Doorstepping. It comes with the territory. Any news photographer will tell you that.In fact if you can remember back to the last time the Conservative party were in power, doorstepping Members of Parliament was so common that it prompted one colleague to refer to himself as a professional milk bottle. There are doorsteps that require immense amounts of waiting time, where at any given second the subject could arrive or depart into a melting pot of strobes, elbows, quantum cables, screaming producers and the occasional passing mother and child with pram. And while all this is happening it’s also raining and the traffic warden is quickly putting a £100 ticket on your windscreen.
Then sometimes you are lucky enough to get the Nobel Prize for Literature doorstep. In fact twice in two years I have by chance landed the call “……..we’re just getting the address…..”    

Both Harold Pinter and Doris Lessing were either at home or within walking distance. Pinter was in fact in the middle of his lunch and suddenly appeared on his doorstep sporting a cap and a black eye from a recent fall. There were half a dozen journalists and photographers and the light was perfect. Similarly with Lessing, who arrived by taxi, only to be told by a Reuters journalist that she had in fact won the prestigious prize. She then sat on her doorstep and conducted interviews. At this time there were only a dozen members of the media and again the light was perfect.

Two authors on two doorsteps in two years winning the grandest prize in the literary world. Both sets of pictures were aided by virtue of the fact that the UK picture desk searched for and obtained both addresses in record time. It meant that as the photographer, I had an advantage when I arrived. Almost unheard of on a doorstep, where the usual scenario involves everyone poised at the start line, a door opens, and we all scramble for the finish line together.

On leaving the Arsenal versus Manchester City Premier League soccer match on Saturday I was approached by two Arsenal fans. They asked me my opinion of the game, which I gave them, adding that Manchester Citys Micah Richards was a future England captain. Before carrying on their inebriated way they asked me where I was going the next day. I told them to the Wales v France international rugby friendly.. Any chance we can carry your bags? Any chance indeed..well its a question all sports photographers have probably been asked a thousand times. No-one ever offers to carry my bags when I am doorstepping the Prime Minister in Downing Street or waiting in the rain to car shot a disgraced MP outside the House of Commons or when travelling on assignment to Iraq. But mention a sports event in any climate and you are immediately inundated with offers of help.
Being an wire agency photographer allows us the privilege of covering not only all the world’s hard news but also the world’s major sporting tournaments. Every one completely different but all sharing one similarity. Sometimes it is the culmination of everything that has gone before it. Sometimes it can happen half a dozen times in one match.The one defining moment that all sports photographers wait for, and the one that sums up the very core of every professional sportsperson’s being. Winning.

The following images are taken from a few of the major sporting events I have covered where I was lucky enough to be in the right spot when it mattered. Make no mistake that there is an awful lot of luck involved in some of these pictures. Sometimes we make our own luck but when we do find ourselves in the perfect spot, we rely on our news instincts to take over.

The first picture involve Chelsea’s golden boys Terry and Lampard  celebrating a goal during their defeat of Bayern Munich in a Champions League quarter final at Stamford Bridge. I can’t even begin to describe the amount of luck that was involved in getting this picture, but suffice to say I was very relieved I did. The second image shows Autralia celebrating their 1999 Cricket World Cup win at Lords. This picture was simply point, wait and shoot.

 The next two pictures highlight my two favourite title winning moments at Wimbledon. Croatia’s Goran Ivanisevic had climbed into the family box to greet his father who is sobbing into a spectator’s arms. That moment gave me goosebumps as I was shooting it, something that has never happened before or since. It probably had a lot to do with my having spent years watching Ivanisevic try and achieve his dream and at that moment I knew he had. It was such a privilege to have witnessed that moment that I knew for me nothing at Wimbledon again would ever better it. Nothing has, but Venus Williams celebratory moment was as pure a sporting moment as any I have ever seen.

Michael Owen’s celebration of his second of two goals in British football’s biggest stage, the FA Cup Final, again found me and not the other way round. The second picture shows the Police Football Team’s Ahmed Mnajed being congratulated after his side’s victory over rival side Al Zawra at the Al Zawra stadium in Baghdad. This match between Iraq’s top two teams is the first major sports event since the fall of President Saddam Hussein.

