Photographers Blog

The inhabitants of a Caribbean fishing village with no cinema, have become movie stars.

When I was invited to attend the screening of the movie “The Kid Who Lies” (El Chico que Miente) in the same village on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast where it was filmed, I had no doubt it would be a fantastic experience.

I could just imagine the excitement of its inhabitants seeing themselves and their familiar places on the big screen. But when I reached Ocumare I discovered that this was a place that hadn’t seen a movie screening since its last theater closed 40 years ago, and that this one would be truly special.

Friday night was warm as some 1,000 noisy ocumareños gathered in the social club along Bolivar Square. They filled the club with the sound of drums and the smell of coffee, sitting on plastic chairs and on the floor. Many stood along the walls, and others even poked their heads through the open windows. Nobody wanted to miss it.

“I never went to the movies before, and the first time I get to see one I’m in it,” oyster seller Argenis proudly told me. His smile brightened his deeply-tanned face. “My children are happy to see their father in a movie, even if it’s just for five minutes.”

Pakistan chief photographer Adrees Latif has won the prestigious ICP Infinity Award in Photojournalism for his outstanding coverage of last year’s Pakistan floods. Working under the most difficult of conditions he led the Reuters pictures team to tell the story from every possible angle. His images were published daily across international front pages, bringing attention to the enormity of the catastrophe from its early stages. Latif’s work has received numerous industry accolades including the Pulitzer prize for Breaking News Photography in 2008.

Adrees recounts how he took the award-winning image of marooned flood victims grasping on to an army helicopter as they tried to escape.

Heavy monsoon rains in late July 2010 caused widespread flooding across Pakistan, sweeping away entire villages and killing at least 1,600 people and displacing 10 million. Water submerged around one-fifth of the country and led to the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis in decades. A week into the crisis, flooding had submerged areas of southern Pujab province while leaving a trail of death, damaged infrastructure and an uncertain future in the north of the country. As the flood waters ravaged villages and towns along the Indus River basin, I too followed its trail of destruction. After spending days wading through flood waters to tell the story, I arrived in Multan on August 6 in the hope of getting a seat upon a helicopter taking part in relief efforts. My goal was to bring light to the vast amount of landmass the floods had covered, the same viewpoint that made U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon note the Pakistan floods were worst disaster he had ever seen.

If it is written in a newspaper, is it true or false?

One of the most interesting parts of our job as a photo-reporter is one of the basic principles of journalism – that is telling the TRUE and REAL STORY to newspaper readers and online viewers who were not there but want to know the real story behind the headlines.

But journalism is changing. Long gone are the days when people said “It must be true, the newspaper says so.” Especially in Italy, it looks like some reporters do not tell the whole truth. They do not look for the truth nor do they investigate to try to arrive at the truth. They look for little or wrong clues. They use it to prove their story; a biased truth. Do they do this to confuse the readers and to contribute to warped thoughts? Are the journalists simply not capable of good reporting?

I’m irritated when these types of journalists use our pictures to prove their false version of reality.

The Reuters trophy case got a little more crowded on Tuesday, with a raft of awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and the Best of Photojournalism Awards from the National Press Photographers Association.

And the winners are:

SABEW Award for real-time news organizations

David Baily, correspondent; Kevin Krolicki, Detroit bureau chief; Jui Chakravorty, correspondent; Poornima Gupta, correspondent; Kim Soyoung, correspondent; and Nick Carey, correspondent: "GM/Chrysler deal hopes rise, then shattered"

From the judges' comments:

This package on the potential for a GM/Chrysler deal broke significant new ground with exclusive details of the negotiations between the two auto companies and the federal government. The stories were comprehensively reported and smoothly written, impressive given the many twists and turns of the story.  Besides landing scoops, the reporters were able to see all the angles, and put their exclusives in the larger context of the federal auto bailout and a troubled industry. Although the stories relied heavily on unattributed sources -  and the judges would have like to have seen more precise descriptions of those sources - the stories’ accuracy speaks to the quality of the information those sources provided.

MEMORY OF THE PRESENT

I have just received the first copy of the new book Our World Now 2. The title page reads “Executive Picture Editor: Ayperi Karabuda Ecer”. But besides pleasing my parents (my teenage daughter does not care), what does that mean?

On the one hand, everyone at Reuters is an editor. News flows between photographers, regional chiefs, global editors, picture deskers, keyworders and specialist editors. All are absolutely vital to deliver a daily output of some 1,700 images for the international media. My efforts are only in addition to what has already been produced.

On the other hand, within such a rich, global production there is no such thing as one final edit. Working with Reuters imagery is, like the book’s title, opening a window to our world now – it is live and constantly changing.