Photographers Blog

By Kevin Lamarque

“We’re pulling an all-nighter” — President Barack Obama’s refrain to crowds across the U.S.A. throughout his non-stop 40-hour campaign swing.

An all-nighter? Really? As in we sleep on the plane? On a domestic trip? Seriously? This was my initial reaction upon seeing the White House press schedule and failing to find a hotel mentioned anywhere. But sure enough, that was the deal.

I am pretty used to sleeping on Air Force One on the many long-haul international trips taken by presidents, and honestly, the seats are a lot more comfortable than on board your average cramped commercial airliner. But thankfully, to my knowledge, I have never had to call Air Force One my bed or hotel while traveling in my own country. This was about the change.

In the final stretch of the presidential campaign, with the race tighter than ever, the pace has quickened and the intensity thickened. The Obama team, sensing the pressure, used the clock to pack in as much as they could in a two-day campaign swing through battleground states. The trip: around 7,600 miles, 8 states, 5  time zones, all in 40 hours. Was it really necessary to pull an all-nighter? Probably not. But the image of a president fiercely campaigning through the night, sacrificing sleep for votes, was clearly irresistible. After Obama’s lackluster performance in the first debate, putting the fight back into the man has become a high priority for the campaign team.

So off we went…Washington-Davenport Iowa-Denver Colorado-Burbank California-Las Vegas Nevada-Tampa Florida-Richmond Virigina-Chicago Illinois-Cleveland Ohio and back to Washington. The sleep part came on the flight from Las Vegas-Tampa — a three hour Ambien induced nap.

By Carlos Garcia Rawlins

I was standing on a raised television platform less than ten meters from “El Candidato,” when the scaffolding collapsed. It was nighttime in Barquisimeto, and with great difficulty I saw him appear, navigating through the dark mass of supporters. He was riding atop a pickup truck, waving to the crowd on the way to the stage. I could barely see anything in the darkness as the lighting system seemed to fail completely.

Just as I was about to take a picture, one of our platform supports gave way and we were on the verge of toppling onto the dark mass of people. It could have been a tragedy. It was the second collapse of the day, after another platform meant to hold journalists had collapsed earlier. In hindsight it was a perfect metaphor for what would happen four days later, when Henrique Capriles, a.k.a. El Candidato, lost the election to Hugo Chavez by more than a million and a half votes.

But for him and his team, losing wasn’t an option.

The rallies always had the same script, like a movie looped around to repeat itself. There were a few changes in light or in landscape, depending on the regions where they were held. It was a frantic campaign in which the opposition candidate toured all 24 states, four times. The state he visited least was Delta Amacuro, but he still stopped there twice.

By Jorge Silva

Before the recent election campaign in Venezuela, the last time that I had been close enough to Hugo Chavez to use a wide angle lens was last February when he left for Cuba to be treated for a recurrence of his cancer.  That farewell began as a solemn procession through the streets of Caracas, with Chavez dressed in black, riding in a dark van with open sunroof and an image of Christ on the windshield. His supporters showered him with flowers on the way to the airport, as he left his followers in suspended animation, and his future full of doubt.

This campaign was a re-encounter with him; one that many didn’t believe would happen again. His cancer disappeared from the agenda, and Chavez was back. For his followers it was the difference between night and day, or the idea of a Venezuela without him contrasted with his reappearance in power, where he had been for the last 14 years.

Whenever Chavez appeared the masses screamed wildly. If he were a boxer he would be an undefeated veteran, with many blows against him and without the same youthful agility, but with his own solid punch intact. To his faithful, Chavez remained the synonym of hope.

By Damir Sagolj

In front of me stood what must have been the most beautiful “god’s” body in the whole of Phuket. Her gentle pink robe swayed above bare feet as she made her way in a trance through the crowd of devotees at the Chinese Jui Tui shrine. And her pretty face was pierced with a long spike, a piece of fruit stuck on its end.

This woman was a “mah song”, roughly translated from the Thai language as “entranced horse” or “one whose body is used by gods as a vehicle”. She was the centre of attention for a good reason. For the day, she represented a god whose powers would help purify members of the community and wash away any bad karma.

GALLERY: Extreme vegetarian festival

“The god has to hurt itself, for cleaning us from our bad deeds”, the brother of a mah song told a confused journalist, who was practically from another universe.

