Photographers Blog

A salute to all those who managed to get pictures, text and video out of Myanmar (Burma) of the release of Nobel Peace Prize winner and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a truly historic moment.  No foreign journalists were given visas to cover the election or Suu Kyi's release and there's no Internet.  Respect to you all.

Aung San Suu Kyi (C) waves to supporters gathered to hear her speech outside the headquarters of her National League for Democracy party in Yangon November 14, 2010. Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi called on Sunday for freedom of speech in army-ruled Myanmar, urged thousands of supporters to stand up for their rights, and indicated she may urge the West to end sanctions.  REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

Aung San Suu Kyi speaks with supporters after she was released from house arrest in Yangon November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

U.S President Obama's wrapped up his visit to Asia, where he visited India, Indonesia, Korea for the G20 and Japan for APEC. Having sat and edited the whole G20 Summit I can tell you first hand it is not the easiest place to try to shoot good pictures. Organisers try to create sanitised PR images that attempt to show the event in the best light; top leaders in an atmosphere of unity and cultural understanding where, hopefully, nothing uncontrolled happens. Good to see that the organisers placed Obama and the photographer, Jim Young, in just the right position to ensure that the most important person, Obama, has the biggest white hat.  Respect to you all. Below that are two more pictures where a coincidence of background and foreground has come together in an unexpected unity that allows the viewer enough visual ambiguity to ask questions.  "Mr President: Do you feel that on the international stage you are a shadow of your former self after your poor US election results? And "Prime Minister do you feel that as your austerity measures bit really hard, sparking violent demonstrations in London that will it undermine your position as leader of the coalition government with calls for a change in leadership and direction? "

U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a speech at Parliament House in New Delhi, November 8, 2010.  REUTERS/Jim Young

Bush has faced many battles in his tenure. Record low approval ratings, a failing economy, the September 11 attacks, a war with no near end in sight, and for the last year, most of the world was looking more to his successor, than to the sitting President himself.

But when I look back over my three years here in Washington, I come away with two impressions of the man in the office.

One impression is that of a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, an insurmountable burden. As from my first image of Bush, making the long, slow walk back to the Oval Office, head and hands hanging low.

Shepard Fairey‘s posters of Barack Obama became the iconic image of a historic campaign. After a bit of digging by a photographer and a blogger, it turns out that Fairey’s source material was a photo by Reuters’ veteran photographer Jim Young.

UPDATE, Jan 21: Or perhaps not. A flurry of online interest has resulted in the discovery of another photo from the Associated Press that may be a better match. Read about it at the blog run by Tom Gralish of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has covered this story extensively.

Our original blog post continues below.

Blogger Michael Cramer created the composite photo above after sifting through countless images to find a match. The poster has Obama facing the opposite direction; Cramer flipped it to correspond with the original source photo.