Another football season in Europe draws to a close taking with it a large chunk of weekend duties for Reuters photographers, certainly in the UK.

So (I hear you cry!!) what do we do with all this free time?

The answer is we swap the soccer field for the Cricket pitch and, to the bemusement of most of our colleagues based outside of the UK, we spend FIVE DAYS photographing a single match!! For many the idea of a game that lasts so long that it includes regular meal breaks, stops for bad weather and can still end in a draw leaves them scratching their heads, but I love it.

At its best there is no other game like it. It’s like a five day long game of chess with the captains using all their tactical expertise to wrestle momentum from each other whilst also battling the elements which can have a huge say in how the game pans out.

In terms of daily coverage it also presents many challenges. Condensing 8 hours of play into a concise set of pictures that sums up the day’s story would be difficult enough if you could sit down at the end of the day with a cold beer and edit everything, but to do this as the game unfolds around you is even more difficult.

Add to this the concentration factor of watching 8 hrs of action, never knowing what each ball will bring, and you get some idea of how challenging it can be.

For those of you who think that maybe a sport that lasts so long is totally mad, fear not, there’s always the option of watching that totally sane English past time of CHEESE ROLLING!!!

 You decide.

After the final is over comes the presentation of the trophy. At this point all but the most significant images of winning goals or dejected losers become just so many file pictures. All attention is focused on the pot picture and the antics of the victorious team.  

Until the last jubilant member of the winning team bounces their way off the field photographers and cameramen are locked in pitched battle with one another to capture the defining moments of the victory dance and make deadlines. In addition to skill, experience and aggression (often exceeding anything demonstrated by either team in the preceding 90 minutes), the most important asset in such circumstances is the ability to take risks.

These two frames from Dylan Martinez of AC Milans Inzaghi celebrating after winning the Champions League Final are a case in point. The one is conventionally too tight, too close, but truncated as it is, it captures the energy and exuberance of the moment. The other takes the traditional kissing the cup picture a step further and leaves the viewer with a degree of uncertainty about whether Inzaghi is in reality kissing the cup or the image of himself.

For some the story of the Champions League Final was about Liverpool losing. Our picture of the dejected Liverpool Captain was widely used to convey the disappointment felt by team and supporters alike, but my favourite was this moment from the end of the game, captured by Kai Pfaffenbach. Brazilian striker Kaka is on his knees giving thanks for his teams victory, flanked by Liverpools Harry Kewell and team captain Steven Gerrard; Kakas tee-shirt perhaps offering a clue to the source of Milans edge on the night.
 

The following is reproduced with the kind permission of David Leeson, Executive Producer – Video and New Media at the Dallas Morning News. To see his work, check his personal website at: http://www.davidleeson.com

The Pitchman: Frame Grabs
David Leeson, Dallas Morning News

Want to know a simple truth regarding me? I’m sick of talking about frame grabs.

I can almost hear the cheers nationwide from die-hard 35mm users, who have grumbled about my support of using high definition video cameras to obtain frame grabs. I think the problem I’ve faced as I’ve presented my views about video and stills is that it’s easy to ignore. After all, most of you are using still cameras on assignments.

So, when I hold up an HDV camera in front of an audience and say, “This is the future of photojournalism,” it’s not too hard to dismiss me as a lunatic. You can easily turn your nose up at HDV, pick up your 35mm and say “This is made specifically for stills and the other is for video. Since I shoot stills, video doesn’t apply to me.”

Unfortunately, not only does it apply to you, it could likely help us save an industry threatened by the overwhelming demand for rich online content. It could also save your job during rounds of massive layoffs spreading like a cancer through our newsrooms and it could become one of the greatest technological developments for our profession since the 35mm rangefinder slowly replaced large formats. The use of quality frame grabs from moderately priced high definition video cameras is a no-brainer in a world demanding rich multimedia content.

So, why am I sick of talking about it? I never thought it would be such a tough “sell.” I’ve always believed that everyone in my profession was pretty much like me, joined in the belief that the power of the still image is not in the means it is made but rather the substance of the image. I’ve always known there were a few out there who cared more about their technically perfect pictures than the subjects within them but I figured they were a sub-group of a sub-group.

I was also not prepared for what would happen when I began suggesting that the 35mm would slowly fade from daily use in our photo departments. That’s when the ire began. God help the soul who would try to remove a still camera from your hands. I love my 35mm too. In fact, I’ve been known, throughout the years to kiss my camera lovingly. Recently I presented a passionate argument to the Director of Photography at The Dallas Morning News, Leslie White, after I had been asked to return my company issued Canon EOS1D Mark II.

