Photographers Blog

How a simple tentacle became a media star

Sometimes I hold seminars about journalism – photo journalism in particular of course. Most of the time I start talking about the journalistic rule number one.

What is rule number one? Journalism works very simply. When a dog bites a man – this is not a story. Dogs bite men. Unless the man is Prince Charles or the President of the United States, nobody is interested. But the opposite case – when a man bites a dog – that’s a story. The story will be even bigger if the man who bites the dog is the U.S. President and the dog belongs to Prince Charles.

However, in the future I must change my seminars and change the picture from the dog to the octopus “Paul” — better known as the “octopus oracle” at the Sea Life Aquarium of Oberhausen, a former coal mining and steel producing city in western Germany.

The two-and-a-half year-old octopus has become a star all over the world by predicting all six of Germany’s 2010 World Cup games correctly – two defeats and four victories.

With his nine brains it takes him only a few moments to choose between two glass boxes – each filled with a delicious mussel. Each box is decorated with the flags of the respective teams that are scheduled to clash in South Africa. The keepers of the Sea Life Aquarium strictly follow the FIFA regulation: the home team gets the left box and the guest team receives the right box. Then hungry Paul reaches with one of his eight tentacles into one of the boxes to steel the little mussel. When the mussel quickly disappears into his mouth a whole nation is plunged into disbelief or jubilation.

The first time I covered Paul’s prediction for Reuters was before the classic clash between England and Germany. Only a handful of TV cameras – most of them local or domestic TV – were there. Then there were, including myself, four photographers from Germany’s biggest daily and three wire agencies. After Paul predicted the Germany-England match and the following game (Germany vs. Argentina) correctly – the media coverage got completely out of hand.

How Did He Shoot That?

Alain Bernard of France is seen from underwater as he enters the water to set a new world record of 47.60 seconds during the 100m freestyle in the men’s semi-finals at the European Swimming Championships in Eindhoven March 21, 2008 (Photograph by: Wolfgang Rattay).

It is of course not possible for a photographer to be in the pool during a swimming competition, but that doesn’t stop a determined photographer getting the picture!

I have worked on this problem over a number of years, and got it down to a fine art. It is necessary to pre-position an underwater housing containing a regular Canon EOS 1D Mark 2N with (usually) a 15mm fish-eye lens. When the swimmers hit the water or swim over my camera, I release the shutter via a waterproof cable. The data is transferred from the camera to another housing containing a Canon transmitter that transfers the images from the camera to my laptop.

Above: Setting up my equipment at Eindhoven

Within seconds of the end of the race I am in a position to transmit the photographs to our desk operation in Singapore. The desk then immediately moves them globally.