The moment surrounding this final picture probably gives me the most satisfaction in several ways. It was the culmination of an eight week tour spent following the England team in their pursuit of World Cup glory. Wilkinson’s World Cup winning kick was over in a second. It sealed England’s first World Cup triumph in any sport since 1966. It sealed the fate of the Australian team who were unable to prevent the inevitable. For the first time I thought not about the celebrating players, but about the impact this result would have on a million English rugby fans at home. That’s the power of sport. Definitely something worth celebrating.

As a 24 year old wannabe walking into the Reuters office in London for the first time in 1993 the only thing I knew was that I wanted to shoot pictures, I just wasn’t sure what kind. This was a whole new experience and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t even know what a news agency was, but what I did know was that if they took just one frame from my camera and put it on the wire, I would get paid. Over the following months I began to learn something else. What constitutes a news photograph. And by that I mean a picture that is so powerful it makes you gasp or gives you goosebumps.

Following the tragic deaths in a minibus crash of ten pupils and a teacher from a Roman Catholic High School in 1993, Dylan Martinez produced one such picture from his file. If ever a picture said a thousand words this is it.

Andre Camara’s picture of the devastation that was caused after two bombs exploded in London in 1993 is another.

Eric Camoin’s image of the French anti-terrorist forces moving into position on a hijacked Air France Airbus and successsfully liberating 160 passengers is another such image that made me look at it over and over again, imagining what must have happened once those forces stepped through the aircraft door.

Again Dylan Martinez’s harrowing pictures from the Genoa summit of the protestor in the last seconds of his life before being shot dead by a police officer have the same effect. Brutal, raw images that deliver a monumental impact every time you look at them.

But death, human suffering and destruction should not be considered the only ingredients in the makeup of a great news photograph. Take Russell Boyce’s picture of former British Prime Minister John Major or Kevin Lamarque’s picture of Conservative leadership contender Michael Portillo who having held the seat since 1984, lost to the man grinning behind him, Labour’s Stephen Twigg.

  Both these images have a different but nonetheless significant impact in that  they were both moments that passed in the blink of an eye which no-one would have seen had the photographer not captured them. The essential key to any great news picture.To me these are a few of the news pictures that graced the Reuters wire early and later on in my career and that have the same impact on me no matter when or how often I look at them. They are a constant reminder as to why I became a news photographer. These are not the pretty, beautifully lit and exquisitely framed photographs that we see in abundance on the wires now. These are the no frills, raw, rough edged, grainy, sometimes badly lit, soft or slightly over exposed images that deliver on all counts. Photographers working and producing in every imaginable situation and then some. These are news images that stand the testament of time and show the impact that photographers, who have the ability to catch these fleeting moments, weild with their cameras. It is little wonder that I wanted to immerse myself into this industry. The adrenalin rush is intoxicating.

 If you are a wannabe out there reading this blog, maybe they will have a similar impact on you. In my humble opinion, these are as good as it gets. 

On numerous occasions I have turned on up an assignment and stood about scratching my head, trying to figure out how I am going to turn what I see in front of me into a picture. Not to say that the following technique is a gimmick. Far from it. If you try and pull this one off and get it wrong, it will, take my word for it, look abysmal. The use of shadows in pictures is not the first picture the wire photographer will shoot when turning up to an assignment, but if the light is right, and the light has definitely got to be right, it can turn an ordinary news conference, sporting situation, or political doorstep into an unusual picture. If pictures stand out and get noticed on the wire against the hundreds of others that are seen daily by the sub editors on the world’s picture desks,then half the battle is won. Graphic eye catching images always stand out, no matter how small the monitor’s thumbnail size.

Loathe as I am to fill a blog with my own pictures, here are a selection of photographs that I have taken in the last decade that hopefully illustrate the point.The first couple of sport pictures come from the beach volleyball at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. It was the first time the sport had been included unofficially in an Olympics and was set on Bondi beach The potential for pictures was huge and with the light at midday and sunset being equally effective for shadows, both these pictures were possible.

The next news picture involved a lengthy doorstep in Downing Street where the story also required a security picture.This was lit with television lights where every half hour the policeman would pace up and down the street, passing the door for a split second. This took many attempts before getting it right. The second picture was shot at a mass grave in Iraq where the shadow of the pointing hand was completetly fortuitous.

