Photographers Blog

Der Ball ist rund und das Spiel dauert 90 Minuten

“Der Ball ist rund und das Spiel dauert 90 Minuten” – the ball is round and the match lasts 90 minutes - words of wisdom from Sepp Herberger, known as the ’Miracle from Berne’, most famous as German national coach of the team which won the 1954 World Cup. 

The other night we had something like a miracle from Vienna – Michael Ballack struck a thunderbolt free kick to send an unconvincing Germany through to the quarter-finals of the European Soccer Championshop 2008 with a 1-0 win over co-hosts Austria. Ballack’s free kick, right-footed into the top corner and clocked at 121 kilometres an hour by a German TV station exactly describes, what acording to another German saying, is the whole point of the game, “das Runde muss ins Eckige – the round thing must go in the rectangular thing.

So that is easy enough – isnt it??

   1. Germany’s Michael Ballack (4thL) scores from a free kick during their Group B Euro 2008 soccer match against Austria at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna, June 16, 2008.     REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach.  2.  Austria’s goal keeper Juergen Macho fails to save a free kick by Germany’s Michael Ballack during their Group B Euro 2008 soccer match at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna June 16, 2008.     REUTERS/Christian Charisius

Here a some good examples picturewise as well as from a German fan’s standpoint, taken with a remote camera behind the goal – Germany’s Podolski scores past Poland’s goalkeeper Boruc during Group B Euro 2008 match in Klagenfurt. Well done and well shot! – you remember: das Runde muss ins Eckige

Germany’s Lukas Podolski (top) scores past Poland’s goalkeeper Artur Boruc (bottom) during their Group B Euro 2008 soccer match at the Woerthersee Stadium in Klagenfurt June 8, 2008.   REUTERS/Michael Dalder

A postcard from Singapore VIII

This week I worked the 9 to 5 shift just like many others in Singapore and elsewhere. No big deal you might say but peak time taxi fares and traffic jams make getting to the office a real pain. My colleague David Loh who was also on dayshift made a tempting offer, ”buy a helmet and I’ll take you on my Ducati”. This sounded like a plan to me, so of I went to Little India to buy my new helmet. After a little haggling – 50% off the first price - I left with my new silver motor cycle helmet.

The next morning David picked me up and we whizzed past all the jams to the office, faster and more thrillingly than any taxi ride so far. For the whole week we explored routes and I noticed that many homes were decorated with red banners with big golden characters. David and other colleagues told me this was already preparation for Chinese New Year which is in February.

The legend tells how long, long ago in ancient China there was a furious man-eating beast from the mountains (or from under the sea), which looked like a dragon (or  a unicorn). On the first and 15th day of each lunar month the monster, called Nian, came out to hunt people. On the days of its coming the people, in terror, locked their doors before sunset.

In one village lived a wise old man who rallied the people together to face the Nian with loud noises and fireworks. On a moonless freezing cold night the monster appeared and the moment it opened its jaws the people made frightening noises, beating drums and lighting fireworks. Wherever the monster went it was driven back by the din, time and time again until it fell down exhausted and was killed by the villagers.

 Savage as the monster was, the Nian was defeated by the concerted efforts of  a small village. From that time on the people maintained the tradition by beating drums and gongs and lighting fireworks on the coldest day of winter to drive away imaginary monsters and to celebrate their victory over them. Today, Nian refers to the New Year’s Day or Spring Festival. You can hear people often say Guo Nian, meaning ‘survive the Nian’. As Nian also means “the year” Chinese often greet each other with Xin (means “new “) Nian (“year”) Hao (“good”) – Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year is the most important celebration in the Chinese calendar and year 4706 begins on February 7, 2008 – it is the year of the rat. Babies born before Chinese New Year are born in the year of the pig.

A postcard from Singapore VII – p.s.

After a week of concentrated screen staring I escaped from Pictures of the Year 2007 to a nearby food court for dinner with my wife Andrea. We go there often as it is very close to our apartment and offers all kinds of tasty food. Normally we arrive around 2000 because by then everything has slowed down a bit and it is much easier to get a table at our favourite places.

This time as we sat outside drinking a beer, two couples arrived with babies and took the table next to us. They ordered food, fed their babies and chatted until their food arrived, then one mother opened up her laptop. I thought it rather strange that she’d should want to check her e-mails while she was eating until she moved the two highchairs together and stuck the laptop in front of the kids who can’t have been much more than a year old. 

