Photographers Blog

Reuters photographers and editors discuss their strategy for covering Olympics track and field events from every angle, such as the highly anticipated men’s 100m final. Videography by Lucy Nicholson. Production by Jillian Kitchener.

By Eddie Keogh

My colleagues now call me the medal man. No, I’ve never won one or even got close but during the 9 days of athletics at the Olympic Stadium in London one of my jobs is to photograph every athlete that wins a medal. The unbridled joy is evident in most cases. Years of blood, sweat and tears have come to fruition and occasionally the emotion of the moment and the playing of their national anthem will bring a tear to the toughest of men and women.

For one man the emotion of the moment was just too much.

The Dominican Republic’s Felix Sanchez was here to receive a gold medal for winning the 400m hurdles. Four years earlier he received the news of the death of his grandmother on the morning of his heat. Having cried all day he ran badly and failed to get past the first round. He promised that day that he would win a medal for her and now he was fulfilling his promise. Felix cried the moment he arrived to the end of his country’s anthem.

It was a very special moment as his emotion was shown 20 meters wide on the stadium screens and the crowd stood to applaud him. I don’t mind admitting I shed a tear for him too, I doubt I was alone.

By Fred Prouser

Sunday night: A crowded newsroom at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California awaited word on the fate of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover. The largest rover, Curiosity is about the size of a small SUV with a landing system never tried before. It was being lowered by a sky crane on cables as retro rockets fired to lower the rover near Mars’ surface.

Reporters braced their fingers on their laptops. Photographers, well we were all elbow to elbow in front of large video screens, watching mission managers in the control room, hoping and waiting for the first images from the rover to be flashed on screen. After many tense moments, black and white images appeared. Then the camera cut away but then back again. My cameras motor drive went into action as I and the others shot the images off the screen. It would be well over an hour before NASA posted the imagery to a web site to download, and deadlines were to be met on this most ambitious landing on Mars.

After I was certain no other images would be shown on screen, I headed to my laptop and filed the first black and white rover image to the Singapore editing desk, also alerting to them by phone that it was en-route. Literally within minutes, the image shot by the Rover from the surface of Mars were on websites around the world. The next images to come were the photos from the control room which were pooled (shared between news agencies), shot by Brian van der Brug of the Los Angeles Times and NASA photos from the control room shot by NASA’s Bill Ingalls.

By Jeff Tuttle

As a journalist I try to approach each assignment with an open mind as to what I might see and hear to help tell that particular story with my camera.

I am a native Kansan, so I know my state very well and when Reuters approached me about shooting the current drought I jumped at the chance and accepted the assignment. Knowing that the two wetlands in central Kansas were almost dry I figured that would be the best place to start.

GALLERY: LIFE IN DROUGHT TIMES

Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area, one of the two wetlands that I wanted to photograph, was our first destination (my son, 17-year-old Zach, went with me on the shoot). As we drove west we stopped and photographed some damaged crops in Harvey County and then again in Barton County. There was plenty of sunshine when we started, but storm colds were approaching fast to the west, the direction we were headed. Great, no rain for a month and here I was shooting a drought story and it was going to rain!

By Tom Peter

Some call it street art; Bosso Fataka call it “joy in shaping our environment.” The environment that surrounds the four young men of this art group is the streets of Berlin, a city that some say has become Europe’s unofficial capital of unsanctioned art in the public space.

Over twenty years after the reunification, there is an abundance of derelict houses, whole swathes of industrial wasteland and railway arches that afford artists with square kilometers worth of brickwork that’s just asking to be covered in graffiti.

But art being art, this scene’s actors have gone beyond the traditional spray can work. There’s stenciling, urban knitting, urban gardening… you name it. The interested visitor can go on a tour around central Berlin, where well-informed insiders will show you the most notable examples of urban art. Bosso Fataka do what you might call “urban wrapping.”

By Luke MacGregor

With very little understanding of astronomy but with the aid of a phone app, I began a three evening attempt to capture the moon with the Olympic Rings. The rings have been hanging iconically on Tower Bridge for the London 2012 Olympic Games and it was suggested to me that a full moon should – at the right angle – cross through them.

