Streets of Wootton Bassett
A historic market town with a distinctive 17th century town hall, Wootton Bassett is worth a visit – but the crowds that gather here with grim regularity are rarely interested in the tourist sites. Instead, as British troops face a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Wootton Bassett, west of London, has become synonymous with the repatriation of soldiers killed in action.
After they arrive at a nearby air base, the bodies are driven slowly through the town en route to a hospital. For the past two years, townsfolk have joined grieving relatives in paying spontaneous tribute to the passing dead.
Covering the repatriation cortege is an uncomfortable assignment. There is always awareness that some people think photographing and filming mourners at a moment of emotional vulnerability is a thoughtless intrusion. Even after scores of similar ceremonies, this feeling of awkwardness is evident, including at the latest one I attended on July 22. Friends and family of soldiers line one side of a narrow road in Wootton Bassett while photographers and television crews face them from the opposite side.
The timing of the procession of flag-draped hearses is always an uncertainty. Participants on both sides of the narrow street usually arrive early, often ending up standing face-to-face for hours with little or no interaction. Such was the case as we waited under brooding storm clouds, and blazing sunshine. The bereaved fidgeted in their heavy dark attire, as photographers perched on stepladders and shifted their heavy cameras in aching arms. I believe it is out of respect that very few pictures are taken before or after the procession. However, in the few minutes as the coffins pass and flowers are laid, photographers snap away, capturing raw and painful emotions.
Something for nothing?
Everybody likes something for nothing. Better still if that something is actually useful. Last week was all about a little extra content for just a little extra effort and how it pays dividends.
Babysitting My guess is most Reuters photographers have a camera in their hand most of the time. You know, just in case. My journalist wife had to drive to the world’s largest coal port last weekend. I was babysitting. A new emission trading scheme was slated to be the following week’s main story in Australia so I grabbed toddler and cameras and off we all went. I ended up with a good carbon emissions file including an Asia picture of the week (below) in between splashing in puddles and chasing seagulls…with my son of course.
Drive-by Two days later I headed in the opposite direction, to Canberra for the arrival of Spain’s King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia. On the way there the clouds lifted from some distant hills framing a new wind power farm. Pulling over on the freeway, a few quick frames out the other side of the car…and an image (below) included in the Best of the Week file.
Reuters staff photographers are on call pretty much all the time and it would be rare to find one who does not take cameras home with them. The same goes for vacations etc.
4.25 – who values a news picture?
ATTENTION EDITORS: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A nice number 4.25, seems to sit easy on the eye, or should do except its 4:25 a.m. and the numbers are from my digital clock.
As Reuters’ chief photographer in Asia, I have a lot on my mind. The threat of conflict on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, floods in India and Bangladesh, a bogus trial of Suu Kyi in Myanmar, crashing economies, H1N1, claims and counter-claims of corruption and racism, insecurity in Nepal and Sri Lanka, global warming, the risk of unrest in Tibet and of course, China, where just about anything can happen at any time.
With the decline of the traditional news market, however, I sometimes wonder who still cares about news pictures and why should they be paid for.
How can you put a value to a news picture? You can’t eat it. A picture doesn’t move financial markets, so you can’t make money from it like you can on a news story. We hear the news through word of mouth, on the radio or even on the television. Most pictures have a lifespan of no more than 24 hours anyway, and everyone can take them these days (or so they think). So why bother?
Simple answer: when it comes to integrity, honesty and trust, seeing is believing. It is rarely understood that people are smart and should be left to come to their own conclusions. A still picture shot by a Reuters news photographer gives the viewer time to see the truth.
There was a lot of doubt earlier when loads of media networks started reporting that the terrorist leader was dead. Most people said that he was not dead & that the violance which shook the country will still continue even after the war. However after looking back a long time after the war it is evidant that it is over for good & that the terrorist leader is dead.
I guess this pictures would really be the evidence for the future to show the end of horrors.
Looking Back, Looking Forward
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.
One can have many perspectives on that vision. My view is that although our photographers work to shoot that one standalone impact image, the important factor is that the sum of this collection is a stunning testimony of our times.
The book presents 370 images by 188 photographers of 60 nationalities. To reach this point, my colleague Jassim Ahmad and I, together with Kate Slotover and Amanda Vinnicombe from our publisher Thames & Hudson would regularly ambush a meeting room at our London offices and plaster the walls with images and evolving layouts.