I was so happy to have escaped my screen for the time being, I couldn’t help but feel slightly sorry for these poor little guys stuck in front of theirs, although the distraction it provided certainly gave their parents time to eat in peace and who knows, maybe maybe next time we see them they’ll be casually slipping “neigh, oink, baa, ruff, cluck, meow” into the after dinner conversation. 

A postcard from Singapore VII

After our trip to Australia I worked for just two weeks before escaping again, this time to Vietnam. We began our journey in the south at Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) on the Mekong Delta, and travelled by minibus and plane via Nah Trang, flooded Da Nang, Hoi An and Hue (with its Forbidden City) to the northern Ha Long Bay and the capital Hanoi. Although it involved a lot of travelling and sightseeing, we had a good, relaxed time, always with an eye on the outstanding culinary delights, but that is a story for another day. 

I returned to the office completely relaxed and looking forward to my favourite job of the year, compiling the global selection of Pictures of the Year. Selecting the best pictures of the top stories of the year is a massive task and involves trawling through thousands of world class images including stunning news pictures, graphic scenes of conflict, natural disasters, sports, cute animal features and a lot of very, very boring pictures of men in suits, all too often shaking hands. There were artistic and colourful features, eye-catching stand alones and stunning sports action pictures. A huge challenge but a great job and one I still find thrilling even if I do have to look at more than 500 pictures every working day, five days a week.

At my request local and regional chief photographers had compiled their 2007 selections and while I was in Vietnam hundreds and hundreds of these images had flooded into the Singapore desk. Some were suggestions for the global “best of the best”, others targeted more locally. In the end there were more than 2,000 of them, about five times more pictures than than we needed. I whittled them down to a “short list” of about 1,000, then my boss Pedja Kujunzic and I went through the whole lot, time after time after time, discussing the merits of each picture and the relative importance of the story until we had our final cut. The hardest part was getting the blend right; ensuring that we had the best pictures of the big stories, spiced up with eye catchers to give clients everyhere a selection that was high impact and well balanced.  

In the end we moved clients some 400 Global Pictures of the Year 2007 – I’m sure you will see many of them in the round-ups of the year’s events in your papers or on the internet.

I would like to show you them all but here are a few, my personal selection.

A postcard from Singapore VI

Travelling light and shooting for fun in Australia

In mid-October after finishing my last nightshift on the Singapore desk by moving a picture of the first snow falling in Red Square in Moscow, we decided to escape the heat and humidity in search of cooler weather in Australia. With 20 degree temperatures expectable in Perth I packed “warm” clothes. Despite only having arrived in Singapore in July my body already feels uncomfortable when the temperature drops below 25 degrees.

When travelling I always face the question what photo equipment to take? I always carry my laptop but do I go as a photographer with lots of equipment – or go as tourist with a small a happy snap camera and risk maybe missing “the picture”. For this trip I wanted to take able to file pictures to Singapore if needs be.

But I decided to travel “light”.

An EOS MarkII camera with my new 50mm lens was the key equipment. The 50mm is sharp, small, very light (290g), and fast with an f1.4 aperture. Last but not least it delivers  great image quality. I love the strong halation at f/1.4 – which gives pictures a soft, dreamy look. My all-rounder is the 1670g heavy f3.5-5.6-28-300mm which certainly is capable of producing high quality images, not as great as those from the f2.8-70-200mm but perfect for travelling. To be equipped for all situations I added the f2.8-16-35mm wide angle lens – just in case.

To complete the equipment my wife Andrea took her digital compact camera – which we use especially for close up pictures. Chargers and batteries and that’s it. All lenses and bodies packed in a wash-leather (protects the equipment and keeps it dry) in a low-key sling bag for hand luggage in the plane and when walking around.

Postcard from Singapore V – Oktoberfest

Having been in Singapore for three months now, my wife and I recently joined the German Association a meeting point for some of the more than 5,000 Germans living and working in Singapore. The club was founded 1856 and is one of the oldest foreign clubs in town. Beside guided tours through various interesting areas of Singapore like Chinatown or Little India, there are coffee mornings, inline skating and Doppelkopf events (next to Skat probably the best known card game in Germany). The club also offers the preparatory classes required for those who wish to change an existing, valid international driving license to a Singaporean licence. Personally I see no reason for an extra test but it is mandatory for all foreigners and I will let you know when I pass it.

