I would like to make a brief tribute to Olivier Thetaz with whom I take pictured here in action. He is a professional driving instructor training the likes of police or ambulance drivers. He is also a retired amateur race driver and sometimes I think he still has a bit of racing in his blood. I have been sitting on the back of his motorbike on and off for the last 15 years covering cycling, running, triathlon and bikes races.

 
The pictures I take are a result of our special relationship. As the races we cover are not too busy compared to those of the Tour de France or Giro d’Italia we are a bit less pressured but I still need to be fast in making a decision to ask him to stop on the side of the road.

I have to look forward and backwards, take into account the sun, the background and the possibility to quickly jump back on the bike to stay ahead of the riders as it is quite difficult to overtake. We try to prepare his position on the road before so we can make the best of the little time we have.

He also needs to be quick and precise.  He has to place the bike in position in front of the riders - we are generally only allowed to shoot for a few seconds and then leave our position on a rotational basis.

We are in constant communication via a bluetooth radio device on our helmets which is a technological improvement compared with the days when we had to scream orders at each other.

Even so, we had to find a way to communicate with short words and I would always talk with his view in mind - not mine : left, right, up down, level with the yellow jersey or the emergency shout “Dégage !” (Move out !) when a rider tries to use the wind tunnel created by us to leave the pack more easily.

He also has my safety in his hands. In Switzerland, roads are only closed to oncoming traffic a few minutes before the arrival of the race.

As a rule we have to drive on the left hand side of the road, facing the oncoming vehicles that security didn’t manage to catch before the arrival of the race -  I can recall two accidents involving other drivers, fortunately neither resulting in bad injuries.

I have to trust him as I can only concentrate on the race and I’m relieved to say I very rarely get a bad feeling about his driving. He only lets me know later in the evening when we were close to a crash !

This usually happens when we drive down a pass following the pack - then the technical cars are the biggest danger as we all have to speed up to more than 100 km/h (60 miles/h) to keep up with the riders as they are quicker in the curves and have the priority anyway.

On some sections of road we are also allowed to overtake the pack but it can only be done with the goodwill of the riders - sometimes they get too close and touch the bike but fortunately we’re travelling at the same speed. Inevitably there is also some swearing in various foreign languages as we choose the wrong side to overtake….

The strangest day we experienced was certainly the 21st June 2007, it really proved to be the longest day of the year. We were in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland in Bellinzona for the Tour de Suisse cycling race. It was stage 6 out of 9, and we went to the start as usual 90 minutes before to get a good coffee and wait for the cyclists to arrive for some portrait shots.

Some gathering black clouds on the mountain tops convinced us to wear our rain cover as the stage was about to start. Wearing this outfit means you are almost waterproof (apart from your camera) but you have to wear it over all your clothes.

Any movement is a struggle so turning around on the bike to shoot is far from easy. It started to rain big drops, then the drops became hailstones and very quickly the road was covered in white.

The driver had already stopped and was lying on the fuel tank of his motorbike trying to prevent any damage. He also refused to drive back to the riders  as we were cruising 1 km in front of the pack when it happened. I then had to run back to find some cyclists and take some pictures.

The stage was stopped and soon a new start on the other side of the mountain was decided. I decided to quickly send some images as my phone was ringing with editors asking if we were on the spot - but the region proved to be badly connected with no 3G phone signal and we had to rush to drive the 80 kilometers left to the second start.

Only a few kilometres before the end of that stage, I was sitting backwards on the bike for my convenience, and he shouts in the radio that there is a horse running loose on the road. I try to turn my body and managed to get a few frames before the animal exited down the nearest side road. It is a day we still remember and joke about with colleagues.

So far in 2009 we have covered the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse cycling races in Switzerland.

Audio slideshow produced by Toru Hanai and Kim Kyung-hoon. A full story is listed below.

ICHIKAWA, Japan - He is a typical man of age — a few white hairs cover his round head and he wears dentures.

