ATTENTION EDITORS: GRAPHIC CONTENT

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.

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.