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Composer of ‘dub’ media day music: Pierre Gerwig Langer

Photo: Lucy Nicholson.

4.30am and traffic is actually moving at the busiest freeway junction in the U.S.  If only I could drive everywhere at this time.

Photographer Mike Blake has been up all night waiting to hear whether he will have to evacuate from his San Diego home with his wife and son.  Luckily the wind has changed direction and the expected firestorm didn’t make its way to the coast.

Californian homes burn fast.

Not like brick or stone houses.  A couple of hours after the first spark, all that remains is a pile of shredded paper.  The powdery landscape is broken up by satellite dishes, burnt-out car chassis, metal-framed garden furniture and the odd piece of pottery.  An acrid chemical smell lingers for days.

Survivors often use the word “rage” to describe the fire blown through their neighborhoods by 100+ mph winds.  It cruelly levels some people’s homes while leaving their neighbors’ untouched.

Photo: Lucy Nicholson

I arrive in San Diego and call our fire photography guru, Reuters freelancer Fred Greaves.  I’ve been listening to local AM radio for the last couple of hours and have called the San Diego fire service command center.  While there are countless home evacuations and miles of brush burning, there are also no recent reports of homes on fire.  I ask Fred’s advice on where to go.  “Follow the black smoke,” he says.

Greaves is close to the Mexican border, I am in the east, Mario in the west, and Mike is covering the evacuation centers.

I can’t see any black smoke through the thick grey smoke.  Just a beautiful deep red sun rising.

 Photo: Mike Blake.

Immediate mandatory evacuations have been ordered in a rural area out east, so I head that way.  I cross a police roadblock with my press pass and my car is the only one driving east as I pass miles of traffic queuing to evacuate in the other direction.  The wind pounds my car and I finally see black smoke on an Indian reservation in the distance.

Photo: Lucy Nicholson

I drive through an eerie deserted landscape of burnt-out cars and buildings.  A few people are running.  An empty casino is untouched.  I see a burning home in the distance, so I stop the car.  The wind is swirling, throwing sparks from the flames onto the trees in every direction.  I run through a field towards the intense heat, shoot 4 frames with my camera then run back to the car.  There are no firefighters in sight.

Photo: Lucy Nicholson

Further down the road a woman is watching her neighbor’s trailer home burn to the ground as her husband sprays their yard with a garden hose.

Photo: Lucy Nicholson

Next stop is an affluent area in the hills further west.  There is a fire truck in every other driveway.  I head toward a plume of black smoke where I find firefighters trying to put out a fire in a private vineyard while pushing the flames away from homes.

Meanwhile, Mario has come across a neighborhood just as the fire hits and makes great photos of firefighters battling to save homes.

Photo: Mario Anzuoni

When I first began to shoot fires in California, Fred Greaves took me to be outfitted in a firefighter suit and helmet with an emergency fire shelter, and told me to wear jeans and cotton clothes underneath and leather shoes.

The shelter is a reflective sheet which you are supposed to whip out and crouch underneath if fast-moving fire heads your way.  A photographer from USA Today told me he had to use his once and ended up in the burns unit.  He had to ask his wife to peel crispy skin from his back every night for weeks.  “That’s love,” he told me.

Lucy in firefighter outfit

All the stores are closed, so I sit outside a gas station in my yellow outfit to transmit photos.  My face is smudged with soot, and my hair is matted.  A woman rests her hand on my shoulder, tells me “God Bless,” and offers me a sandwich.  I tell her thanks, but I’m not a firefighter.  “You’re working hard out there though,” she says, but retracts my sandwich.  It looks so good.

Prisoners are used a lot for fighting wildfires in California.  They stand out in their orange suits.  The women work together and most of them chain-smoke as they do the physically exhausting job of clearing brush for a dollar an hour.  I once came across a group of male prisoners attacking bushes on a hillside with chainsaws as they tried to prevent a flare-up.

As the sun sets, I see some National Guard troops protecting an evacuated neighborhood from looters.  A soldier, who told me he was glad to be home from Iraq, was politely asking residents to park their cars and stand in line.

The area was heavily hit by the fire and there are hundreds of people lining up.  I ask a cop what is going on and he says they are escorting people to their homes to collect medication.  I asked him if they needed to show a prescription, but he is taking the humane approach.  He tells me that as long as people tell him they are going to get medicine, he will let everyone be escorted to see their home.

Most people do not mind being photographed - some are indifferent, some excited to be in print.

One woman who has lost her home starts screaming at a local newspaper photographer taking her picture with a long lens.  He apologizes again and again but she continues her tirade.  I apologize too, even though I wasn’t photographing her, and she walks away.  He seems upset, so I tell him he wasn’t doing anything wrong, that most people appreciate us being there to tell their story.  I also tell him he probably made her feel better, by allowing her to vent at someone, even though I’m not sure if this is true.

