Photographers Blog

Privileged witness to the start of life

Vivek Prakash

Mar 6, 2012 12:03 EST

By Vivek Prakash

It’s an experience I will never forget. I have no children of my own, but when the day does come, maybe I’ll be just a little bit more prepared for it.

I had come a long, long way from my usual cosmopolitan stomping ground of Mumbai, to a place just about as far interior as you can go in India. I was about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Rajasthan border in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in a village of about 700 people. This is very, very small by Indian standards. There were dusty roads that a car could barely fit down, mud houses, a scorching heat during the day which turned to a deep chill at night.

I had many ideas in my head and many questions too – what kind of emotions was I going to experience and witness? Should I be excited, or should I feel like an intruder, given the subject matter I was here to shoot? I had come a long way to shoot this, but now, standing in this little rural community health center with my camera, I felt conflicted.

On the edge of reality

Eric Thayer

Mar 6, 2012 10:23 EST

The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing At her low gate; Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling Upon her mat.

I’ve known her from an ample nation Choose one; Then close the valves of her attention Like stone.

- Emily Dickenson

By Eric Thayer

Somewhere on the edge of reality is this place.

A glance into Germany’s dressing room

By Kai Pfaffenbach

Football, or “soccer” for our American friends, is the top sport in Europe. With the Euro 2012 tournament in Ukraine and Poland later this year we are expecting another sports highlight just before the Olympics in London. Sixteen teams will fight for the European title and after their good performance at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Germany is amongst the favorites for this event. Title holder and World Champion Spain, Holland and France are on the bookmaker’s shortlists as well.

With the big tournament to come I had asked the team press spokesman a while back if I could get some behind the scenes access on Germany’s road to the final in Kiev. It was a big surprise when I finally got the opportunity granted to shoot the set up in the dressing room for an upcoming game. Almost 40,000 spectators in the newly renovated stadium of Bremen were expecting a great test match between Germany and France. By that time I was inside the catacombs of the stadium where even TV is usually banned from. You will never make it past all the security standing around without very special permission.

Entering the dressing room, or should I say “dressing hall”, was really different to any other sport venue I had seen before. Each and every player has his own personal space; one match dress on a hanger, a second one lying on his seat.

The carefully polished boots were lined up under the seats. German defender Dennis Aogo had – beside his individually painted shin pads – three pairs of boots.

Femen gets naked for Putin

Denis Sinyakov

Mar 5, 2012 13:21 EST

By Denis Sinyakov

“Young silly girls” that’s how Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov referred to Ukrainian Femen movement activists Oxana Shachko, Anna Deda and Irina Fomina. The three were sentenced to 5-12 days jail for appearing topless at an election site during the presidential vote in Russia on Sunday and imitating an attempt to steal the ballot box, which Putin had used to vote earlier in the day.

It was the first time Deda and Fomina had been in jail.

One wouldn’t be able to tell it was Fomina’s first ever protest the night before, when the women gathered to practice in a hostel room overlooking the Moscow river. I had never covered this intimate process of preparation for an act of protest before. Moreover, it was the first time I met the activists, and I barely knew their leader Anna Hutsol. That left me slightly confused.

The day before the elections, Hutsol replied to my request to come and photograph them, saying she would most likely agree. All day long, in my head I was going through pictures of Femen shot by Alessandro Bianchi in Italy, Gleb Garanich in Ukraine, photos that had won at the World Press Photo and POYi, trying to make mine different. My fears about repeating what had been shot already proved groundless, thanks to the interior of the Soviet-style apartment made into a hostel.

Remembering where I came from

By Shannon Stapleton

Throughout my career I have covered my share of despair caused by senseless killings, war and natural disasters in other countries and within the United States. You become kind of jaded and realize that when you get the call to go cover one of these assignments that you are going in as a journalist and your job is to cover the reality of the situation no matter how bad it is. Little did I know that I would someday be covering such tragedy in a place around 25 miles from where I grew up.

I received the call on Tuesday to get on a plane to Chardon, Ohio, a blue collar town of 5,000 outside of Cleveland a day after the senseless shooting of five high school students, that ended with three dead by the end of the week. I boarded a plane as soon as possible and arrived in Akron, Ohio around 5:00 pm where I drove for an hour to make a candlelight vigil honoring the victims of the shootings at St. Mary’s church in Chardon, Ohio.

