Photographers Blog

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.

It is an extreme sport that can give you serious head injury, broken ribs, cuts and bruises, to say the least. However with a little bit of training you could experience the thrill of your life, they say!

Despite the fact that it is a dangerous sport and more then 40 amateur jumpers took part in the competition, no one got hurt. And for example, the youngest jumper was just 7 years old and the oldest one was 65.

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.

By Mike Segar

For any photojournalist, when you cover events of any kind, be it sports or news or daily life, you really never want to be part of the story. Your assignment; to be present to make the best possible images of the events unfolding in front of you is a privilege, and ideally your only mark on the event itself is to come away with as compelling a visual record of what happened as you can under the byline REUTERS/Mike Segar…

However, sometimes… you just can’t get out of the way.

Photo courtesy of Richard Mackson for USA TODAY Sports

My assignment at the London 2012 Olympics along with my colleague Sergio Perez from Madrid, is basketball; 15 days of basketball games, 6 games a day, as nations compete for the Olympic Gold medal. Even for basketball lovers, that’s a lot of basketball.

This is my first time covering an Olympic basketball tournament. I have been fortunate enough in my career at Reuters to have covered many NBA Championships and NCAA championships. I love basketball as a sport that I play, love to watch and love to photograph. Action at the feet of the world’s best players is exciting and fun. My close friend and colleague at Reuters Shannon Stapleton and I spend many hours talking about the game. I always look forward to being on the court, close to the action of the NBA, NCAA and in this case the Olympics where many NBA stars are competing.

By Mike Blake

The ability to take a number of pictures all on the same frame was simple in the days of film cameras.

You would find a situation where the background would drop off enough to accommodate a number of exposures on the same frame of film. After that, it was a matter of how many exposures and how do they all fit next to each other on the same frame.

GALLERY: MULTIPLE EXPOSURES

We have never been able to do that with the Canon camera system until the release of their new DX camera. And of course, being at the Olympics, what better place to use this new technology? Paired with the world’s best gymnasts and a camera that can take 14 pictures a second, it’s amazing.

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.

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.