Photographers Blog

By Pascal Lauener

When Switzerland suddenly became a sailing nation after Alinghi won the 2003 America’s Cup for the first time and then had to defend the Cup in Valencia, I had the chance to cover sailing. Since a young boy, I have been attracted to boats, more so to container vessels rather then sailing ships. However after covering the America’s Cup in Valencia, I became fascinated by sailing. Challenged by the elements (wind, weather and water) and on a shaking rib (boat) it’s not so easy to get a good shoot of the action. But with the help of my Spanish colleagues and some old sailing photography professionals I made my way to the Olympic sailing in Quindao followed by another America’s Cup and now to the sailing event at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Benoit Tessier, a Reuters photographer from Paris, and I arrived in Weymouth on July 23 and started our coverage of the games with press conferences and training sessions of the different sailing classes. Every morning on our way to the ribs (boats for the media) with our heavy Peli cases, mentally checking that you have packed everything for a day out at sea, the sun cream and the oil gear for the sea spray and rain, you hope you will return with some cool frames.

On board the rib the first thing I do is to get my underwaterhousing and my cameras ready for action. I put the underwaterhousing on the floor of the rib so it’s ready whenever we have the chance to come as close as possible to a sailor. I also have the two cameras one on a 500mm and the other on a 28-300mm lens back in the Pelicase. On the way out of the port you make your plans together with the captain of the rib and your colleagues on board. But as they are also your competitors you need to find a way so that everyone gets the things they need as there is no place for dispute on a moving rib.

So, for the three weeks spent covering the Olympics I am on the same rib, with the same driver and the same photographers. This might seem boring but it makes sense. After the first days we know each other by the expressions on our faces and it makes life easier and safer for all. It also ensures we have a lot of fun. We are four photographers with four big Peli cases and a driver on the rib so moving is complicated and you have to take care that you are not blocking someone’s shot.

The most important person on the rib is the driver; he makes your picture happen. He needs to be a good sailor himself, having the courage to sneak into position right before the action, stopping at the right moment to put the underwaterhousing into the sea as the ships pass by and speeding up so as not to miss a single shot.

By David Gray

I have been photographing Michael Phelps for over 8 years, which has included 3 Olympic Games and 3 World Swimming Championships and I have never seen him like this – a goldless man.

I even saw him in a race that for the first time did not result in a podium finish. And then the U.S. team only finished second in the 4X100M freestyle relay race, which included Phelps and his now great rival team mate, Ryan Lochte. I never thought this would be possible.

But the perceived rivalry between Phelps and Lochte is a very interesting story here at the London Olympic Games. Whenever I photographed the two of them together in the past, they would always be laughing, joking, and never, ever ignoring one another. Since the first training session here in London last Monday afternoon, I’ve noticed the lack of talk, smiles, laughter, and even recognition.

By Petr Josek

Bulgan airport in the southwest part of Mongolia reminds me of a small train station from the spaghetti western film “Once Upon a Time in the West.” It’s slow, hot and once a week people wait for an airplane with no more then 20 passengers on board to arrive.

The day of July 17, 2012, was different.

The Czech Army plane Casa brought on board four Przewalski mares. They are endangered animals with a sandy brown coat and faintly striped legs, extinct in their homeland since the early 1970s.

Now the animals were landing on a dirt tarmac after a 6,000 km (3,728 miles) flight from the Czech Republic. It was a challenge for the pilots, required extra airport staff and was an attraction for local residents. It’s hard to say if the customs officer was taking pictures for professional reasons or just for himself as a souvenir from the unusual event.

By Tim Wimborne

A couple of weeks back I was listening to a radio station when a school teacher rang in to share her story of being tasked back in the early 1980s with leading a new subject called Leisure Studies. The pretext for this cutting edge course was that imminent computer technology meant the 25 hour work week was inevitable and a bounty of recreation time assured. Of course we’re all experts in how this flash of history unfolded.

Not too long after this, about the time my career as a photographer began, this misjudgement was mirrored when society’s zeitgeist shamans and marketing gurus told us the great leap forward into digital photography and associated new technologies would revolutionize our working day. It did of course. Just not in the way most ‘experts’ foresaw. Instead of the time spent hunched over enlargers etc. the main result is a dramatic increase in productivity. Where once a pocket full of batteries was all that was needed to power all equipment I might carry on even an extended assignment I now take with me a small shop’s worth of cables and adapters, chargers, hard drives and power supplies, audio and video devices and of course an ever larger range of batteries.

Of course Reuters’ photographers no longer lug mobile darkrooms around the globe, converting hotel bathrooms into dark, stinking laboratories. But they do produce a range and quality of images never before possible. Clients receive pictures moments after they are shot, photographers are now in contact with colleagues, editors and clients at all times of the working day.

By Shannon Stapleton

I woke on the morning of July 20th happy and looking forward to a great weekend with my son at his last lacrosse tournament of the season.

That feeling of happiness changed quickly when I looked on the phone and it said “Can you get on a plane to Denver as soon as possible, there has been a mass shooting at the screening of Batman with 12 people dead and numerous injured.” My heart started to race and all I could think of was how just five months prior I had responded to the senseless killing of three high school students in Chardon, Ohio. A place close to my heart because it was near where I grew up and had played my last high school football in 1987.

