"Skunk", the Israeli Army calls it. Good name.

It had been a month or so since I was last in Bilin, a village in the West Bank, north of Ramallah. Regular protests occur here every Friday over the controversial Israeli barrier fence. Palestinian, Israeli  and international protesters and activists gather near the fence to protest and sometimes throw stones at the Israeli security forces standing guard on the other side who fire teargas at the protesters. Sometimes the amount of teargas the security forces fires can be overwhelming because they are firing into open fields rather than narrow streets or houses. The gas is usually enough to turn all but the hardcore protesters back along the path from which they came.

I knew beforehand the Israeli security forces had recently introduced a new sort of smelly chemical spray, called Skunk, fired from a police water cannon. I was told by Fadi Arouri, our Ramallah photographer, how horrible it was after he experienced the lasting stink it left with him the week before. He politely offered to stay back last Friday, a few hundred meters away, to get a long shot of the tear gas being fired.

I thought, no problem, I'll get in there and get the shots before any spraying starts. I should have known better with my track record. I was once sprayed by a police water canon in Kuala Lumpur during a protest and had to walk the walk of shame through a brand new shopping mall, covered in yellow die and  pepper spray,  to find a dry shirt and a  pair of pants. Nobody in the mall wanted to serve me.

A few years later, outside the American embassy in Jakarta, I was directly hosed by a police water canon, for more than the required amount of time I might add. Moments later I discovered, to the amusement of the few hundred hard-core anti American protesters who were also there, that I was the only person who was wet.

This time in Bilin, I promised myself, it would be different.

Some of the protesters were wearing heavy yellow rain gear, the type fishermen wear or crossing guards don in storms. I wonder where they bought them, out here in the desert where it rains only a few days a year. The police water canon quickly emerged from hiding behind a house on the hill. I was already wearing my gas mask as I casually started walking backwards, trying not to appear like I was retreating.

It was not the most dramatic sight in the world. The water cannon first sent a few feeble streams of the green liquid into the air to test the wind direction. It looked like most went back towards the Israeli troops watching from the distance. Then it started sending the plumes of spray 45 degrees to the right of us, high into the air. I watched it rain down on the protesters in front of me, took some pictures and stood back out of the way. Again and again it fired, but I was dry, safe and, I believed, smelling sweet.

And then it happened. It started with a drop of sweat on my nose, inside my tightly sealed gas mask. The sweat started a chain-reaction itch. I shook my head and even jumped up and down. This had to be dealt with, and quickly I thought. Walking away from the protesters, I gently slid my index finger through my mask's seal in attempt to solve my dilemma by scratching my nose. Big mistake!

It was, without doubt, one of the most horrible things I have ever smelled. I can't describe it without using expletives. But if you mixed dirty diapers with not so fresh road kill and left them all in the sun for a few days, you might get an idea. That half second scratch will last me a lifetime. And I wasn't even hit with it.

Despite changing my clothes by the car, and rinsing my exposed arms and face with water the stench was still there. It was on my boots, my cameras, my helmet and mask. I could smell it the whole ride home. I could think of nothing else. I thought about what I would say to the border police at the checkpoint if they searched my car. "No, I don't have a rotting corpse in the trunk, I was just at a protest"

Five days later, after countless washes and scrubs, I can still smell it. My cameras came out worst. I wanted to put them through the delicate cycle in my washing machine, but you just can't do that.  My gas mask went in the dishwasher, though, along with my helmet. Everything else that couldn't be machine washed, has been coated over and over with disinfectant spray, to no avail. The trunk of my car still has a "serial killer" stench to it.

Next time I am in Bilin, I will go for the long shot...

During nearly two decades of violent Kashmir conflict, I have covered fierce gun battles, between Indian soldiers and Muslim militants, suicide bombings, rebel attacks, massacres, protests, mayhem, violent elections and disasters.

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.”

When Ingolfur Juliusson's first pictures of the riots in Iceland came in to Your View we had no pictures by Reuters photographers or stringers on our professional picture wire. Seeing this and the quality of the images, I sent them along to our chief photographer of the region. In cases where we use citizen journalists pictures on our professional wire it is usually the chief photographer who negotiates usage and payment for the photographer. As our chief photographer was out of the office and knowing that Europe was on deadline for these pictures, I contacted Ingolfur directly and negotiated a payment for 5 pictures.