But 75-year-old Shigeo Tokuda sat on a movie set on Monday wearing just a silk kimono and loin cloth about to have sex on film with a woman who is younger than his daughter.

Tokuda is Japan’s oldest pornographic movie star and was shooting his latest film in which he portrayed a master of sex.

The director said the films showed people that their sex lives did not have to end with old age, and in 16 years of making such movies Tokuda has acted up with women ranging from their 20s to as old as himself.

“I debuted at 59, and have played in more than 200 porno movies since then,” he said, using his screen name, not his real one in an interview on the set.

“I wanted to challenge what ordinary people did not, so I decided to be a porno actor.”

In Monday’s film he used vibrators, whips and candle lights to show the master satisfying a 36-year-old actress. The film was not scripted.

Tokuda turned to the pornographic industry late. He lived a typical Japanese office worker’s life as a travel agent after graduating from one of Tokyo’s elite colleges.

The career sideline came about because he was unsatisfied with a lack of story lines in sex movies he’d seen, which led to a discussion with a film producer about whether he could do better.

It took a couple of years of thinking about it but Tokuda eventually took his pants off for the camera.

Since then, he has became a popular figure in porn movies for rent in Japan, with its rapidly ageing population and long life expectancy. One in five Japanese is over 65 years old.

“Other old men think they can do it because he can. The elderly can feel secure and encouragement when they see his films,” said Gaichi Kono, the director of Tokuda’s latest film.

Japan’s elderly are rejecting the idea that growing old means slowing down, said Chineko Araki, a professor of social welfare from Den-en Chofu University.

“More than 50 percent of men over 65 are eager to have a sexual relationship with their partners,” she said in an email interview.

Tokuda’s films will soon be offered to Japanese retirement homes, exports beckon and they may be shown on the Internet.

Tokuda says his wife and daughter pretend not to know and his friends will never guess.

“But my job makes me keep alive,” he says, adding he plans to keep going at least till he hits 80 years old.

A Florida tent city for hundreds of homeless people lies at the end of a dead-end street, but residents say they have not given up hope of a better life despite the U.S. economic downturn.

The Pinellas Hope camp, 250 single-person tents in neat rows on land owned by the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg in a wooded area north of the city, has room for about 270 and has been filled to capacity since it opened two years ago.

“I could open the gates and have over 500 people,” said Sheila Lopez, the chief operating officer for Catholic Charities at the St. Petersburg diocese.

The camp has a food hall, bathrooms and showers, a laundry room and a few computers for residents to look for jobs and prepare resumes.

“This is a great place to be. It gives us a great opportunity,” said Alex, a resident who declined to give his last name. “We have a safe place to live. It sure beats sleeping on the street.”

The number of homeless people in the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, is difficult to pin down, advocacy groups say, because most people are homeless for only a short period of time.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates about 675,000 people are homeless on any given night during a one-month period. Between 2.5 million and 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness for at least one night in a year.

The alliance said it expects more than 1 million people to become homeless as a result of the current recession.

Our World Now is available in U.S. bookstores. Click here or on the picture above to view a site dedicated to the book.

Pigeons create controversy among city dwellers whether they are being pilloried as "rats with wings" or celebrated as endlessly feedable feathered friends.

Through photographer Simon de Glanville's pictures, viewers come eye-to-eye with the creatures.

Over the past 10 years, De Glanville has taken pictures of pigeons, squirrels and dogs for a project entitled "London Wildlife". His favourite locations for photographing urban wildlife include London's Peckham, Brixton and Chinatown neighbourhoods.

What is your opinion of pigeons? Do these pictures change your perspective on pigeons?

A nice number 4.25, seems to sit easy on the eye, or should do except its 4:25 a.m. and the numbers are from my digital clock.