Day One – Having planned to be in the “perfect” spot on London Bridge with a good view of the Olympic Rings further up river and using the app information, I waited for the moon to rise. However the horizon itself was a little cloudy. When the moon eventually showed itself about 10 minutes after the app’s moonrise time it was off to the right hand side of the bridge. I hadn’t taken into account that the moon wouldn’t rise in a vertical line but would travel across the sky. So, by a combination of it appearing late through cloud and miscalculation, I was totally in the wrong place. I rushed carrying the tripod with a heavy 400mm lens attached and the rest of my camera gear hanging off my shoulders – running off the bridge, down several flights of steps, and to the path alongside the River Thames to try re-align the moon with the rings. However, the moon moves surprising quickly. I couldn’t manage to run far or fast enough in time to get the image before the moon rose high, over and above the bridge.

Day Two – Armed with my 400mm, only a monopod and less gear, ready to run after the moon should I be in the wrong location again, I returned to London Bridge. A recalculation had been made. The moon was rising later and at a slightly different angle to the night before. From my previous mistakes I knew that when the moon was on the horizon it needed to be to my left in order for it to move across through the rings. However, to my dismay, the rings were not there. As Tower Bridge is a combined bascule and suspension bridge (i.e. the carriageway lifts to allow boats through) it had raised in preparation to allow a vessel through. I waited just in case they might be lowered, taking in the misfortune of looking at what would have been the perfect shot – that didn’t happen.

By David W Cerny

Right in the middle of the summer season in Czech Republic, divers show off their guts in a cliff-diving competition at the flooded quarry near the central Bohemian village of Hrimezdice.

This event has a 13 year history and is getting bigger every year. It was just a few courageous jumpers in the beginning, but now its a very popular cliff diving and music festival with thousands of visitors and more then 60 jumpers.

Anyone who is not afraid to jump into the water from 12, 16 or even 20 meters high can apply to this crazy competition, which includes all freestyle dives. The divers have the possibility to create as large a splash as possible and perform loops, somersaults, twists or just freaky movements right before the splashdown.

By Dominic Ebenbichler

The alarm clock was set for 7.15am. After a short breakfast with my colleague Damir Sagolj I took the bus to Wimbledon, a journey of about 1.5 hours.

After arriving I met with our tennis specialist Stefan Wermuth who is covering the whole tennis tournament during the London Olympics. He showed me the venue and we figured out who was going to be covering which matches. I got to shoot Andy Murray, which also included capturing some pictures of Prince William and his wife Catherine, who were cheering for Murray throughout the game.

As the matches were spaced with only 15 minutes break inbetween, there was not even enough time to eat a sandwich. But who needs food during the Olympics?

By Adnan Abidi

Near my house in Delhi at Deenu bhai’s tea stall, I noticed a very young visitor; 7-year-old Sohail. He was Deenu bhai’s relative visiting him from Aligarh for the summer breaks. Before leaving for work, I enjoyed a cup of tea at Deenu bhai’s, and as usual, I was sipping a steaming hot cup of tea with a snack when I saw Sohail with a drawing book.

Hot summer mornings keep away a lot of lazy lads who otherwise are found gossiping at Deenu bhai’s place. I was finding no such company, so I asked Sohail what he’s been up to. He showed me a few landscape drawings, which were mostly village scenes with huts and animals, with the sun rising at a location painted in yellow.

GALLERY: SOLAR INDIA

I am no art critic, and couldn’t actually make out anything in those drawings. But I recalled my childhood days, and compared it with Sohail’s to figure out a similar thought process in both of our generations. Neither of us have ever imagined a typical Indian village scene during or after sundown.

By Fabrizio Bensch

We are on day 5 of competition at the London 2012 Olympic games and our robotic cameras triggered by the team of Reuters photographers are producing amazing pictures from the most unusual angles whenever athletes all over the world are competing for gold, silver and bronze medals.

GALLERY: OLYMPIC BEST FROM LONDON 2012

We had big expectations to create pictures from new perspectives and they have been surpassed by what we are seeing right now. From the colorful opening ceremony to the athletes’ reactions, many Olympic moments have been captured by the remote robotic cameras. At the moment I’m covering the fencing events at the ExCel venue and I trigger the remote cameras with the help of wireless Pocket Wizard wireless transmitters, simultaneously as I shoot with my hand-held camera with the 400 to 800mm lenses. When I see a new angle on the field of play, I can make corrections remotely with the joystick to control the two axis camera head.

Below is a selection of images made by our photographers (Michael Dalder, Adrees Latif, Murad Sezer, Sergio Perez, Mike Segar, Dominic Ebenbichler, Pawel Kopczynski and Fabrizio Bensch) with their eyes but through the lenses of the robotic DSLRs catching the dramatic moments at many different Olympic venues.