Photographers Blog

Chicago, Illinois

By John Gress

UPDATE: January 24th

You never know how the assignment is going to go when you decide to put on the same clothes you had on the day before. Why? Because they smell like smoke!

I made a return trek to the ice castle today, an abandoned warehouse which has been burning for three days. Quite surprising considering most of the building has collapsed and is covered in inches of ice.

While covering the blaze today, I photographed firefighter Michael De Jesus covered in icicles. When he told me his name I asked, “Do you know Charley?”

He replied. “That’s my dad!” “Oh, I took pictures of him yesterday on the back side of the building.” “I know. He’s on the cover of the Red Eye,” Michael explained. Despite my conversation with Michael, I really didn’t expect the photo on the cover of one of the local papers to be my picture, because there were a lot of photographers covering the story. But sure enough, it was.  

I’m still stunned that my best pictures from both days were of people from the same family.

Craigellachie, Scotland

By David Moir

Scotch whisky is big business. With sales well over 5 billion pounds per year it’s an industry that has gripped the growing middle classes around the world. Including in countries where sales previously struggled and with drinks industry companies eager to quench that thirst with huge modern computer run distilleries being built around the globe producing more and more of the liquid.
But one thing still remains true in its production, oak casks.

Whisky isn’t Scotch Whisky unless it has been distilled in Scotland and matured for a minimum of three years in an oak cask which comes in various capacities from a Pin to a Butt. ‘Cooper’s’ are the tradesmen who build and repair the oak casks and barrels, their skills passed down from generations show no signs of entering the hi-tech world. They use tools such as a dowelling stock, flagging iron, inside shave and a hollowing knife to name a few.

I visited the Speyside Cooperage which started as a family business in 1947, in the small village of Craigellachie in northern Scotland, or the Malt Whisky Trail as it is also lovingly known. There they repair and build up to 150,000 oak casks a year, with each ‘cooper’ still being paid per cask, working on 20-30 per day like it always has been. The hardest workers can earn up to 60,000 pounds.

Wengen, Switzerland

By Ruben Sprich and Pascal Lauener

Ruben Sprich

The Lauberhorn, the world’s longest men’s alpine skiing World Cup downhill race, boasts 50 start gates at a 2315 meter altitude on the Lauberhorn in front of the Eiger North Face, the Moench and the Jungfrau with the Top of Europe, and ends 4415 meters later in Wengen at a 1287 meter altitude. Wengen is a small village in the Lauterbrunnen valley near Interlaken in the Bernese Overland.

I remember in 1986 when I covered the Lauberhorn for my first time. We carried the 60 kg heavy black and white laboratory and the transmitter in a big box from Lauterbrunnen in the train up to Wengen and set up in the bathroom of our hotel in Wengen. This was in addition to our skies, boots, clothes and cameras. Much more heavy was our luggage with our color laboratory in the 90s.

For several years now we have stayed at a hotel on the Kleine Scheidegg, the Bellevue des Alpes, located at 2061 meters, which is between Wengen and the Lauberhorn. Since 1999 we’ve used digital cameras. In the 80s and 90s after the race we rushed back to our hotel to start developing film, choose the pictures and make prints, writing captions on a small Hermes baby typewriter, and transmitting our pictures to Zurich or London. This year Bern based staff photographer Pascal Lauener and myself covered the races using our Paneikon software which transmits the pictures instantly after each racer to our server in Vienna where our Editor Michael Leckel edited and processed the pictures we sent in. Minutes later our clients around the world get the pictures in their systems.

Rio de Janiero, Brazil

By Pilar Olivares

On the first day I appeared as a stranger, to photograph them without knowing their history or their story. The second day I understood what was going on and was able to talk with them at length about what they were doing. The third day I sat and had coffee with them, laughed with them, and listened to them talk about their villages and how hard it is to be in the city.

They are Indians from Brazil’s most remote corners, about to be evicted from the place where they have lived for over six years, the historic Indian Museum next to the famous Maracana soccer stadium.

The eldest of the group told me, “In the city you need money. You can’t do anything without it. In my village I just fish, live in the forest, and listen to the sounds of nature. What do I need money for?”

New Delhi, India

By Mansi Thapliyal

My city is known as the so-called “rape capital of the country”. They say it’s unsafe, it’s dangerous, it’s full of wolves looking to hunt you down. A lot of it may be true. As a single woman working, living and breathing in New Delhi, I have had my fair share of stories. But the labels and opinions associated with the city were accepted on one level – no one questioned them, no one asked why – until a brutal tragedy one cold December night which shook the world and forced everyone (the authorities, the public, the lawmakers) to ask themselves uncomfortable questions and focus the on safety of women. It is still an ongoing, raging debate, thank heavens.