As Reuters’ chief photographer in Asia, I have a lot on my mind. The threat of conflict on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, floods in India and Bangladesh, a bogus trial of Suu Kyi in Myanmar, crashing economies, H1N1, claims and counter-claims of corruption and racism, insecurity in Nepal and Sri Lanka, global warming, the risk of unrest in Tibet and of course, China, where just about anything can happen at any time.

With the decline of the traditional news market, however, I sometimes wonder who still cares about news pictures and why should they be paid for.

How can you put a value to a news picture? You can’t eat it. A picture doesn’t move financial markets, so you can’t make money from it like you can on a news story. We hear the news through word of mouth, on the radio or even on the television. Most pictures have a lifespan of no more than 24 hours anyway, and everyone can take them these days (or so they think). So why bother?

Simple answer: when it comes to integrity, honesty and trust, seeing is believing.
It is rarely understood that people are smart and should be left to come to their own conclusions. A still picture shot by a Reuters news photographer gives the viewer time to see the truth.

Take as an example when Sri Lanka declared that it had beaten the Tamil Tigers and a quarter-century war was over. A counter claim was made: “No its not, we are fighting on,” said the Tamil Tigers. The government said that rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was dead. “Oh no he’s not,” countered the Tamil Tigers.

A day later Reuters News Pictures get exclusive pictures of Prabhakaran’s corpse being carried through a crowd of government soldiers. A close-up image of his face told the indisputable truth – Prabhakaran is dead.

A colleague, who works in the financial news section of Reuters and was born in Sri Lanka wanted to study the picture for quite some time. His response after a few minutes of close scrutiny was “Oh my God! It’s really him. That man has impacted my life for over 20 years and now he is dead”. The undeniable truth. No-one can ever tell my colleague different, it’s a fact.

The story in a news picture taken by a Reuters photographer is irrefutable, unbiased and will form part of history for others to believe in too. This truth, like integrity, cannot be bought but has to be earned and then maintained at all costs – once lost it can never be replaced.

My fear, at 4.25am, is that not enough people value this precious commodity – maybe I should get back to sleep and not worry.

It was tempting to stand on the sidelines and shoot with a long lens behind the barrier alongside the heckling parents. But with the immortalised words of war photographer Robert Capa burning in my head “”If your picture isn’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” I knew what I had to do. I needed to be where the action was happening, on the frontline amongst the battle hungry children and the ammunition of waiting custard pies.

With two black bags and a length of duct tape I prepared my camera for action. Wrapping the plastic to create a protective sheath with only the filter of the lens and the flash head showing, and just enough space for my hands to control the trigger.

The countdown had begun, the demarked area was swarming with children. The starter shouted ‘Go’ and a stream of custard and flan bases rained down to the sound of shrieking children. No less than 10 seconds and my camera had taken a direct hit. Everything faded to darkness, I couldn’t see anything through the dense custard layer. With the aid of some nappy rash baby bottom wipes (supplied by the sponsor to aid the clean-up operation) I managed to wipe clean my camera and continue shooting.

It didn’t take long for some of the braver pie fighters to decide that an adult and member of the media looked a far greater trophy. ‘Splat’ I took a pie in the side of the head. I could feel the custard already congealing inside my inner ear. As the rest of the patisserie made its way down the back of my neck. From then on I was target numero uno and sustained hits to most part of my body.

Suddenly a cheer went up. “We’ve done it”. Battle had been sustained continuously for one whole minute and victory over the World Record holders was imminent. Skirmishes continued as parents tried to drag away vanilla and banana flavoured children to be cleaned.

I limped away (I had custard in some unimaginable places) to file, feeling somewhat like a giant crème brulee as the custard firmed to a crust in the sun.

Photos of Luke MacGregor taken by Terry Applin of The Argus in Brighton.

One of the demonstrations I always look forward to is the one featuring the latest in military warfare aircraft. I had the privilege of seeing the F-22 Raptor team last year at this same show. This year the Navy brought along the F-18F Super Hornet.

