your hands and toes. Wearing layers was the only way to stay warm. I had on two pair of thermal underwear covered by wind and rain proof winter pants, two Under Armour shirts and a winter wind proof parka, a fur lined hat that covered my ears and my neck covered by a neck warmer, with two pairs of toe warmers covered by two pair of socks in winter boots.

Everyone will ask how you keep your hands warm. As any photographer who works in cold weather will tell you we all have different pairs of gloves for every type of cold. I found on my left hand, which does not use as many finger movements while taking photographs, a heavy mitten with a chemical hand warmer inside and on my right hand a wind proof thin glove with a hand warmer in the palm of the glove and placing it in a pocket in my jacket with another hand warmer inside after each timeout and play stoppage worked best for me.  Others used thermal heat packs for sore backs or toe and hand warmers on their backs around the kidney area to heat the blood as it flowed through the body as another way to try to keep warm for those extreme conditions.   

New York Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes celebrates after kicking a 47-yard game winning field goal in over-time to defeat the Green Bay Packers in the NFL’s NFC Championship football game in Green Bay, Wisconsin January 20, 2008.     REUTERS/Jeff Haynes (UNITED STATES)

The coldest I felt was when it went to overtime. No one wanted to play, watch or work any longer than we had planned for; but I’m telling you all, there was no place I would have rather been than on that side line, in every piece of cold weather gear I owned to witness one of the great NFL games of the season and the second coldest game in history.

I feel lucky just to have actually been there, cold and all! 
 

A British Airways 777 crash landing at London’s Heathrow airport when you have a fully equipped photographer and a text journalist airside is not something you see every day. Unfortunately when it happened yesterday they were trapped onboard another plane carrying British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and assorted colleagues waiting to take-off for the Far East.

Dylan Martinez

Fortunately photographer Dylan Martinez was able to find a window with a distant view of the stricken aircraft and emergency vehicles and despite the dismal optical properties of aircraft windows, able to shoot and file a couple of quick pictures.

Stephen Hird

Those of us in office waiting for more pictures to arrive while watching events unfold on TV may have been slightly covetous of the aerial view we could see from the BBC’s helicopter but Stephen Hird was swiftly on the scene and soon moving clear strong pictures shot from the perimeter fence. He was followed by London bureau colleague Toby Melville. From their pictures of the wrecked plane it was evident that with the exception of a few “minor injuries” the passengers and crew had had a remarkable escape.  

Stephen Hird

Of course before all this happened the primary focus had been Prime Minister Gordon Brown.  

Dylan Martinez

From the back steps of the aircraft taking them to China, Dylan had photographed him and his wife embarquing by way of the front steps, 

Dylan Martinez

so he was there when Richard Branson got on too. The Virgin Atlantic boss getting onto a British Airways flight - now that’s something you don’t see every day!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22706026

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/17/e urope/heathrow.php

http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/2008/0 1/18/2141308.htm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk  /article3204607.ece

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-0 1/17/content_7442126.htm

At various times some of our photographers and picture editors have talked about how the eyes, hands and even feet can be used as the subject of pictures. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the “middle way” - the human belly as a means of self expression.

Going one better than wearing his heart on his sleeve, this soccer fan has transformed his belly into the Brazilian national flag, shame about the chest hair. Ivan Alvarado .

Gregarious biker, gsh, likes choppers, tattoos and beer. Laszlo Balogh.

I find this image really disturbing. It is one of a harrowing series showing life in an Argentine women’s prison where 273 female inmates, several of them pregnant, live with their 63 children who are allowed to remain with their mothers until they are four years old. Carolina Camps.

No paint or tattoos here, just a winnner in Spain’s El Gordo, ”the fat one”, lottery.  Perhaps with his winnings he’ll buy some underwear more appropriate for a well-fleshed lad. Miguel Vidal

By Sapper Ian Chapman, winner of the British Army Photographic Competition 2007 

After my return from a busy tour of Afghanistan last year, someone suggested that I enter a few of the hundreds of images I’d taken on operations into the annual Army Photographic competition. ‘What the heck’, I thought, so I sent a slack handful of prints off in the post, never expecting to hear back.  Several weeks later whilst working with the US Marine Corps in Washington, my wife managed to contact me to let me know that an invitation had been received for the competition awards ceremony.  To cut a long story short and never having entered a competition before, I became the rather bemused but extremely proud winner of all five amateur categories that I had entered, as well as winner of the “Best Overall Image”. One of the judges was the Reuters UKI Chief Photographer David Viggers, who has since asked me to contribute to this blog page - thanks David, no pressure there then!