I had fallen in love with “her.” I said, “I’m not just giving back my camera to you. I am saying goodbye to a lover.” Five minutes later, as I was eloquently expressing my deep adoration for my camera, she interrupted me and said, “Just keep it.”

So, yes, I understand the attraction to the tool but I am more concerned with what the tool can do. If the tool matters more, then we would be better off as commercial photographers. You’ll make a lot more money and avoid the story-telling power of video intruding on your life as a photojournalist. Because, over the last five years, video has been slowly working its way into our visual lexicon. Frame grabs are the perfect solution to combining the need for stills with the needs for motion and sound.

An HDV camera provides us with the ultimate photojournalistic reporting device. With one camera I can produce powerful still images while at the same time combining my efforts to produce storytelling sound and motion. Entire stories could be told in motion alone. Add sound to it and a layer of information never available to us before is ready to bring your still images to a new platform of power.

But, these days, I’m more than a little dismayed. I am beginning to feel like one of those guys demonstrating a new slicer-dicer at a county fair. Perhaps if I offered a set of free steak knives, more of you would listen. But, that’s probably a bad idea. I’ve seen some folks get so heated about frame grabs, if I gave them a knife, they’d probably throw it at me.

I didn’t create this scenario. I am not responsible for the fact that people aren’t reading our newspapers as much anymore. Blame the Internet. Blame Al Gore. Blame whomever you wish but don’t blame me. I’ve sacrificed some of the best years of my still photography career to hopefully establish a tradition of ethical reporting with video using traditional still photojournalism practices.

All of this reminds me of the days when color first arrived on the newspaper scene and we struggled with decisions about which camera to use – the one loaded with Kodacolor or the one with Tri-X. Strangely, none of us seemed to grasp the idea that we could have made black and white prints from our color negatives. I suppose we were so attached to black and white that color was the stepchild we ignored for as long as we could. We begrudgingly loaded our cameras with color and tried to find something colorful. “Oh look! That kid is wearing a red sweater!” Sigh. Doesn’t that sound familiar to how some people are using video today?

Video, in particular the ugly “FG word,” is not the death of the still image. It’s just the opposite. It might just create a new world of still photography. How many of you own a Holga? Isn’t it interesting how we’ll embrace new ideas in still photography as long as the camera doesn’t shoot faster than 10-frames per second?

Which leads to one of the most common complaints about frame grabs other than the camera itself. Some say shooting video at 24-30 frames per second and pulling a frame grab from the footage is “cheating.” “It takes all of the skill out of it.” Sure it does. It’s sort of like the way automatic transmissions took the skill out of driving or how the computer took all the skill out of writing on a typewriter. Of course the ink and quill approach in Shakespeare’s day had long since trashed the grand skill of cave drawings.

I usually smile like the pitchman at the fair answering the question, “Can it dice tomatoes?” I wish I could refer you to some news photographer from decades ago, on assignment with his flash bulb and a Speed Graphic. How do you think he would look at your motor drive and fancy TTL dedicated strobe? You think it’s possible he might say you were cheating?

But the real answer, throughout history, is that technology cannot substitute for the heart, mind and soul of the artist. Nor can any increased frame per second assure you of capturing a powerful moment. Nor can video grant you better composition or lighting. Actually, the video camera is nothing more than a camera and it is the same as it has always been – useless to photojournalistic reporting without a compassionate and sensitive soul bearing it.

When did we begin caring more about these things more than the moment? I’ll take one solid, kickass moment over any perfectly, lit, composed, mega-megapixel, pretty picture any day. Fact is, one of my most popular photos from Iraq is back-focused but the power of the moment trumped technical weakness. Give me a great moment and I don’t care what camera you use to make it. All I care is that it moves me to feel something. Even better is if your image makes me move into action to do something about my world.

Thus, I think video frame grabs could be a resurrection of a profession at stake. Perhaps you have noticed that visual imagery is the leading force behind the shift from our print editions to news and information organizations on the web. We are needed now more than ever. Clinging to your 35mm and dismissing the merits of an image obtained by a frame grab is not serving our profession well. It’s time to move forward. This is our chance to rise up and lead the world.

Champion’s League Final, Liverpool versus AC Milan playing in Athens. We have four photographers on the pitch, one in the stands with the editing team in Reuters offices in London and Rome. Our first fully captioned and cropped action picture moves to clients within three minutes of the kick-off.

For anyone like me who remembers the days of film, runners and analogue lines when  competitive coverage of a soccer match meant being able to file one in-focus print on a drum transmitter over the phone line by half time, the technology we use now is truly liberating, particularly for the editors. The massively increased speed of transmission allows the story of the game to be told in a more rounded way rather than just as a series of isolated moments, through the use of supporting frames, alternative crops and different angles.

