Photographers Blog

By Ueslei Marcelino

It’s always a challenge to photograph nature, and the moon is certainly a part of that. Everyone at some time has looked at that giant orb shining in the sky.

In recent months I felt the urge to try my hand at photographing it. The simplest way is to record the moon up there alone, suspended in the dark. The hardest is to capture it with something in the foreground that can cause more visual impact.

This July 3 I had already identified a place where the moon would appear, so all I needed was that interesting foreground object. My chosen place was at the Pantheon of the Fatherland monument, in the political center of Brasilia between the Planalto presidential palace, the Supreme Court and Parliament.

When the moon appeared on the horizon some people pulled out their camera phones and pocket cameras to record the beauty of the moment. I had hoped to use these people in my image as a timeworn and simple photographic cliché, a silhouette. In this case, I hoped to put someone on the moon.

To the left of where I stood, I noticed a couple admiring the scene. The man was taller and began photographing the moon with his phone. At the same time, I started looking for a way to frame him with the moon in the background.

Going for an assignment where you’re sure of a good picture can cause more stress than you imagine.

The annual mid-winter Pingsi sky lantern event in Taiwan, one of the most colorful festivals in the world, is an event where most photographers would say, “Yeah, I can shoot that easily and make a nice picture.” The mass release of balloon-like lanterns usually occurs on the 15th day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, celebrated by ethnic Chinese around the world.

You look at similar shots in the Reuters archives and wonder whether your pictures this year can match them.

It didn’t take long this time to find a photograph that leapt off the screen. I had intended to select the one image from the Reuters daily file that knocks your socks off. The problem is I found two!

Of course Barack Obama’s speech at the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in Berlin has to be a contender, for the subject matter if nothing else. But subject matter is not enough. Jim Young’s picture does the trick. It is not the conventional shot of a politician talking from a dais. The composition is pleasing on the eye; it contains, in a very simple way, all the elements necessary for a news picture and, despite the fact it is almost a silhouette, the figure of the U.S. presidential candidate is unmistakable.

The other photograph is an absolute winner, and much more of a silhouette. Of course animal pictures are always popular, but Radu Sigheti’s picture of a giraffe in Kenya, with birds sitting on it’s neck, is just a very simple and elegant image that speaks for itself.