By  Jim Urquhart

He stood there with a shotgun over his shoulder and asked me in no uncertain terms, “What do you think about oil drilling?” And in that moment, the seasoned oil man I had come across pheasant hunting with five of his friends in a field west of the oil boom town of Williston, North Dakota, had me stunned like a deer in headlights.

GALLERY: North Dakota’s oil boom

There was never a threat of danger, but there was definitely a bit of suspicion as to what my motives were. Being obviously out of place, having asked these guys where an oil drilling rig was and after telling them I was a member of the media, I had to pause for a moment.

Part of me was thinking, “Whatever you think of oil is what I think too.” But I just explained to him I had no dog in this fight and was there to document the oil boom. It was the truth and it was all I had.

By Larry Downing

The final Presidential debate between incumbent U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney is only a few short autumn days away and a great chance to somehow connect with and persuade undecided voters to punch their ticket on Election Day 2012.

Both men have so far scored high marks as fearless debaters eloquently pointing out the glaring weaknesses and flaws hiding inside the “other” party’s ideologue with precise, intellectual arguments measuring up to the price of their Harvard University degrees. It has also proved to be a stress test for each one to be seen as polite while on a national stage, yet, still aggressively arguing their own passions and at the same time remembering there is no more promise of campaigns tomorrow once the votes are tallied.

And both have proven themselves as equally impassioned candidates grinding through this endless campaign season leading up to November 6th. Two ambitious politicians consumed by their own determination to convince voters to let their families move upstairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the next four years by singing party lyrics to anyone carrying a microphone. These two foes are politically polar-opposites linked together by their joint willingness to invite the sharp, concentrated lights of the national news media into their personal space to snoop around much like the late night reality shows.

By Yiorgos Karahalis

Mata Nikolarou, a jewellery shop owner in Athens, says she is not surprised that thousands of businesses in the capital have had to shut down.

“It was about time to happen. The market needed a clear off. Everyone in Greece had become a merchant, either by taking over their father’s shop or by taking out a cheap loan from the bank,” she said, explaining that most merchants had appeared out of the blue.

Almost a third of businesses and shops around the Greek capital have shut down over the last two years, as Greece’s crisis broke out and it agreed on a huge bailout package funded by the IMF and the European Union.

By Darrin Zammit Lupi

I attended a brief and very poignant ceremony; the funeral of four Nigerian would-be immigrants who drowned while attempting to reach a better life, crossing to Europe by sea, crossing the central Mediterranean that has become a graveyard.

Six immigrants died on that crossing last August. Four bodies were recovered, including that of a fourteen year old boy.

The burial took place months after the accident, because DNA tests were necessary to confirm the identities of the four who died.

By Thomas Peter

“It feels good to walk in nature after so many months of boredom in the Immigration Holding Centre,” said Sallisou as we walked along a poplar-lined alley in the sleepy hinterland of Potsdam-Mittelmark, a rural county just outside the German capital of Berlin. Two weeks earlier, the smiling man from Niger had joined a 600 km (372 miles) foot march of refugees. With every county border they crossed, they were breaking a state order that restricts their movement to a territory around their camp. At present, Sallisou was eagerly filming the procession of refugees with a small video camera.

“Since I have been on this march, my days have a purpose again. There is so much to organize and we do it ourselves. We work as a team. Being on the move feels like I have a home again,” Salissou said.

For these people whose stories of displacement and rejection are as varied as the places they come from, ‘home’ means self-determination, the feeling of being needed and the knowledge that they are heading for some sort of reachable goal, all of which they have not had since they fled their countries.

By Jonathan Alcorn

The call came in around 5:30 am from Reuters senior picture editor Hyungwon Kang, awakening me from a deep sleep after a long weekend of convering Space Shuttle Endeavour’s trip through the streets of Los Angeles for Reuters.

The instructions were to get to the home of Lloyd Shapley as soon as possible, the UCLA professor had been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for economics and I needed to make a picture as soon as possible. I tried calling Mr Shapley, but it went straight to voicemail. It was still dark outside when I arrived, and an AP photographer pulled up about a minute later. We walked up the driveway and rang the doorbell.

After about a minute, an obviously fresh out of bed Mr Shapley opened the door. We both congratulated him and told him that he had just won the 2012 Nobel prize for economics!