Colorado and the Rocky Mountains have also been a place of very fond memories in my life. I spent the years of 1991 to 1995 there and never forgot the majestic feeling of the mountain lifestyle. I just couldn’t believe this was happening again and especially in the Denver area where I cherished the years spent in the region.

By Lisi Niesner

An unsettling night followed this story. It felt as if something was scuttling on my skin. It was a tickling feeling which made me scratch and I saw bugs bustling around in my mind’s eye. In the morning I could not remember exactly what I had dreamed, but the one thing I knew, all night long I had heard the buzz in my head.

I got plenty of mosquito bites, a bee sting, and on top of that several times I encountered stinging nettles and thistles while shooting Vienna’s city beekeepers. The Austrian organization Stadtimker, retains wild bees and honey bees in the city area of Vienna. Everybody who has a little garden or a roof-top can join and make room available for one or more bee hives. The beekeepers build up the hives and fully care for them generally once a week.

The hives are placed on prominent buildings in the city center: On the roof of the Austrian chancellery, the State Opera or the Burgtheater, just to mention a few of the most important. The organic honey and even cosmetic products can be purchased in some cooperative shops in Vienna.

By Denis Balibouse

Would you stand on this ridge?

(Excuse the uneven horizon, it is due to my legs shaking when I took the picture)

A few weeks ago I received an invitation for two conferences from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva from the six astronauts who flew the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s last mission in May 2011, which delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. According to CERN’s website this is “an experiment to search in space for dark matter, missing matter and antimatter on the international space station.”

Sometimes the hardest part of a job is to find the news hook, so for this invitation I turned to my journalist colleagues in Geneva. Tom Miles, our Chief Correspondent in Geneva helpfully pointed out that the mission commander was Mark Kelly and that his wife, former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an attempted assassination in Tucson, Arizona on 8 January 2011, was coming along.

By Mark Makela

July 20, 3:30am; Wise, Virginia. Early morning darkness covered the hills and valleys. Despite the rain 500 people had already lined up for free medical and dental care. You know it is a unique shoot when your assignment begins here.

The day before I had driven 10 hours from Philadelphia to get to the Remote Area Medical (RAM) three-day clinic in southwest Virginia. RAM has been providing free healthcare since 1985 for uninsured and underinsured Americans and for people worldwide. This would be their 674th expedition. RAM began as a parachuting operation in the Amazon founded by the humanitarian, Stan Brock.

GALLERY: REMOTE AREA MEDICAL CLINIC

I knew that there was positive foreshadowing when my first frame was of a bemused chihuahua named Bella standing on her hind legs with her owner.

By Peter Andrews

Instagram is mainly a tool for young people to take pictures and catch up on things; situations that they missed out on, either because they weren’t yet born or because they just weren’t there.

It is a fascinating tool, however it’s not real photography, it’s an illusion. Listening to an explanation on what Instagram is, it appears that anyone can become Ansel Adams (who I studied at the Fine Arts faculty 30 years ago). Just with a touch of technology one can skip all the creativity that we had to develop or study for and just pick up an iPhone and become an artist. One may look at it as the end of photography (and most photographers who make a living by taking pictures would say that). But if you look at it from a different point of view, it is the beginning of a new era in photography and photojournalism as this global tool turns image-taking and sharing into a worldwide diary of everyday life.

Myself, as a professional photographer who has made a living by taking images for 28 years, I have a tear in my eye when I look back at the romance that film photography was able to give me, in the same manner that a painter who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century would say about his passion and profession. I recall taking pictures, followed by developing film by hand, breathing fumes in the darkroom, spending evenings making prints as perfect as possible and then sometimes a few hours later looking at a product with satisfaction.

By Mike Segar

The photos in this project, conceived ahead of this week’s International AIDS Conference, are not the dramatic, heartbreaking, moving sort that we have been used to seeing of AIDS patients from the ‘80s and ‘90s. What I came to quickly realize is that this story, or I should say this portion of it, is about hope – hope and recovery. Living and learning to live as best one can with a disease the world has come to know all too well as an indiscriminate killer.

Take for example the hope that I saw in the eyes of 40-year-old AIDS patient Bobby Billingsly, a man who was close to death when he arrived at Broadway House in Newark, New Jersey, with a CD4 count near zero in 2009, an indication of what is known as Full blown AIDS.

GALLERY: AIDS IN BLACK AMERICA

With the care of nursing, physical therapy and support staff, the latest in AIDS fighting medication, exercise, healthy diet and therapy, Billingsly is becoming the picture of hope – at least to me. He has slowly been able to raise his CD4 count to nearly 200, improving his overall health and hoping to live as long as possible with AIDS. Twenty years ago he would surely have faced a speedy death. Perhaps most hopeful is the attitude he shows of resolve and determination to move forward — something he said he had little of when he arrived. When I asked him how he looks at having AIDS now as opposed to then he says, ”With the medication, workouts, and all we do here, there is reason to believe that you can beat this thing, maybe not beat it, but not let it beat you.” That stuck with me.