Photographers Blog

By Jassim Ahmad

We have just launched an update to The Wider Image app for iPad – an award-winning interactive experience showcasing visual insights by Reuters photographers. Thanks for your enthusiasm and feedback, which has helped drive these enhancements. Here is what’s new:

Share further
Our #1 reader request. You can now share stories and photographer profiles through Facebook and Twitter. Your friends and followers will be able to preview the story and read the full photographer profile, for example Lucas Jackson.

The share pages adapt to screen size, so they work across smartphones, tablets and desktops. When sharing stories on Twitter, your story tweets can expand to show the main image.

Four ways to discover
The toolbar now offers four views to navigate the collection:

- Latest – view the most recent stories added to the app
- Explore – browse the entire collection through a world map and timeline
- Profiles – access over 160 photographer profiles and their stories
- My View – reflect on your favorite stories and see new stories from the photographers and countries you follow

Chicago, Illinois

By John Gress

Most of us climb stairs.

Some of us do it for exercise, some of us do it because there is no other option.

Many of us would complain that it’s a burden to ascend three floors, but for Zac Vawter climbing to the third floor of the Willis Tower on Sunday was an accomplishment – making it to the 103rd floor was historic.

Vawter took approximately 2100 steps to climb 1353 feet with the world’s first neural-controlled Bionic leg, according to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Their Center for Bionic Medicine has worked to develop technology that allows amputees, like Vawter, to better control prosthetics with their own thoughts.

By Carlos Barria

I have heard this question asked a million times: would this picture be better in color, or in black and white? I grew up in the color era, but I do remember seeing television programs in black and white. That was before 1990, when my parents bought a color television to watch Argentina’s national soccer team play in the World Cup in Italy. (We won the Cup in 1986… in black and white.)

I find myself wondering sometimes whether a particular story, or a particular picture, would be stronger or clearer in black and white, or in color. To some degree, the answer is imposed. I work for a media organization that provides clients with color pictures, so I photograph in color.

But sometimes I like to experiment with converting pictures to black and white, just to see how they look. Recently I visited two Communist Party schools in China where trainees attended courses to reaffirm their foundation as Communist Party members. During the trip I went first to Jianggangshan in Jiangxi province, a historical area where former Chinese leader Mao Zedong fought the Nationalists, as a leader of the newly created Red Army. Then I visited a modern school in Pudong, in the cosmopolitan hub of Shanghai.

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 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 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.

By Peter Andrews

Instagram is mainly a tool for young people to take pictures and catch up on things; situations that they missed out on, either because they weren’t yet born or because they just weren’t there.

It is a fascinating tool, however it’s not real photography, it’s an illusion. Listening to an explanation on what Instagram is, it appears that anyone can become Ansel Adams (who I studied at the Fine Arts faculty 30 years ago). Just with a touch of technology one can skip all the creativity that we had to develop or study for and just pick up an iPhone and become an artist. One may look at it as the end of photography (and most photographers who make a living by taking pictures would say that). But if you look at it from a different point of view, it is the beginning of a new era in photography and photojournalism as this global tool turns image-taking and sharing into a worldwide diary of everyday life.

Myself, as a professional photographer who has made a living by taking images for 28 years, I have a tear in my eye when I look back at the romance that film photography was able to give me, in the same manner that a painter who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century would say about his passion and profession. I recall taking pictures, followed by developing film by hand, breathing fumes in the darkroom, spending evenings making prints as perfect as possible and then sometimes a few hours later looking at a product with satisfaction.

By Wolfgang Rattay

Reuters robotic cameras will not only be hung high up at the Olympics venues but will also go underwater.

We have developed a remote-controlled “underwater photographer” that can hold its breath for the duration of the Olympic Aquatic competitions at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Let me tell you briefly about the history of Reuters underwater news photography.

A long, long time ago I was a gear fiend. I had to have all the toys and they had to be dragged around with me on every assignment. A backpack the size of a refrigerator stuffed with lenses, filters, tripods and gadgets that would never see the light of day…. All just in case.

The older I get, the lighter I travel. The older I get, the less stuff I need in my life. My wife and I even disposed of our dining table and chairs in favor of simple floor cushions. No clothes drier, no air-conditioner, no TV. This approach applies to my professional life, be it an assignment 10 minutes walk from the Reuters office in Sydney or a several week-long assignment in Afghanistan. Now I’m more likely to shoot with prime lenses, not use flash (I never really got the hang of speed lights anyway) and not take any fancy add-ons. If it doesn’t fit in two or three small pouches on my belt, chances are it gets left behind. My check-in bag is rarely full. Media scrums at news conferences are less painful. In and out of taxis/elevators/armored trucks is easier. Running with your kit is faster. Working becomes simpler and I really don’t miss all those bits and pieces that no longer weigh me down.

That means there is less to break, less to clean, less to remember, less back strain and less of a struggle through airports. Oh, and to keep your boss happy, less expense.

Bob Radocy of TRS Inc. lost his his left hand when he fell asleep at the wheel and side swiped a semi-trailer truck. He now designs and builds prosthetic attachments that allow amputee athletes to participate in multiple sports. Bob tells photographer Rick Wilking about his motivations in this multimedia piece.