The great thing about working for an international news agency like Reuters is that it is just that, international. The ability to look at lots of regional or local stories at the same time allows for a truly global perspective on world events. Never has this been more readily demonstrated than over the past week or so as Santa Claus and his helpers have geared-up their efforts for the festive season. Reports and pictures have come in thick and fast, a few of which I offer for your perusal.

I particularly like this picture of his merry helper elves warming up by dancing on a frozen lake in China.

From the hundreds of sightings which have flooded into the desk we can see that the old boy still adheres to traditional modes of transport,

- Kacper Pempel

although there is clear evidence that even Santa Claus is not immune to the mid-life motorbike crisis.

- Arnd Wiegmann

He is clearly a caring and compassionate individual,

- Guillermo Granja

but it is equally clear that he knows how to have fun 

 - Hugh Gentry

Of course not everyone who looks like Santa is the real deal and the same

- Johanes Eisele

goes for angels, indeed some of them may not even have been good all year!

- Hannibal Hanschke

Compliments of the season to everyone, I hope Santa brings you everything you deserve.

I have left my letter to the photographers’ and picture editors’ Santa Claus rather late this year and am having real problems thinking of enough things to make it worth his while climbing down my chimney, here’s what I’ve got so far…

Dear Santa,

I hope this finds you free of the seasonal ailments afflicting the rest of us and that this note has not arrived too late for your consideration. I can only imagine how busy you must be at this time of year but then you have a lot of little helpers what with the Elves and all. It must be tough come annual performance appraisal time or do you just use casual, seasonal  labour?

This year I have been a good boy most of the time, which may if I’m entirely honest, have more to do with lack of opportunity than virtuousness but I would like to request the following modest items for my stocking please:

- The ability to fly and hover at will.

- A tap on my desk that delivers hot, strong tea.

- A laptop that works perfectly well when wet.

- Photographers that work prefectly well when wet.

- Digital cameras that do exactly what they are supposed to do when you get them - and when wet.

- Light, long-life, universal equipment batteries.

- A 3G network in the UK with as much bandwidth as those in the USA and Germany.

- An end to “pools”.

- Daylight at ground level in Downing Street at least once a year…

At which point I run out of inspiration, so I’d be very grateful for any other useful suggestions while there is still time please.

I hope Yusuf Ahmed Tawil will forgive me for taking liberties with his work, but it serves as a graphic illustration of just how fundamentally a little judicious cropping of an image can completely misrepresent the event it purports to illustrate. 

Trimming a little off the side of this image transforms our understanding of what is happening in this image of a demonstration by Papuans wearing traditional dress at the U.N. climate conference in Bali. The reality is somewhat less intriguing.

In this high impact news picture from Chor Sokunthea in Phnom Penh even without knowing the details it is pretty easy to understand what is happening. There can be little doubt about who is the aggressor and who is the victim here, can there? The clenched fist, the look on the monk’s face, the policeman recoiling as he attempts to defend himself from the impending blow tell us all we need to know - or so it would seem.

But not if you look at the original frame below. It tells an appreciably different story. That there is a brawl is indisputable but who exactly  is aggressor and who the victim is far less obvious. The policeman is shoving away a monk with his riot shield while swiping at him with his baton completely oblivious to the incoming fist.  Then there is the photographer - to some eyes he may just make things “untidy” but he was there and his presence adds useful context. He begs the question, “how out of control could this incident have been if it was safe enough to shoot pictures up close?”

These recrops are purely illustrative and neither moved on the wire. However in my view the more dynamic version of the fight picture is a perfectly legitimate image but only if seen in the context of the wider version or other similar establishing images.

In this competitive business if we can’t do ’exclusive’ or ‘definitive’, we go for ’better’ and/or ‘faster’ than anyone else’s.

Joshua Roberts

An incidental by-product of this is an unvoiced convention that where possible competing colleagues exclude one another from their pictures in part to keep images as ‘clean’ as possible but also in order to convey an impression of unrivalled or exclusive access to the event in question. It is largely unwitting and more presentational than an attempt to mislead or misrepresent and when one considers that most days there will be around 40 photographers on the touchline at a Chelsea soccer match and very many more at big set piece events on the White House lawn, it is usually something of a forlorn hope.

Yves Herman

In spite of this, most of us have at some stage ended-up in the backround of a competitor’s front page picture. If we are lucky we appear to be the model of professionalism, working with camera raised, but many a hapless individual has been caught, camera down staring into space. These are the pictures that pinned to the office notice board, we unwittingly walk past for days on end to the delight of our workmates, until the penny finally drops.  

I really had intended to give the soccer pictures a rest but this one from Miguel Vidal in Portugal was too good to resist and it isn’t the usual ”jubo” or action picture. 

In fact to understand and enjoy it as a picture you do not need to know that it is a moment from a  soccer match or even the specific detail of the incident, (Porto’s Raul Meireles (R) argues with referee Olegario Benquerenza during their Portuguese Premier League soccer match against Guimaraes at Dragon stadium in Porto December 15, 2007).  

The image is so simple and eloquent that the caption information is almost a distraction.   

I reproduce this Reuters update on the case of Iraqi AP photographer Bilal Hussein for anyone who may not have seen it earlier in the week.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi judge convened the first criminal hearing on Sunday against an Associated Press photographer who has been detained by the U.S. military without charges for nearly 20 months, the news agency said.

The U.S. military has accused Bilal Hussein, a 36-year-old Iraqi, of working with insurgents in Iraq. He was seized in April 2006 in Ramadi, capital of western Anbar province.

The award-winning photographer was present for most of the nearly seven-hour, closed-door proceeding in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, the AP said in a report from Baghdad.

