Photographers Blog

Moore, Oklahoma

By Lucas Jackson

Minutes, sometimes seconds, is all the time people get to shelter from a tornado. Rarely with that much time is it possible to feel safe, especially as one of the rare category EF5 storms that bore down on Moore, Oklahoma rages overhead. It is overwhelming to see what wind can do when it unleashes an unfathomable amount of energy on structures that we humans believe are solid and safe. Full sized trucks wrapped around trees, suburbans turned into an unrecognizable mass of metal void of any identifying features, and blocks of neighborhoods laid flat, down to the foundations. Seeing this almost complete destruction – for blocks and blocks – makes it hard to comprehend how anyone could live through something like this. My own difficulty in matching what I was seeing with the reality that hundreds of people had managed to survive this event led me to start recording the stories of survivors and taking portraits of where they took shelter.

I felt it was important to record these stories as they could help future tornado victims prepare a location inside of their home to better withstand a storm like this. The voices of Robert, Scott, Matt, Corey and Donna capture this experience that most of us can not even imagine and I thank everyone who was kind enough to share their memories. Almost every person I spoke with was watching the news to see where the tornado was heading as they sought shelter somewhere in their home. As the reality of the storm bearing down on them became clear and they ran for shelter in their homes, almost all of them remember hearing the phrase “If you are not underground, you will not survive this storm. You have run out of time,” said by Gary England, a meteorologist for News Channel 9 in Oklahoma City as the world began to rumble around them. These are their stories.

“We were in the living room and all of us was in there, watching Channel 9. And he said that we needed to take cover immediately and also stated that it needed to be underground because it probably wasn’t going to be good if we took it on top of ground.

I took shelter in my linen closet with my mother, and my 21-year-old daughter, our five dogs. And we survived the tornado and walked out to the house gone and just the closet there, with the towels still folded. Light bulbs still good.

It’s like you hear the commotion and then you hear a silence and a roar. And then you hear popping glasses and breaking wood and trees flying by. And the door got sucked off. We had a quilt over our heads – that’s all we had.

By Tom Peter

Some call it street art; Bosso Fataka call it “joy in shaping our environment.” The environment that surrounds the four young men of this art group is the streets of Berlin, a city that some say has become Europe’s unofficial capital of unsanctioned art in the public space.

Over twenty years after the reunification, there is an abundance of derelict houses, whole swathes of industrial wasteland and railway arches that afford artists with square kilometers worth of brickwork that’s just asking to be covered in graffiti.

But art being art, this scene’s actors have gone beyond the traditional spray can work. There’s stenciling, urban knitting, urban gardening… you name it. The interested visitor can go on a tour around central Berlin, where well-informed insiders will show you the most notable examples of urban art. Bosso Fataka do what you might call “urban wrapping.”

By Nir Elias

As an Israeli and a resident of “ultra” secular Tel Aviv for most of my adult life, Purim — the celebration of the Jews’ salvation from genocide in ancient Persia, as recounted in the Book of Esther — has always been a time of partying and dressing up, for me.

Images of Orthodox Jews celebrating Purim were always very familiar. But being present at one of these celebrations was a different experience altogether.

This year I went to photograph the Vizhnitz Hasidic community in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city some 7 km (4 miles) from Tel Aviv. The Vizhnitz community members tend to emphasize the joyous gatherings and celebrations commemorated in the Jewish tradition.

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.

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

Lucas Jackson – Orchid Court

Lucy Nicholson – Arrivals 1

Through my video “The children of Dadaab: Life through the Lens” I wanted to tell the story of the Somali children living in Kenya’s Dadaab. Living in the world’s largest refugee camp, they are the ones bearing the brunt of Africa’s worst famine in sixty years.

I wanted to see if I could tell their story through a different lens, showing their daily lives instead of just glaring down at their ribbed bodies and swollen eyes.

It was a challenging project. As one senior photographer asked, how else can we tell the story without showing images that clearly illustrate the plight of the starving millions? Few photographs cover all aspects of life in the camps.

Reuters photographer Brendan McDermid shares his experience covering New York Fashion Week, with the logistics of shooting backstage, the shows and everything in between.

A combination picture shows Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate before (top) and during Earth Hour March 27, 2010. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Reuters’ photographers around the world were out in full force on Saturday to capture their city’s landmarks as the lights went out for Earth Hour.

From Beijing to Berlin, before and after photographs were taken and combined into this short video to illustrate the symbolic one-hour switch-off.