Crown copyright/Ian Chapman

My first camera, an OM10, was a 21st birthday present and I carried it everywhere with me whilst serving with the Army, taking pictures from Africa to Norway.  In 2006, I was given a Canon 350D and having the luxury of being able to delete all the rubbish shots, I became more adventurous with the images I took and saved.  So, armed with a shiny new camera and a big machine gun, I set out to document my experiences at the sharp end in Afghanistan.  Being a novice photographer, I never realised just how much memory space would be required to back up my images and on one occasion I managed to delete a full memory card while trying to download the images onto a mate’s laptop in the middle of the desert. Even charging the batteries for the camera was a challenge and I frequently had to flutter my eyelashes at our signaller in order to blag a plug socket for half an hour. Due to my tiny collection of memory cards, I estimate that I deleted around five thousand images to bring about a thousand home. A lesson well learned although I still haven’t bought a portable hard drive - I splashed out on a Nikon D200 instead! The Canon camera just about died in Afghanistan due to all the dust and abuse it was subjected to.

 
The feedback and comments I’ve received since winning the Army photographic competition have really fired me up and encouraged me to pursue photography as a future career, so I enrolled at a digital photography night class over the winter months to improve my general camera skills. I turned up on the first night to have the lecturer inform everyone that there was a pro’ amongst the class and proceeded to show everyone a magazine article about me. Embarrassed or what? Every time I turn up now, all I get is ‘what have you won this week?’ and ‘which magazine are you in today?’ I just laugh the banter off and continue photographing the melons and Goth models. One of the prizes I won was a two day training course on digital editing and I’m booked in to attend that later this month. Hopefully, I’ll learn more about image manipulation to enhance my work. Saying that, I’m really not interested in putting donkey ears on grandma’s head - I prefer to capture the image I want and just do the basics with it on the computer.

My local paper, The Hull Daily Mail, featured me in a ‘local boy done good’ article and afterwards I asked if I could possibly shadow their pro’ photographers to get a feel for press photography. The paper kindly had me on board for the week before Xmas and to say that I learned loads would be an understatement! A great bunch of people and a brilliant experience. The icing on the cake for me was when they asked if I’d like to cover the Championship footy match between Hull City and Wolves at the KC Stadium on Boxing Day. I jumped at the chance and was let loose on the touchlines with a 300mm lens that resembled a rocket launcher. Brilliant. Thankfully, the day was cold and dry, but I became a bit of a weather-watcher in the preceding days, praying for a crisp, bright afternoon. How people can do that job in pouring rain is beyond me - I just didn’t want to get my camera wet. They’re having me back to cover a rugby match when the Super League starts in February. Can’t wait, but please, no rain!

In summary, it’s been an exciting and hectic few months for me.  I’ve been amazed at how willing the professionals are at giving their time and precious advice and I’ve also learned that trying to get on the professional ladder is not an easy step to take, but I’m prepared to graft hard and I know it’s going to be fun trying!

So far it’s been a great story and a rollercoaster ride for supporters and candidates alike and the great pictures keep coming.

I particularly like this clever picture from Brian Snyder in New Hampshire. It is simple, effective, well observed, beautifully executed and delightfully still.

Our team of photographers may have changed shift but the candidates are still going. strong. As well as being completely awed by their sheer stamina, I am always amazed by the commitment demanded of their nearest and dearest. Jason Reed’s picture of the Obamas working the crowd shows that campaigning is very much a family affair.

The caption on this picture tell us that Senator Hillary Clinton “points to supporters in the crowd at her New Hampshire primary night rally”, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this expression of surprise and delight was a direct result of her having spotted Larry Rubenstein back behind a camera.