It was the first time Hussein or his lawyers had seen any of the materials gathered by the U.S. military against him since his arrest, the news agency said.

Magistrate Dhia al-Kinani ordered that the proceedings and details of materials presented remain secret, the AP said.

Hussein’s lawyer, Paul Gardephe, said no formal charges were lodged. Gardephe was permitted to see some material during the proceeding but was forbidden from taking any copies with him to aid in building his defence, the AP said.

“There is still no formal charge against Bilal, and The Associated Press continues to believe that Bilal Hussein was a photojournalist working in a war zone and that claims that he is involved with insurgent activities are false,” AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement, according to the report.

“Because the judge ordered that the proceedings today be kept secret, we are restricted from saying anything further.”

The agency had said the U.S. military would submit evidence to the Iraqi judiciary on December 9. 

PULITZER PRIZE

The AP has repeatedly called for the immediate release of Hussein, who was part of its photo team that won a Pulitzer prize in 2005.

It has said that under Iraqi law, an investigative judge would review the evidence and decide whether to dismiss the case or send it to a three-member court for trial.

AP President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Curley has written to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, expressing concern that Hussein’s lawyer had not been given enough time and information to prepare his defence.

The U.S. military has said Hussein was detained for possessing material used to make roadside bombs, insurgent propaganda, and what it described as a surveillance photo of a coalition installation.

U.S. military spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner said last month that Hussein’s case had been reviewed several times by a board that periodically reviews the files of detainees. Hussein was still deemed a “security threat”, he said.

Hussein is one of several Iraqi journalists who have been held by the U.S. military without being charged. Iraqi journalists working for Reuters have also been detained by the U.S. military for months and later released without charges.

(Writing by Dean Yates; editing by Ralph Boulton)
 

In the business those jump-for-joy sporting moments are referred to as ”jubo” (jubilation) or “cele” (celebration). ”Did you get the jubo/cele?” and the response, “yes, he was right up the barrel”, or “no he went the wrong way”,  is a common exchange between picture editor and the photographer on the touchline.

From the evidence on the wire there appear to be few sporting images more emotional or exuberant than those “jubo” moments of soccer players celebrating after scoring a goal. The expressions of American football and icehockey players are all too frequently obscured by facemasks. Basketball players seem to err on the side of mean and moody and baseball players appear to be almost permanently underwhelmed. It might be a cultural thing or perhaps just a result of the way those sports are broadcast or sponsored. There certainly isn’t a lack of passion because tempers do fray and fights and arguments are frequent, but there doesn’t seem to be any of the theatricality we see from soccer players, at least not during the game. 

Jose Sand of Lanus celebrates scoring against Boca Juniors - Enrique Marcarian

Frank Lampard of Chelsea celebrates scoring against Sunderland - Toby Melville

Cristiano Ronaldo of Manchester United celebrates scoring against Blackburn - Phil Noble

In the soccer playing nations, images like these from the Reuters wire, occupy prominent positions on sports sites, in specialist sports papers and sports sections of newspapers, often as cut-outs or montages and always used for maximum impact.

“Jubo” moments are the one part of the game when the players direct their attention at us, when they seek the approbation or otherwise of the viewers and spectator. They not only help to sell newspapers, but they also sell the sport itself and even if you aren’t interested it is almost impossible to remain impervious to such expressions of raw exuberance.

The devil is, of course, in the details. Sadly for Phil Noble this isn’t the WBC welterweight world title fight, it is a Commonwealth light heavyweight bout. It isn’t Floyd Mayweather of the U.S. it is Michael Gbenga of Ghana. He isn’t hitting Ricky Hatton of Britain, he is hitting Dean Francis and it isn’t Las Vegas, Nevada it’s Bolton, northern England. He didn’t win and it wasn’t even the top bout of the night.  

Apart from that it is an absolute gem of a boxing picture, right on the money, beautifully lit and with a lovely clean background. 

Right picture, right night, wrong fight!

Participating in downhill winter sports certainly calls for nerve and experience and so does photographing them competitively. These images from Wolfgang Rattay, a veteran of the slippery slope, freeze the action at the Men’s Luge World Cup event in Winterberg, Germany and even permit close examination of the expressions on the faces of the competitors. It is hard to escape the conclusion, at least from this evidence, that having his eyes open was perhaps what gave the winner his edge.  

If individual luge looks scary, Wolfgang make luge with two-up look positively relaxed, although it really can’t be much fun for the occupant of the back seat.  

Frankly I’m not sure which is braver, hurtling down a mountain feet first at high speed or having the confidence to wear lycra in freezing conditions in the certain knowledge of the inevitability of being photographed from this angle. 

I really like this picture of a young Russian sailor voting in the parliamentary elections. It was a routine assignment, an oblique regional angle on the main story centred on Moscow, from which Gleb Garanich has delivered a little gem which is anything but routine. The subject is readily identifiable as a Russian sailor even through the red fabric of the polling booth and it it looks more like something from the depths of an archive than a spot news picture.  

I would have been tempted to crop it tighter to clean it up a tad but I can see he’d want to give it as much space as possible and the original version does look busier, more ‘newsy’ somehow. The cropped version looks more like a painting.

Which is exactly why it looked so familiar the first time I saw it - it reminds me of Vermeer’s painting The Lacemaker - admittedly it’s a guy, landscape and red but the position of the subject and the overall texture rang a bell. 

Is Gleb’s picture art? No, for me it is news photography but perhaps it reveals the range and sophistication of the visual terms of reference photographers like him call on. It does however demonstrate that even in the crash, bang, wallop world of news agency photography there is space for stillness and beauty. 

What do you think - crop or not crop? Art or not art? News picture or just Mr October in next year’s calendar?