Last Friday the club organized an evening out to celebrate the ultimate event for fans of beer and group jollity: the Oktoberfest. Traditionally, Oktoberfest takes place during the 16 days up to and including the first Sunday in October. This year, the ‘real’ festival started in Munich on September 22. In Singapore Oktoberfest only runs from October 3 to October 9, although the city has plenty of places where thirsty people can meet at “belated” beer-festivals.

Our destination was the Paulaner Brauhaus, established in 1999, and located at the Millenia Walk – opposite Suntec in the city centre. This microbrewery offers freshly-brewed beer and traditional Bavarian cuisine. Beside the bar on the ground level it has a restaurant on level two with a traditional Maibaum (Maypole) in the middle of the room. Brew meister Alex makes two signature beers; Munich Lager – a bright, golden brew with a smooth taste and 4.7% alcohol and a Munich Dark which contains 4.8% alcohol with a full body, intense malt flavour and a deep dark colour. Additionally customers can get special seasonal brews like Salvator beer (in March), Maibock beer (in May) as well as the world-famous Oktoberfest beer. All the beers are brewed according to “The German Law of Purity” using only 4 natural ingredients; water, hops, malt and yeast. There are no chemicals or artificial enzymes added – and the only beer sold is freshly brewed in the onsite microbrewery.

Once our group arrived in the restaurant the first half litre Oktoberfest beer arrived ….. hmmmmm what a great taste. The waitress – definitely not Bavarian – was handing out the “Oktoberfest Dinner Menu”. We really enjoy the Asian food here and the more spice the better, but after three months my body was crying out for a real portion of meat. The menu was reassuringly familiar and wonderful - Wurstsalat (sliced Regensburger sausage), Leberknoedelsuppe (liver dumpling in clear soup), my favourite Schweinshaxe (grilled pork knuckle with sauerkraut and bread dumpling) – and Wiener schnitzel (breaded veal schnitzel and steamed asparagus and potatoes). Decidedly not for vegetarians …. but just the job for Bavarians and beer drinkers and there are many of both here in Singapore. 

My wife went for the Schnitzel and I ordered Haxn (knuckle). Seasoned drinkers already know this, but for novices I will repeat the one simple rule of Oktoberfest – “eat properly before you start drinking the beer”. With the right ‘preparation’ you can have one or two beers more …. if you can afford it - half a litre of beer costs 16.90 SG$, which is around 8 Euros. I am reliably informed that the average cost in Munich was this year between 7 and 8 Euro per litre!

A Postcard from Singapore IV – Face-to-face with the ‘exTerminator’

After testing numerous Mooncakes I have come to the conclusion that most are delicious. The Black Forest Cherry Mooncake is a cracker, but I actually prefer the “original” style. Despite the immense number of calories I have consumed the process of sampling  mooncakes all over the place has been very enjoyable, particularly since my colleagues have taken to ensuring there are always fresh mooncakes around when I arrive at the office.

This week’s Tuesday afternoonshift was very busy with the top story being the protests in Myanmar (see previous blogs).  In addition to hard news pictures, the Singapore desk sees many other interesting images from around the world – sometimes just nice to look at, sometimes real eye-catchers.

Here are a few from that afternoon shift.

1. Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband listens to speeches during the annual Labour Party conference by Dylan Martinez, proving that although party conferences may be boring there is no reason why the pictures need to be. 

2. In the Siberian city of Barnaul, Andrey Kasprishin pictures an enormous baby girl Nadia (L), who weighed 7.75 kg (17.1 lbs) at birth.

3. With his image from the FIFA Women’s World Cup in China of an excited Anja Mittag talking on the on the telephone after Germany beat Norway, Alfred Cheng Jin shows us that a good soccer picture does not always need a ball in it. 

A Postcard from Singapore III

After several combinations of team working various morning and afternoon shifts, this week was time for a whole new experience: The main shift of the day: our night shift which begins at 1500 gmt/2300 local time. From 2300 until early in the morning there at least one EiC is on duty awith typically from five to seven sub-editors. The night shift is most certainly our heaviest shift with up to 1000 pictures landing over an eight hour period on a busy nights.

I arrived at the office at 2200 to give me plenty of time to read in, look through all the pictures moved during the day and catch up on our top-stories.

