On my way back from a routine election assignment in Hsinchu, a fellow wire photographer quizzes me on my age.

“Errr… 26″ I reply and the other wire photographer goes “Wah sey!” which translates as something like “Whoa” if there is such a word in english. He proceeds to to tell me that he can’t remember where he was when he was 26.

Which is probably also why Russell, the Asia Chief photographer, asked me to write about my newbie experience operating and planning my first big team story,  namely the Taiwan presidential election won by Nationalist candidate, Ma ying-jeou.

My plan was simple, don’t screw up and don’t miss any news. I must admit though, I would not have had such a comprehensive coverage of the elections without the guidance of Reinhard Krause and Russell Boyce (If I was an ‘Angel’, they would be Charlie).

Also, kudos to Darren Whiteside, Bobby Yip and Pichi Chuang who covered all the assignments in Taiwan with such energy and creativity. These guys really are the best!

(Darren in the centre with red bandana on the Taiwan Killer media bus, picture taken by Bobby Yip)

(A ride on the Taiwan Killer media bus gets you a shot like this)

After months of following the campaign, the big election day finally came for Taiwan.

The plan was to file early voting pix for U.S., Canada and South American clients who might have an interest in the Taiwan elections. Filing early at say 9am here would be 9pm over there, very close to or past newspaper deadlines. Also, filing early ensure your pix hit the news websites first.

Now with all the nice looking voting feature pictures done, comes the boring but mandatory pix of the presidential candidates voting. I say mandatory because if you manage to get a pic of the candidate looking victorious even before results are annouced way later at night, early edition papers or websites might use the voting pix as an alternative to the night jubo pix if the candidates do not appear till really late at night.

The big mama of elections is really getting a simple pic of the president-elect gesturing in victory. I quote “The first person to get that pic out usually gets the headlines tomorrow”.

The planning that goes behind that though is another story.

5am on election day, my assistant and I carry eight stepladders to the headquarters of both candidates to ensure that we have the best positions at night to shoot the victor. We arrive at the KMT location at 6am only to find that TV crews were already poised to attack the media stages. We lock and chain up three stepladders at different locations at Ma’s headquarters whom we expect to win. Shortly after at around 7am, AP and AFP arrive to place their stepladders too.

12 hours later, the area was packed with supporters and as planned, I got a postion in front of the stage, Reinhard shot from the right and Russell from the left. As Russell was the closest to the media centre, he would shoot for five minutes and immediately file while Reinhard and my assistans would “Speedy Gonzales” the cards to him to edit the first batch of jubo pictures.

My spot was slightly tricky though, because the organisers had rearranged the stepladders in front of the stage, I was forced slightly further back, which made my shot messy, while AP and AFP had slightly off centre positions but a better angle to get a nice background which read “Moving Forward” in Chinese.

“Screwed!” I thought to myself. After much comtemplating and negotiating with a local photographer who agreed to let me move forward to the stage on the basis that I don’t stand up, I got a much better angle for an opportunity to shoot the jubo shot well. Turns out, I was the first person to kneel at the new president (who would not arrive till about an hour later ) because of my “No standing up agreement”. A good lesson to never underestimate your relations with a local newspaper photographer this was though, he saved my skin!

Ma arrives. “Get the right exposure! Horizontals and verticals! Tight and loose! Don’t screw up!” A million thoughts that across my mind. Phew.

All’s well that ends well and it’s finally time to treat myself to beer and a foot massage. In a month following the two candidates around I’ve seen more of them than I have my Mum.

A fellow photographer of mine once said that Taiwan is different from any other country. For one, there is never enough space at any event to shoot it comfortably so if you expect to get a good spot, you have to come down at least two hours before the event.

Pichi Chuang

In a general news story you can expect more than 11 news television stations sending 20 plus cameramen with assistants. As for local newspapers, foreign newspapers and wire services, the number of photographers can chalk up to 30 odd.
 
All in all, expecting 40-50 fellow photographers and cameraman jostling for the same image with you is pretty much the norm in Taiwan for a common and very local story. 

 
You can only imagine what happens when it is a big news story.
 
To make matters worse, during elections, political parties always provide a media vehicle to give photographers and cameramen a photo opportunity as politicians ride on a similar vehicle and wave to their supporters.

Nicky Loh
 
Unlike the politicians, we do not usually have the luxury of having seatbelts fastened to us while the vehicle moves and have to watch out for low lying branches and power cables that could take our heads off or knock us off the vehicle.
 
We can only depend on our sturdy stance on the moving vehicle and pray that the subject is in the frame when we hit the shutter amidst the shakey ride.

Pichi Chuang
 
During the coverage of the Taiwan legislative elections, a Hong Kong TV correspondent fell from a press bus in Kaohsiung.
 
Ricky Li, a cameraman working for Asia Television, hit his head on the ground as he failed to jump aboard the moving press bus. Li was rushed to the Kaohsiung Veterrans General Hospital to undergo surgery for two hours to remove blood clots from his brain. 
 
He remains in a coma.

 
Even Reuters photographer Pichi Chuang was not spared the pain when a cameraman dropped his beta cam on her when the media bus braked hard.
 
The feeling of knowing that a colleague was so injured seriously disturbs me and made me realise that if this kind of freak accident could happen to him, it could happen to any of us, anytime.

Nicky Loh
 
So the next time we are passionately pursuing a news event and running after our subjects, we should also take a step back and make sure our safety is not compromised in any case.
 
As the Taiwan presidential looms closer, more of these media bus events will take place, and these pictures usually do make it to print because they are the news pictures. Though, we should ask ourselves, is this photo really worth risking our lives for and can we do it differently?