I know from shows past about water vapor appearing on the wings. Capturing these images is very difficult due to the speed and angle of the aircraft, not to mention that if you’re seeing vapor, it is probably a really bad day for photography. It usually means a humid, overcast day - add the grey color of most standard military aircraft and you have an exposure “nightmare”.

With this sequence it was really simple - it was pure luck and a bit of timing. They announced the pilot would be making a “high speed pass” from the right, would come straight down in a dive and level off at show center. I knew there would be a great opportunity in the descent for some “vapor shots” but what happened surprised even the air boss announcing the show.

With my Nikon D3 set at 1/8000th of a second at F4 at 400ISO, I started tracking the plane as he began to dive, firing away cautiously as to not fill up the buffer on the camera, but still getting the shots I was hoping for. Then the fun began and the cloud formed once on the descent. I saw it, but knew it wasn’t “tack” sharp and I wasn’t going to miss it again if it happened. In a sense I “cheated” a bit, laying down and making good use of the 9FPS I had my D3 set to. The end result was about 18 frames of the cloud forming around the jet, and disappearing into the air.

I looked back at the sequence in the camera when all was said and done, and I was very hesitant to zoom in to see if it was sharp, especially on the best of the image sequence. However, my excitement got the better of me, and when I decided to check I was able to clearly read the pilot’s name in the camera, so I knew I had nothing to worry about.

The best part of it all is I was on a “spec” assignment for a local newspaper. The air show refused me access to the roof of the building so I would be away from the fans. The paper along with other agencies never ran the image as it didn’t appear to impress them.

Operation in Sanjaray

Embedded with the Canadian Army in Kandahar.

On May 16th I reached the forward operating base (FOB) after traveling in an convoy of armoured vehicles that left from Kandahar Airfield.

We set out from the FOB in a different armoured convoy traveling for a “secret cleaning operation” in Sanjaray village. I was told that the only condition for me to go was to not send pictures until the end of the operation.

We followed the tracks left by the tanks in the burning desert sand, surrounded by orange-colored mountains, until we reached an improvised base belonging to the Afghan National Police (ANA). This base offers a view of Sanjaray and the entire valley.

The Afghan soldiers based there don’t have electricity or running water, and they sleep on blankets stretched over the ground under a half-constructed building that still has no windows. We spent the night sleeping in the open next to the tanks.

The joint operation in which more than a thousand soldiers from Canada, the U.S. and Afghanistan were participating, was one of the largest ever carried out in this region considered to be rife with Taliban fighters.

At daybreak on the 17th we were already on the march into the valley. We watched the sun rise from behind the mountains as we entered Sanjaray. Our goal was to hike between three and four km each day, and thus cover the 12 square km in which the operation was focused.

The soldiers hiked for hours but advanced slowly with their backpacks weighing some 30-40 kilos. One other factor that determined their speed was the work of mine-sweepers that cleared the way ahead with the help of dogs.

The streets of Sanjaray, where the call to prayer is heard morning and night, are a capricious labyrinth of mud-brick, circular houses with not one straight line; no two windows or doors are the same size. No houses are alike but they all have their courtyards full of grape vines and cherry trees. Their fields abound in wheat and sorghum, as well as poppy and wild cannabis.

The landscape is biblical with waterholes, small streams, men with long beards walking their donkeys and children dressed in shirt-like robes. The mechanized soldiers with their high tech equipment are practically extraterrestrial.

The searches began early in houses and compounds that were on the soldiers’ list. At one house they found material to make homemade explosives (HEDs), and at another they arrested three men suspected of belonging to the Taliban, but they didn’t allow me to photograph them. I was told they were taken immediately to Kandahar.

We continued until noon checking courtyards, yards, stables and kitchens, and interrogated those present and asked about those family members that were absent. They took photos, climbed up to attics, jumped over walls, crossed rivers, and on and on. They stopped to rest often in the shade, and as the day went on they stuck closer to walls for cover.