The selection was quickly moved on the wire and it wasn't long before we saw some online play.

This screenshot is from http://www.dn.se/

A number of Your View contributors have had their pictures moved on the Reuters Pictures wire.

Click here to view a slideshow and click here to view this week's showcase.

I’d like to add my own congratulations to the plaudits being lauded on Adrees Latif who has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. It is one hell of a picture.

The following images are unlikely prize-winners but serve to demonstrate the delight with which news of his win has been received by his Reuters colleagues. In the first Paul Barker, Editor Asia News Pictures and Asia Chief Photographer Russell Boyce toast his image;

while in the second the editorial team from text, TV, graphics and pictures at Reuters Asia HQ in Singapore drink his health as Adrees himself listens-in via the telephone on the desk to the right of the frame, from his assignment in Nepal.  

I bet he’s pleased now that he diversified beyond basketball and maybe at long last my spell-checker will stop trying to correct his name to ‘Address’.

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2008/04/pulitzer.html

Reuters Bangkok senior photographer Adrees Latif tells how he took the pictures which won him a Pulitzer Prize. The pictures were taken in Myanmar during the protests in September last year and include the photo of Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai being shot.

“Tipped off by protests against soaring fuel prices, I landed in Yangon on 23 September, 2007, with some old clothes, a Canon 5D camera, two fixed lenses and a laptop.

For the next four days, I went to Shwedagon Pagoda, two-three kilometres from the centre of town and waited for the monks who had been gathering there daily at noon.

Since I was at the same pagoda every day, dozens of people, including monks, asked me who I was and what I was doing. As the ruling military regime is notoriously secretive, my replies were guarded.

Barefoot in maroon robes, and ringed by civilians, the monks chanted and prayed before starting their two-kilometre march to the Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon. Each day their numbers grew, from hundreds to thousands.

By 27 September, the city had become packed with troops. Soldiers and government agents stood at street corners.

Finding the Shwedagon Pagoda sealed off, I went to the middle of town to find groups of young people taunting soldiers at Sule.

Within minutes, the crowd swelled from hundreds to a few thousand. The soldiers threw barbed wire coils across the roads.

Knowing that hundreds of people were gunned down in similar circumstances in a 1988 uprising, I climbed an old crosswalk directly overhead, to get to one of the few spots offering a clear view.

Below me, protesters were singing and waving flags; to the side, young men were thrusting their pelvises at the soldiers.

At about 1.30pm local time, two dark green, open-top army trucks approached, followed by dozens more packed with riot police. They were hit by a barrage of water bottles, fruit and abuse from the crowd.

I had already locked on my 135mm lens and set my camera shutter speed to 1000, aperture to F/7.1 and ISO at 800. With the camera on manual, I wanted to stop any movement while offering as much depth-of-field as possible.

Two minutes later, the shooting started. My eye caught a person flying backwards through the air. Instinctively, I started photographing, capturing four frames of the man on his back.

The entry point of the bullet is clear in the first frame, with a soldier in flip flops standing over the man and pointing a rifle. In the second frame, the man is reaching over to try and film.

More shots rang out. I flinched before getting off two more frames - one of the man pointing the camera at the soldier, and one of his face contorted in pain.

Beyond him, the crowd scattered before the advancing soldier. The whole incident, which went on to reverberate around the world, was over in two seconds.

I kept low on the bridge, capturing some more images from among a crowd taking cover. However, with soldiers firing shots and smoke grenades below, I had to get off the bridge.

With adrenaline pumping through my body, I put my camera in my bag and followed the protests for another hour and a half. Feeling the demonstration had lost its strength, I made my way back to my hotel via backstreets and along a railway line.

My initial caption read: “An injured man tries to photograph after police and military officials fired upon and then charged a crowd of thousands protesting in Yangon’s city center September 27, 2007.” Initially, I thought he was merely trampled. I had no idea he was dead.

Two of the frames showed the man’s face. A few hours later his colleagues in Japan had identified him as Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai.

The images dominated front pages across the U.S. and the world. Mourners at Nagai’s funeral in Japan clutched the picture, which played a role in the public outrage that prompted Tokyo to scale back aid to the ruling military junta.”