These three press conference pictures show Microsoft supremo Bill Gates, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak Britain’s then Chancellor Gordon Brown in action, lit again with daylight television lights.

All these are not to be confused with the final entertainment picture. This is Noel Gallagher of Oasis performing at the Brit Awards in London. This is a silhouette. And this is another story.

Technology. Who can knock it ? In the last ten years the advancements in the digital imagery revolution have transformed the way in which press photographers work, think and play. The Canon EOS focusing system was so advanced that overnight the sporting arena quadrupled in the amount of photographers now able to cover football. In fact digital camera technology is so good, even primates can use them. And to what effect? Well, in reality a digital camera is just another highly sophisticated tool they can play with and they are probably not that interested in the end result. It focuses, exposes, sharpens and saturates for them, all they really have to do is point the camera in roughly the right direction and hey presto they have a usable image of Prince Harry leaving a London nightclub at 3 am looking rather worse for wear. Then to complete the picture, money exchanges hands for the rights to publish and voila, we have a bona fide chimpanzee.

I have never really quite understood those whose thought processes creak to the conclusion ‘I have a camera therefore I am a professional photographer.’  It used to be that a portfolio of prints (which then evolved to a CD)  was an absolute neccessity in order to obtain work. The physical process of watching a picture editor flash through your 20 best prints in mere nano seconds and then to be told “don’t call us…. “ was a sight to behold and an experience never to be forgotten. It was such a shock to the system that it made you invent ways of trying to keep a picture editor hovering over your pictures for just a few more precious seconds. Nowadays it’s, “ have you got a camera and a laptop?”. And there you have it. Invest a couple of grand in some sophisticated equipment and you too can see your pictures in lights and call yourself a professional. I always wanted to be an RAF test pilot, so maybe if I bought myself a jump suit and a pair of raybans I could become a top gun? Being a musician, if I bought the right drum kit surely Paul Simon might let me take Steve Gadd’s drum stool for the forthcoming Royal Albert Hall gig? Somehow I think not……and so what is it that gives those with no experience or qualifications the right to assume the mantle of professional photographer?

Technology. It is our friend and our enemy simultaneously. It has totally changed the way we work as professionals in this industry for the better. It has made our jobs less stressful from a wiring perspective, it has lessened the load on our backs and given us the opportunity to see what we do instantly and just as importantly allowed our clients to have a ready to publish World Cup final trophy pictures within 4 minutes of the shutter being released. However It has also allowed those who with little or no skill or experience to downgrade the picture quality of our industry. As long as people are prepared to pay for these images, these so called photographers will continue to invest in the latest state of the art equipment and continue to tar us with the same brush.

We all chimp, but that doesn’t make us monkeys. 

The two giants of Northern Irish politics, Sinn Feins Gerry Adams and the Democratic Ulster Unionists’ Reverend Ian Paisley.
Both men, bitterly opposed to each others beliefs, stamping their unmistakable personalities throughout the history of the recent troubles. In the Jean Claude Delmas picture, Paisley denounces Pope John Paul II during the Pontiffs speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg for which Paisley was expelled and dragged out of the assembly by stewards and other members. In Mike Browns picture Adams does what he does best, captivating a large crowd, this time at Vinegar Hill in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford at a commemoration of the Irish rebellion of 1798.

In Dan Chungs picture Adams the master photo opportunist plays football outside a polling station in 1998, guaranteeing his picture in the next day’s paper and simultaneously putting a huge grin on every waiting photographers face. Paisley, in this picture I shot at the recent local assembly elections, is just as adept at giving the ever present photographers that little something to brighten their file.

Now that Northern Ireland appears to have a much brighter future, the real picture every photographer wants is the two men together. As Paisley once said I will never sit down with Gerry Adamshed sit with anyone. Hed sit down with the devil. In fact, Adams does sit down with the devil.. Independent, February 13 1997. 
This has made our job even more difficult and so every opportunity there has been over the past 15 years to photograph both men even in the same vicinity as each other has been seized, with varying degrees of success. That Crispin Rodwell managed to get both men in the same frame in the above pictures, was an achievement in itself.