When I arrived at the church there were thousands of people that had gathered inside and outside dressed in red to honor the victims. I got quickly to work and was amazed at the outpouring of support from throughout the community and the other schools nearby. Kids had their school name jackets on from around the area and everyone had candles listening to the church service outside in the cold. When it was over people hugged and cried and walked hand and hand back to their vehicles. Walking back to my car was when it really hit me. I hadn’t been back to Chardon in 25 years when I played one of my last high school football games on a field that had now been replaced by a newer one with Astroturf.

Healing power of photography

Yuriko Nakao

Mar 2, 2012 14:16 EST

By Yuriko Nakao

The 3.11 Portrait Project brings smiles to the victims of the triple-whammy disaster through the power of the photograph

After the magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked Japan in March 11 last year, as a photographer for a newswire service, I had many chances to document reality, which was often depressing and shocking. However, at times, I would feel rewarded when my work brought positive results by inviting support and compassion from around the world to those who were suffering. However, still, the support was often not directed specifically to the person pictured in my shots, which often made me feel helpless.

Japanese photographer Nobuyuki Kobayashi, 42, had experienced a similar feeling. His main field of photography was mostly to shoot commercial photos but past assignments included regions in conflict, and disasters such as the earthquake which hit off the coast of Sumatra, the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the attacks on 9/11. As what many Japanese photographers did after Japan experienced the worst catastrophe since World War Two, Kobayashi went up north to take photographs after his friend in Iwate prefecture asked him to. He shot pictures of the disaster and rubble in northeastern Japan, but came to question whether that was the role he should play.

His conclusion was no.

“People were striving to move forward despite their difficulty and I hoped by photographing their portrait, it would offer them courage and hope, and possibly give them momentum to take a positive step forward towards the future,” Kobayashi said.

Editing the Oscars

Reuters photo editors Peter Jones and Sam Mircovich explain the process of transmitting hundreds of images from Hollywood’s premier event – the 84th Academy Awards. Photos created by Mike Blake in the Oscar photo room are quickly sent from camera to editor, reaching clients around the world.

Click here for a look at photographers covering all angles of the red carpet.

The femen phenomenon

By Gleb Garanich

I have been shooting Femen protests for five years and the girls have become a real Ukrainian brand now, like Chernobyl, the Klitschko brothers, footballer Andriy Shevchenko and Chicken Kiev. Colleagues in the office were always jealous when we left to cover the protests and many of my acquaintances from abroad were willing to go and watch them. Before taking pictures of the girls’ regular lives outside the protests, I asked myself: what do I know about them? I only knew their names. The public has two ideas of them, “funny girls” or “damn prostitutes, I wonder who’s paying them”. I personally do not care if their actions are moral or immoral, wrong or right. They do not kill or steal or promise to make voters’ lives better. Shooting their protests is much more interesting than, say, covering a briefing by the prime minister. These girls at least appear honest. Who pays for that is a question for the Financial Times, not me.

REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov

I chose the three most prominent Femen activists, Oleksandra Shevchenko, Inna Shevchenko and Oksana Shachko, and decided to spend a few hours with each one on a regular day. Two problems I faced were a queue of foreign reporters waiting to meet them and the flu, which brought the girls down. But once they recovered, I paid them a visit.

I spent the morning with Inna Shevchenko.

Inna, 21, was born in the city of Kherson and studies journalism in Kiev. She had worked for the press office of the Kiev mayor’s office, but was sacked for taking part in Femen protests. Inna likes to hike in the mountains and read Chekhov. She rents a room in a downtown Kiev apartment.

Red carpet moments

Tuxedo-clad photographers and editors come together for Hollywood’s most anticipated night – the 84th Academy Awards. Mario Anzuoni, Lucas Jackson and Lucy Nicholson take spots on the congested red carpet to capture the styles of the stars, looking for glamour, intimacy and surprising moments.

In this multimedia piece, Lucas turns the camera toward the photographers themselves.

Oscar photographers:

Mario Anzuoni – Arrivals 2

Mike Blake – Photo Room

Gary Hershorn – Awards Show

Flirt

Damir Sagolj

Feb 27, 2012 08:55 EST

Photographer Damir Sagolj won second place in the multimedia story section of the POYi awards for the following piece on the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011.

View more of Damir’s photographs from Japan here.