Photographers Blog

By Joseba Etxaburu

I’m a fireman and photo stringer for Reuters. I have been coming to the San Fermin festival for the past 12 years.

Every year I try to find new images and new ways to tell the stories we see. One of the events I usually cover is the release of wild cows into the bullring following the running of the bulls. A young cow chases revelers around knocking them down and occasionally tossing them.

SLIDESHOW: RUNNING OF THE BULLS

Looking for a different angle, for a while I have been going into the ring with a wide angle lens – getting as close to the action as possible while keeping an eye on the cow, which is very fast and often pretty bad tempered. On Thursday, I hadn’t really planned to go into the ring but Reuters photographer Susana Vera said she wanted to shoot the action with a long lens. I thought it wasn’t worth both of us doing the same type of pictures. So I went in.

Looking back on it, I think the cow had spotted me from the start and didn’t like the look of what she saw. She had a crooked horn and maybe she was self-conscious about being photographed. She kept her eye on me and started advancing. I tried to back away using a circular motion. It’s never a good idea to run to or from bulls or cows in a straight line. They are faster than you and will catch you. It’s better to move in a curve. They have less ability to turn than we do and there’s a chance you can out-turn her. On this day though that didn’t happen. She came at me and while I was trying to dodge, I slipped.

I grabbed onto her horn to stop her tossing me. It worked but she stepped on my elbow, which is the biggest scratch I got that day. With my other hand I held onto my camera. Those things aren’t cheap.

By Vincent West

Yes, the fish are dead, and they are obviously painted, thus objects of aesthetic contemplation.
- Alberto Rey

That may or may not be the sort of thing that springs to mind when you are lying in bed at 3.30am, sweating, and imagining ways to chop the cable of the sound system that sends throbbing bass pulses through the walls of the hotel. One thing is certain however; you will be wondering and worrying about how today’s “encierro” will turn out. It’s why we are here. Ever since Hemingway’s Bill Gorton declared “These basques are swell people”, increasing numbers of unwary visitors have flocked to Pamplona to see whether or not the angels are on their side. They test it every morning at eight o’clock, from the seventh to the fourteenth of July.

The “we” in question are four photographers (there used to be more but you know how it is). Eloy Alonso, cider and civil war expert, an excellent photographer with a talent for polemic, Susana Vera, by far the most responsible of the group with a sharp eye for beautiful and creative pictures, Joseba Etxaburu, a lucky, happy, firefighter and motorbiker whose record for dramatic, often gory and distinctive images of the San Fermin festival is renowned and Vincent West, about whom perhaps the least said the better.