Meanwhile, I decided to focus on what Delhi’s women face and what they think about it. How do they go on with their lives, their work, their families? Just trying to understand the magnitude of how unsafe India’s capital is became one of the most challenging and emotionally exhausting assignments of my career.

SLIDESHOW: INDIA’S WOMEN DEFEND THEMSELVES

From call center executives to advertising professionals to tea stall workers, everyone has their stories and how they cope with it. Take the example of Chandani, 22, one of the few female cab drivers in the city. As she drove me around the city, a policeman stopped us at a barricade near India Gate. When he saw that a woman was driving the cab, he scraped his jaw off the floor. “You also drive a cab?” he said with an expression that suggested that he had spotted the Abominable Snowman. “I am doing a very unconventional job for women. Given that I do night shifts, I carry pepper spray and I’m trained in self-defense. Initially I faced a lot of problems but driving cabs at night has helped me overcome my fears,” Chandani said.

Across the drought-stricken states of Brazil

By Lunae Parracho

As white dust follows your car along dirt roads that cut through a maze of dry arteries while the burning sun dries out your skin, you realize that the wilderness is all around you.

A meek, skinny cow stares intently at everyone passing by, as if some stranger might bring it water or food. Starving goats roam here and there, chewing on dry twigs and looking for something to drink.

After losing my way and walking for an hour or two between dry twigs and spiny cactus, I run into Hildefonso standing in front of his house. Time has also got lost in this wilderness and the farmer spends his days waiting for the rain to come. He has already waited two years in vain.

Milan, Italy

By Alessandro Garofalo

“Do you know how Ahamad Massoud died?”

It’s not a quiz but a question addressed to us a few days ago by an employee from the secretary of the Public Prosecutor’s office when we asked why photographers were not allowed to bring photographic equipment into the court during the trials involving the former dancer Maroc, Karima El Mahroug, better knew as Ruby Heartstealer, in the sexgate scandal with former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, accused of inciting the prostitution of a minor and abuse of power.

For a long time here in Milan we used to wait for Berlusconi and various protagonists of his different trials outside the courthouse because a measure prohibits filming in the courtroom for safety reasons.

But as we know, there is always someone who feels smart, especially when we talk about Italy – business is business. The channel networks want the scoop to broadcast in the news and the newspapers want to publish pictures on their front page. So, disregarding the bans, some editors and colleagues started to shoot video and take pictures with mobile phones, regardless of quality.

Allahabad, India

By Ahmad Masood

The Maha Kumbh Mela, or the Grand Pitcher Festival, is one of the biggest gatherings of people on earth; it takes place every 12 years and goes on for 55 days, in one of four cities in India : Allahabad, Ujjain, Haridwar and Nashik.

I moved to India from Afghanistan last year and the Mela, as it is called, was one of the assignments I wanted to cover.

My memories of the word “Mela” come from the times when I used to watch lots of Bollywood movies. Some of these movies would show brothers separated during this massive, chaotic gathering at childhood and then re-united decades later as adults.

Sun City, Arizona

By Lucy Nicholson

During the post Second World War baby boom 76 million Americans were born between 1946 and 1964. The first of them turned 65 in 2011, and as the baby boomers begin to retire, I decided to visit the original American purpose-built retirement community: Sun City, Arizona.

SLIDESHOW: SENIORS OF SUN CITY

An 80-year-old and a 20-year-old were getting married in Sun City. A local newspaper reporter came to cover the wedding. The first question the reporter asked was: “Don’t you think the sex will lead to premature death?”

The groom replied: “If she dies, she dies.”

Fred Isenberg, 75, broke into a broad grin as he told me the punch-line of this joke during a break in a tango dancing class he was taking with his wife Suzanne, 71.

Lagos, Nigeria

By Akintunde Akinleye

I never wanted to be a photojournalist. I loved broadcasting and had nurtured dreams since childhood of being a radio or TV correspondent. Almost by accident, I picked a camera at age 11 instead and started shooting pictures. Well, here I am.

My first degree was in social studies at Ondo State University, in Nigeria’s southwest. It didn’t do much to advance my photojournalism career, but I learned about society – both theory and practice! Years later, I did two post graduate diplomas — in journalism and mass communications.

In a country like Nigeria, academic qualifications don’t take you far, though, unless you also learn how to adapt to the rough and tumble of life here. Be sure, Nigeria is a school!