350 miles after the beginning of the day, I scrub the soot out of my ears, wash my hair, wrap it in a towel and fall asleep before I remember to take the towel off.

Photo: Lucy Nicholson

Mike and I are flying to Denver to shoot World Series baseball this weekend.  I’m not normally excited about high altitude (1 mile above sea level) and temperatures just above freezing, but it will be good to breathe again.

Photo: Fred Greaves

Photo: Mario Anzuoni

Photo: Mike Blake

Los Angeles Senior Photographer Lucy Nicholson reports back from the 2007 NBA Finals

Growing up in England with 4 tv channels, I didn’t get to watch much
basketball.

The first game I ever saw was during the 2001 NBA Finals when I worked
as a runner for Agence France-Presse in Los Angeles, taking disks from
the photographers and keeping the editors happy with beer.

Allen Iverson was darting all over the court for the Philadelphia
76ers.  I was mesmerized by his energy and acrobatics and quickly
became hooked on the game.  With its breakneck pace and emphasis on
rhythm over rules, it was instantly more attractive to me than reading
through ‘The Complete Idiots Guide to Baseball’ and ‘American Football
for Dummies.’

I’ve photographed every subsequent NBA Finals as basketball trickles
its way across the Atlantic.

There are now three British players in the NBA - Ben Gordon, Luol Deng,
and Ugonna Onyekwe, all on the Chicago Bulls - as well as a smattering
of talented players at U.S. colleges and Spanish clubs.  They add up to
potentially the first-ever remotely competitive British basketball team
at the London 2012 Olympics.  Former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman even
played last year for my hometown Brighton in the British Basketball
League.

First stop for the 2007 NBA Finals is San Antonio, Texas.  First
challenge is to carry most of my camera equipment onto the plane as
hand luggage.

Fortunately U.S. airlines don’t yet weigh hand luggage, so I walk past
the boarding gate pretending my bags don’t weigh more than I do and
then find a guy to lift them into the overhead bin.

Straight to the arena to set up remote cameras…

These finals orbit around Cleveland Cavaliers player LeBron James.  The
U.S. media are crowning him King James and hailing him as the next
Michael Jordan.  If Cleveland wins (or even if they dont) the Reuters
photo report will be heavily weighted with pictures of LeBron, so
shooting multiple angles of him in action with remote cameras makes for
a varied edit.

On an overhead catwalk I mount a 400mm lens which I will trigger when
players jump for a rebound via a button attached to one of my hand-held
cameras.

Dallas-based Reuters photographer Jessica Rinaldi (top) holds a
focus card.

Photographer Mike Blake set up an overhead remote during the recent NHL
playoffs with a Canon 5D camera and a USB cable attached to a computer
running the Reuters Paneikon editing software.  I decided to try the
same thing so that the editors could have a live feed instead of having
to wait until the late-night end of the game.  We used Paneikon for the
first time at an NBA Finals with Gary Hershorn, Peter Jones, and Mike
Blake editing from New York, Toronto and San Diego respectively, and
everything ran really smoothly.

The Canon 5D, 400mm lens and pc computer set up with a Sprint card
& Paneikon.

The story of Game 1 was how the Spurs Tim Duncan dominated LeBron
James and the overhead camera came through with a good illustration of
his aggressive defense.

Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James (L) is fouled by San Antonio
Spurs Tim Duncan as he goes up to shoot.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The NBA only allows one camera behind the glass for the finals (in
addition to the NBA & Sports Illustrated cameras), so Reuters, AP,
Getty, EPA, and AFP take turns to set it up and we pool the images.  We
shoot Game 2, which produced a photo of finals MVP Tony Parker.

Lucy setting up the camera behind the glass.

San Antonio Spurs Tony Parker goes up to score during Game 2. 
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

I was shooting with the new Canon Mark III cameras for the first time
and they were pretty impressive in low light.  This is a crop of a
third of the full frame of LeBron James sitting in a dark corner
waiting to be interviewed, which I shot at 3200 ISO.

LeBron James at 3200 ISO.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

This finals was one of the dullest, most unemotional Ive seen.  It
ended abruptly in Cleveland as the Spurs won four straight games with a
defensive lockdown on LeBron James magic.

 
Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James reacts during their Game 2 loss
to the San Antonio Spurs.   REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

The only spark came from Tony Parker, the diminutive point guard from
France, who energized Game 4 as he became the first European player to
earn the NBA Finals most valuable player award.

San Antonio Spurs Tony Parker of France kisses the NBA
Championship trophy as he holds the MVP trophy in the locker room
defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 4.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

San Antonio Spurs Tony Parker (R) celebrates with owner Peter Holt
(C) and Fransico Elson (L) after defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in
Game 4.  REUTERS/Hans Deryk

Lucy Nicholson
www.lucynicholson.com