Paul McErlane then succeeds in shooting a picture during peace process talks that shows both mens faces clearly and that they are almost within touching distance of each other. Then only a matter of weeks ago the Press Associations Paul Faith is given the pool opportunity to shoot Paisley and Adams sitting together at the Parliament Buildings at Stormont. But for some this is not enough. Having taken this long for history to get these two men together, appetites will not be satisfied until there is a handshake.

As David McKittrick of The Independent eloquently stated Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams did not shake hands yesterday: they had no need to, since their manner of signalling they are ready to go into government together produced an even more telling and forceful image.

Kieran Doherty is a Senior Photographer working in London
 

There are only a handful of press photographers working presently in the UK who can honestly say without a hint of arrogance that they have been there and done that! Alisdair Macdonald who sadly died on Tuesday last week, was one of that select handful. A truly remarkable photographer, his range of work is testament to his unique ability to nail it when it mattered. A Daily Mirror staffer he could easily have slipped into the role of wire agency photographer in every sense. It is often said that people never realize what they have until it is gone, but every Fleet Street photographer who knew Alisdair, witnessed his unbridled passion for pictures and his consummate professionalism and dignity in creating them.

Having covered a half a dozen Farnborough air shows myself alongside Alisdair, we would sit and wait for the afternoon aerial displays to start. The brief was simple. Shoot some pretty plane pictures and if one crashes make sure you have it. Contrary to the rest of us who would sit and wait only for the Red Arrows display, Alisdairs camera never left his eye from the opening Airbus 350 sequence to the flypast finale, and this he would do all week. The point here is that had something happened midair, there was only ever going to be one photographer to get that picture.

That picture. Charles and Diana kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Not an easy picture to capture taking into consideration the hours of waiting, the weather, the long lenses needed, fighting your way through the public for a spot and making sure there is enough film in the camera for the moment. This was one picture Alisdair was never going to miss.

What photographer would not want these portraits of a Beatle or one of Britains finest actors gracing their walls? The Michael Caine portrait is deceptive in its simplicity. Down a London side street leaning against a wall and shot in black and white, nothing could have typified Caines look and appeal more than this.

True to his news roots, Alisdairs ability to react on the spot resulted in his fabulous picture of two workmen and two policemen casually wandering away from the freshly punctured water main. Pure poetry.

Alisdair was one of that select few who have embraced everything that this industry has thrown at them. Today we occasionally moan about lens quality, image resolution, not enough frames per second, the weight of our equipment, the processing speeds of our laptops and the signal strength of the nearest coffee shop wifi. Let us just imagine for a moment shooting a soccer match on a plate camera or a high court snatch on a rolleiflex? Most of us wouldnt have survived. A Fleet Street institution, has left this world and left his mark. We are all the better for having worked with him.

Ali Mac 1940-2007

All pictures courtesy of The Daily Mirror.

Any politician will privately admit that there is an art to public speaking. It involves not only the rhythmic variation of their speech but, more importantly from a visual perspective, the active engagement at precise moments of their hands. As soon as hands move, flashbulbs simultaneously illuminate and freeze the moment. Tony Blair is probably the greatest exponent of exquisitely placed hand use at work in British politics today, and if he thinks youve missed the moment, he will give it to you again.

More than just a tool to articulate and punctuate speeches, hands can give away inner secrets as Alessia Pierdomenicos beautifully observed pictures show. Tony Blairs knotted and tangled fists are seen next to Gordon Browns serene and relaxed hands, giving away far more about the state of mind of either man than I am sure they intended.

In the case of the next two images, two recrops produced pictures that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. David Moirs picture of Scotlands manager Alex McLeish , once cropped to the hand and the badge, turns a perfectly good portrait into a very powerful and graphic image that could be used in every editorial context ad infinitum.

With Stephen Hirds excellent picture of Michael Stone being apprehended by Stormont security guards, the cropped image showing all the hands grappling around the gun is again a very strong image, with the red painted fingernails in such close proximity to the gun heightening the impact.

And finally, as Marcelo del Pozo illustrates so aptly in this picture, just hands, shot beautifully, are a picture on their own.

Kieran Doherty is a Senior Photographer working in London.