But the “moments” or “plays” are essential to sports coverage, it is the action pictures,  the goals, the fouls, the home run being hit which define the coverage. It is very reassuring when two of your photographers on opposite sides of the pitch nail it, bang on.

Hats off to Messrs. Pfaffenbach and Noble for these eloquent reminders that it is the person holding the camera and not the technology that makes great pictures.

What do two of the subjects of my previous post, Reuters Senior Photographer Kevin Lamarque, US President George W Bush and a turkey called “Liberty” have in common? The answer, is a photograph which still makes me chuckle as I look at it on my wall five years later. 

At an annual event in the run up to Thanksgiving, the President “pardons” a turkey but in 2001 having spared the life of the aforementioned Liberty, the ungrateful fowl repaid this magnaminous gesture with a breach of protocol. Lamarque captures the moment perfectly. The President’s eyebrows arch upwards in surprise and the smiles frozen on the faces of the helpless “turkey industry representitives” speak volumes.

In Europe news media ran the image for weeks after the event, although it was less than universally popular in the USA.

However lessons were learned and as Jason Reed’s picture of the 2006 event shows, the turkey’s liberty has been curtailed.  

Once bitten twice shy?

You have to be there because routine comings and goings have the potential to become news when the subject is President of the United States. Even so, ”President George W. Bush carrying dog Barney descends the steps of Air Force One on his arrival in Waco, Texas, May 18, 2007″ is a photo caption to pique the interest of only the most passionate pro-Bush, plane-spotting, Barney fan.

But just look at Kevin Lamarque’s stunning picture of the event. 

Nothing happened. Shot against a bright blue background the President looks down as he watches his footing and the viewer’s attention passes to Barney and is held by the tiny pin point of light reflected from the dog’s eye as it stares intently into the distance.

Nobody slipped, nobody got bitten, but you don’t need a news hook when the pictures are this good. 

I hate photographic pools. They are the bane of my professional existence, seldom produce decent pictures and when they do we have to share them.

Too often the agency pools we are subjected to are a waste of time and resources; anti-competitive excercises in lazy, lowest common denominator photo-journalism. Autofocus, autoexposure, point and push pictures of non-events.

For the unitiated pools are the mechanism by which organisations, particularly governments, control press access to organised events, ceremonies, state visits, press conferences and the like. A photographer or photographers will be given privileged access on the understanding that they share the results with their colleagues (or rather selected colleagues). In this country as far as agency pools are concerned very seldom does such favoured access deliver pictures to match.

Of course limiting numbers is entirely understandable in circumstances where space is tight, where rescue or forensic teams are working or where discretion is imperative such as at a funeral.

For anyone working in London “security” is the most often used reason for limiting access to a pool. I can see that for anyone charged with ensuring the physical safety of a VIP it is important to keep lines of sight open and access and exits free but I cannot remember the last time an accredited member of the press launched a physical attack on anyone other than a particularly annoying colleague.

In the UK ”pools” are invariably an attempt to guarantee media attention. Restrict access and those twin motivators, pride and paranoia will ensure that news organisations fight like fiends to gain entry whatever the event and if you control access you also have a good chance of controlling the message. Under the guise of offering privileged access to the news of the day they ensure that precious editorial resources are expended reporting a particular version of events.

It is easy to be lulled into a torpor by this pre-digested diet and to justify unquestioning compliance with the excuse that in the middle of it all, from time to time, there are nuggets, but they are very few and very far between and the costs are independence, impartiality and the ability to respond aggressively to a real story.

Maybe as a child I never learned to share nicely.

 Finbarr O’Reilly is a Reuters photographer based in Dakar, Senegal covering West and Central Africa. He won World Press Photo of the Year in 2006.

Our desire as journalists to reach the scene of a plane crash that killed 114 people in Cameroon last week was tempered by the fear of what we would find once we got there.

Any accident site is bound to be grisly.

But this one was worse than most after misguided search efforts took two days to locate the wreckage of the Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 which went missing shortly after taking off from Douala airport late on May 4.

Tropical heat at the crash site, a fetid mangrove swamp surrounded by dense forest, meant bodies rotted quickly.

Reporters and photographers were granted access only after being made to wait six hours in the sweltering sun by Cameroonian soldiers who seemed more bent on asserting their authority than assisting the recovery mission.

International interest ran high because passengers from more than 20 countries were on board the stricken aircraft.