At the end of the day we found a place to sleep, a narrow strip between cherry trees and a stream, where the village gives way to wheat fields. A Chinook helicopter landed to replenish our food and water. We had consumed five or six liters of water each after a day that peaked at 45 degrees Celsius.

The following day began a 4 am. In just a few minutes the soldiers had their sleeping bags rolled up, did a quick wash-up and swallowed some form of energy to begin the nine hours of hiking to come.

We crossed through plantations searching the mountains that crown the valley to the north. Helicopters flew overhead all day long as we hiked for hours together with an Afghan Army platoon working parallel to us. For hours we found nothing and nobody, crossing one river with water up to the waist and another by walking across a pipe that serves as a bridge.

The heat and lack of water finally made us stop, and a Chinook brought us more. We got ready to spend the night in what looked to be a quiet place, until we were ordered to sleep with our boots on.

I was told that the Taliban planned an attack for that night. Sure enough at around midnight I awoke to the whistle of rockets, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. A sergeant told me not to worry. If you could hear the rockets it meant they were aiming for someplace far, he said, because the rockets travel faster than sound.

More rockets followed and then came flares to light up the night for snipers, and that continued until almost daybreak. It was only later that I found out that the rockets were fired by the Canadians, and that we weren’t attacked. They told me that the Taliban had “decided to remain in hiding.”

A Chinook woke us at 5 am when it brought more supplies, landing very close to us and blowing towels and bags around the camp with its powerful rotors. We were ready for the final hike.

The second officer in charge of the operation assured me that it had been a success, with the best result being that all his men were unharmed. “We showed the Taliban that we can come and go whenever we want.” Even though they never showed their face.

But the question that always comes to mind is “what is the hardest to shoot?’

I always remember protests or riots, clashes between stone throwing protesters and gun-toting Indian troops. Stress levels quickly rise as me and my text colleague, Sheikh Mushtaq, realize that our assignment will not be easy whenever we go out, mostly on Fridays, the day when Muslims offer congregational weekly prayers, which turn into weekly protests against Indian rule in Kashmir.

There is literally no place to hide and shooting is nearly impossible when angry protesters take to the streets and rocks rain down; Indian troops retaliate with tear gas shells, rubber bullets and many times with live ammunition. Most of the time we, with protective gear and camera equipment strapped to our shoulders in backpacks, are stuck in the narrow streets of downtown Srinagar as impatient crowds and ruthless troops battle for hours.

Blood is always spilled in the streets of Kashmir where tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of an anti-India insurgency.

It was a pleasant and beautiful day in Srinagar, a city of over one million ringed by snow-capped Himalayan mountains, but tear gas brings bittersweet tears to my eyes and rocks sometime make me bleed. I clutch my camera, adjust the focus and aperture and keep on shooting masked rioters and police replying with slingshots, teargas shells and bullets. A rock came towards me, I ducked but it hit another cameraman. He was bleeding lying beside me. On many occasions, I had to drop my camera and take care of injured reporters and photojournalists. Several times even I was not lucky.

Years back I was hit by a tear gas shell and then enveloped by a cloud of dust and tear gas smoke. As the tear gas shell exploded between my legs and tore my calf muscle badly. Mushtaq from a distance was looking at me helplessly as the rattle of gun fire followed screams and cries for help. I was bleeding and fell unconscious. After hours I found myself in a hospital and later spent months in bed missing the thrill of photography.

When Kashmir last year faced some of the biggest anti-India protests in nearly 20 years, photojournalists faced the wrath of security forces and angry protesters.  Many of us were beaten up by riot police and demonstrators, protesting Indian rule in the disputed region. They break our cameras and sometimes beat us with batons and gun butts.

It is painful and disturbing but when I see people writhing in blood and dying with bullet wounds, my pain disappears and I feel guilty when police do not allow us to photograph the tragedy. I feel disappointed when they stop us after ambulances and hospitals are attacked.
People often ask “what is the most difficult to shoot in a conflict zone?”  I always say “protests or rioting.”