In a book like this, the pictures need to do more than just work together visually. They must go beyond familiarity to surprise, enlighten, question and draw different responses. Through this process some really good images are lost and others emerge.
“Some days you, as photographers, don’t feel appreciated enough. Well, remember you are documenting history every day through every frame.”This is something important to remember. And something I needed to be reminded of this week, when I’d been feeling a little unappreciated as a photographer – comments on my photo Blog had decreased to the point where I was questioning why I posted photos for so little feedback. Why not just keep them on my harddrive for my own viewing?You’ve managed to remind me why we bother to document the world around us, even with seemingly unremarkable, every day scenes.I’ve been lucky enough to live opposite the Stratford Olympic site for the last 6 months and have built up a collection of images of the stadium being built, often with beautiful sunsets in the background. When the stadium is finished and London welcomes the world for the Olympics in 2012, I’ll be able to look back and see my record of the 6 months in which I saw its creation. I wish I could document the whole building process, but I’m moving to a different part of London now.In effect, we’re chroniclers of history, when we consider the bigger picture. If people hadn’t taken photos of (at the time) “unremarkable” things, we’d never have photographs showing factory life in the 1900s, or trench photographs during WW1 and WW2. Images which at the time, were probably laughed at by those in the pictures. Yet now, are considered iconic. In 50 years time, will I look at my 6 month record of the Olympic stadium, and marvel at our building designs, compared to architecture in 2060?So thank you for the reminder of why I continue to not only photograph the world around me, but to share it with friends and strangers online.For the record, I think looking through the thousands of Reuters photos every day and compiling them into books would be among the best jobs going!
Remember the days of black and white film?
Do you remember the days of black and white film? Life before digital and the preview screen? How about shooting one frame per minute?
I have made several trips with U.S. President George W. Bush to his ranch in Crawford, Texas over the last couple of years.
Crawford is a small, sleepy town, population 705, a place where time has seemed to have passed them by. There are no hotels, one small flashing traffic light, and definitely not a Starbucks to be found.
A Holga is a $25 toy, plastic, medium format rangefinder camera with one fixed exposure, and I have been using it for about 7 years. I brought some 120 Tri-x film on a visit when we had a couple days with no planned coverage of the President, just to kill some time and have some fun. But I realized that a lot of the images that I was trying to make had more of a horizontal look than the traditional square 6×6 images produced by the Holga, and thought they might work better as “sprocket” pix. If you put 35mm film in a Holga, it will expose the entire negative, including the edges numbers and sprocket holes. I thought it might be an interesting photo project to shoot some views of this town whose notoriety is home of the “Western White House” and the impact his presence would have on their town. I wanted the images to have an old dusty, historical look to it. And with Bush nearing the end of his presidency, it might be interesting to make a picture package on the town that will probably slip back into its quiet world, probably losing its most famous resident when he retires down the road to Dallas.
Shooting with a Holga is a very patient process. The viewfinder is nowhere near the image you end up with, especially with sprocket photographs. The angle is much wider than it looks, having to correct for the parallax error, mentally blocking out the top and bottom thirds for the 35 mm film….ughhh, never mind, click! F/8 @ 1/100th second. Turn the winder knob 36 clicks, and you are ready for the next frame. Sometimes that is the best thing to do with a Holga, just trip the shutter and move on. Don’t over analyze it. It is after all… a toy camera!
But what I love about it is the simplicity of it all. Film, plastic lens, and a black box. The basics of photography. It’s not 10 fps, 15 second photo ops, or rocket science for that matter. The anticipation of the film to come back from the lab days later, getting a loupe and seeing what happened. Isn’t what this is all about? A simple image from a moment in time. Trying to create something from nothing, and having some fun in the process. If you don’t slow down every now and then, the world just might pass you by…..
Where do you take your film to be developed? If you wanted some printed from the negatives, where do you take them for that? I have several 3 1/4 x 4 1/2 negatives over 60 years old that I want scanned. I can’t find a place to do this yet. Thanks. Jan Humphrey.
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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The Wall
Grief & death will always be conditions of life.Humanity demands it to be so.It is needful for many of those not present to share, in the pain of loss of these loved ones.Our hearts will always go out to those who give their lives for we bystanders who love them.The news media in this instance has chosen to share feelings of our human condition which we all cannot deny.That of “compassion”! A quality which we see so little of in this world today.
lampwickke
xxx