Among them was an Associated Press journalist Anthony Mitchell, a Nairobi-based correspondent returning home to Kenya after an assignment.

I did not know Mitchell, a Briton, but many friends and colleagues did and whenever the journalistic community loses one of its own there is a profound sense of loss and disbelief that goes beyond normal sadness at the human tragedy.

Journalists working in Africa often face risks.

Bouncing along on the back of a rickety truck with rebels crossing a remote desert war zone, or sitting on a box of grenades in a dilapidated military plane bumping through the air high above a jungle is part of our job.

We frequently cover stories that involve death and sometimes use grisly humour to cope.

But there were no jokes on this day.

NEED TO SEE

Wading through knee-deep mud, clinging to dripping vines or using hacked off tree branches as walking sticks, local and foreign journalists struggled to the crash site.

The smell hit us first. The overpowering odour of spilled jet fuel and decomposition made several journalists sick. Others fainted.

More than once, I wondered why such a ghoulish mission was necessary. The argument given to obstructive soldiers was that it is important for people to see what happened.

But I asked myself whether this was true. What could be gained from seeing this?

The answer came in the quiet presence of Kamal Shah, a 32-year-old Kenyan whose wife, Meera, 30, was on the plane on her way home from a short business trip.

With family members banned from the crash site, Shah posed as a journalist to gain access.

As we busied ourselves with our work, Shah slowly and silently picked his way through the stinking mud, twisted metal, tree roots, scattered clothing, a dead snake and other debris.

After several hours, he came up to me, covered in mud and sweating.

Somehow, he’d recovered his wife’s wallet from the mess.

“It means a lot just to find this, to see her smile on her photo ID,” he said, his lips and hands trembling.

People do want to see, in order to understand. Still, some things are best not photographed.

Among the debris were private items — smiling family pictures, birthday cards, intimate letters, and identity documents — all too heartbreakingly personal to show.

Working as a photographer allows a certain remove from the subject matter, as we try to capture images that tell the story.

But at one point, while reporting in details to our Dakar office for a print story, I looked down to find my foot submerged in muck and standing on part of a corpse.

I was revolted, but even more, I felt guilty.

Who was it? A mother, a crew member, someone travelling to visit their lover? There’s no way ever to know.

Mud washes off at the end of the day.

But thoughts of our own mortality do not.
Finbarr O’Reilly  

An Hour with a Film Legend by Los Angeles Senior Staff photographer Fred Prouser.
The assignment was pretty straight forward, accompany Global Entertainment Editor Arthur Spiegleman to illustrate an interview with film legend Kirk Douglas about his book “Let’s Face It” at the star’s Beverly Hills home.

A housekeeper welcomed us and led us to the living room. She suggested I look around to find a suitable place to take my pictures. Nearby was a comfortable den with shelves loaded with art books and a skylight with natural light streaming in, perfect for candid portraits during the interview and outside by the pool was a sculpture garden.

Kirk Douglas strode into the room from a door off the den. He was alone. There was no publicist, no manager, no pre-approved questions, he just sat down on the couch and said, “What would you like to know?” and so we began.

He appeared oblivious to the camera, concentrating on Art’s questions. As he spoke he emphasised his words with hand gestures and despite his 90 years and a stroke which affected his speech he was articulate and comprehensible. He mentioned that his best friend Jack Valenti was dying. Little did we realise that later that day we would actually be reporting the death of this former aide to US president Lyndon Johnson and father of the US film rating system.

Douglas told us that his favourite film was Spartacus which he also produced and he spoke of how he had “brought on” the young director, Stanley Kubrick. One of his proudest moments was a pat on the back from son Michael Douglas.

At one point he looked over at me and complimented the beard I have worn for 30 years. I told him, “my wife likes it”.

As the hour drew to a close, Douglas motioned for us to walk with him to the pool area, he posed next to a large sculpture by Seward Johnson showing the young and the old Kirk Douglas and after showing us around his garden, he walked us to the front door and bid us farewell.

Just imagine. Youre sitting in  your apartment drinking your morning coffee as you scan the early news, trying to come up with a fresh angle on Chinas booming economy when you hear scratching at the window.  In certain circumstances this may not be strange but you are on the 32nd floor.  Drawing back the curtains you find a man outside suspended by a thin rope and swinging gently to and fro as he cleans the window. You quickly grab your camera, making sure you dont frighten him and cause him to fall and there you have it, just what you needed to illustrate the story.

As these images show, not the first time that my vantage point above some of Beijings numerous construction sites has freely delivered nice illustrative pictures in this way.

Reinhard Krause is Chief Photographer Greater China, based in Beijing.