And sure enough we had one : The Indonesian island of Sumatra ihad been hit by a powerful earthquake, which toppled hundreds of buildings, killing at least 10 people and burying many others The previous shift already moved pictures and taken some TV grabs from remoter areas. In addition to our pictures wire I  monitored the file of our TV colleagues so as not to miss any potentially useful images fthey may have.

So my first overnight began shift began busily but I was to find out very quickly that this was just the beginning. My colleague Altaf was quietly getting on with editing and processing the file from the ICC Cricket World Cup Twenty20 from South Africa while the rest of our team was filing the pictures from some 22 Euro 2008 qualifiers and friendly soccer matches (Germany beat Romania!!), European Basketball from Madrid, US senator Obama giving a speech, military bands performing in Red Square , a huge file from New York fashion week, a boy practicing boxing at ” Fights for Peace project ” at a slum in Rio de Janeiro, pictures from the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival and preparing the images to accompany stories from the Reuters features desk . did I already mention England beating Russia 3-nil?

At about 0600, an hour before the end of the shift the incoming flood of pictures began to slow down. Thanks mainly to sub-editors Altaf, Deurbon, Gary, Jacinta, Kerk, Rina, Tom, TZ, and Wei Yang who are incredibly fast we had processed and filed more than 900 pictures in a single shift.

It was time to depressurise and relax a bit after seven hours non stop, without a break.

A Postcard from Singapore – II

The second in a series charting Editor in Charge Joachim Herrmann’s move from the Berlin bureau to Reuters global picture editing desk in Singapore.  

After exploring miles and miles of the islands shopping malls, I finally began my job as Editor-in-Charge on the Global Pictures Desk. Over the past few weeks I have observed colleagues working all three desk shifts, asked questions, searched for useful homepages and requested usernames and passwords, transferred data ata from Germany to Singapore. Oh man! All new, all different and hopefully I will remember everything.

But watching and learning from the six EiCs I have been shadowing is only the half of it. I feel ready now  and while I still have many questions about procedures and rules I have no hesitation about working with the pictures themselves! No matter where you are, Berlin or Singapore, working with pictures is the same all over and good fun to boot. Editing, cropping, tweaking and fine-tuning is the main part of our job on the desk.

My first shift, morning shift gets me up at 0600 hrs. What an unfriendly time! After a short ride in a taxi, (cars are quite expensive here in Singapore and when compared to a German autobahn the speed limit here makes driving here seem no fun at al),  I arrived in the office to replace my colleague David after his nightshift. He and his team had handled lots of pictures from various points all over the world and cleared the backlog. What a good start!

Born to shop in Aircon City – a postcard from Singapore

Have you ever considered working abroad? Committing yourself to a new challenge. How about the role of an “Editor in Charge” on the Reuters Global Pictures Desk in an unfamiliar city on the other side of the world, in a new office with a sprinkling of old colleagues and friends and many more completely unknown new colleagues from all over the globe?

My wife Andrea and I decided it was time for a real change, not a small step forward but a leap into the unknown, into the darkness.  OK, so maybe an internal company transfer is slightly better lit, but a leap nevertheless. 

So we leapt and left “our” Berlin behind to find ourselves in Aircon City - at home, in the cab, at the office and back again, all air conditioned – and otherwise known as Singapore.

It is just as you would expect, friendly, relaxed and hot and very humid. On our way from the airport the taxi driver told us Singapore temperatures dont change much it is either HOT or VERY HOT. In fact it stays at pretty much 30 degrees all year round, so we are going to have to get used to it, but will be considerably helped by the omnipresent airconditioning.

We went for a stroll in the main shopping district  Orchard Road. It is a shoppers paradise with countless malls: Centrepoint, Delfi Orchard, Far East Plaza (over 600 retailers), Forum Galleria, Lucky Plaza (wanna buy a suit Sir very cheap?), Palais Renaissance, Scotts Shopping Centre, Ngee Ann City, Orchard Point, Orchard Hotel, Plaza Singapura, Shaw House, Shaw Centre, Specialist Centre, Tangs, Tanglin Mall, Tanglin Shopping Centre, Tudor Court, The Paragon, Wisma Atria  need more? Try http://www.singaporeexpats.com/food-and-leisure/shopping-in-singapore.htm#Orchard . The business of shopping is a serious business in Singapore.