When I was first handed the task of co-ordinating user-generated images for Reuters, I was inundated with pictures of people and their pets and newborn babies. They werent exactly the pictures we were striving for when we launched You Witness News.

Now, I am pleased to say, I am seeing some high-quality images from major news events and global sports stories.

What I wasnt expecting was an insight into a secret society such as North Korea. Images by aspiring photographer Nora Stribrna raised the bar on user-generated content.

Nora, a Czech native and air stewardess on a private jet of a member of the Saudi royal family, tells the story behind the pictures:

North Korea opens its border twice a year to showcase its Arirang Mass Games, where it celebrates its military might and communist ideology. My ex-boyfriend is a photographer and he alerted me to this opportunity to visit the isolated nation. After applying for visas for us both at the North Korean embassy in Prague, he attended the mandatory How to behave in North Korea lessons that the embassy held for upcoming visitors. As I was not in the country, I missed hearing first hand all the useful tips, like what to wear (long sleeves and no shorts) and how not to be extravagant.

So we flew to China and were off: 23 foreigners on a 26-hour train ride into North Korea. The train was poor, devastated and dirty but we all expected it. When we reached the Chinese-Korean border, we all became scared. Nothing was allowed to be brought in, so we all left our mobile phones and computers in China, all books and weird items as well. Every person was searched properly, bag by bag, person by person, and many questions were asked by immigration officers. After being searched and questioned for six hours, we had some time to kill.

My first shock: everybody in green, gray and black uniforms, nobody spoke, heads down, silence, few bicycles, dark atmosphere, everywhere guards and police, barking dogs, fear. But there was revolutionary music playing, trying to make people happy.

We traveled with three official escorts, who were there to observe, control, listen to and ask us a lot of questions. One of them even spoke Czech to be sure they could understand what we said to each other.

Pyongyang, the capital, is made for the world to see how rich North Korea is. There are some buildings, airports and a few hotels. There are no shops or supermarkets. People are given vouchers for food, and are given few clothes a year. All uniforms. There are no other clothes.

We traveled to the north and south and saw indescribable poverty, peasants taking care of rice, guarded by police and military, just to make sure nobody would escape. Everything is black, gray, brown. People never put their head up.

One of our guides quizzed me on the members of our group: asking what is their occupation, their purpose for coming to North Korea and what the journalists in our group were planning to publish. I was asked to tell them to publish only good things about the regime.

After five full days, our initial laughter had passed. All except one of us had lived in communist states and we all remembered those similar days. Nobody really spoke on the plane back to Beijing. I only remember, we all got very drunk that night back to China. And we were very grateful for water and electricity. Very. We could speak! And we could say whatever we wanted.

You can see more of Nora’s pictures from North Korea here

There are many types of photograph that fall into the category of the marmalade dropper or the ‘cornflake dropper’. The phrases refer to astonishing pictures, or stories, that cause the reader of her/his morning newspaper to drop the marmalade or cornlflakes in mid-bite. More often than not it is the unexpected nature of the subject matter within the photograph that causes the extreme reaction. There are lots of examples, but the ones that always catch my eye are the photographs that combine luck and skill, resulting in an image that appears both familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time.

By its nature a photograph is two dimensional, and gives the impression of a third dimension through light/shade and perspective. But sometimes the everyday elements within the frame come together to create something unfamiliar, creating, in my view, a fourth dimension in the image, almost an optical illusion, stopping us in our tracks and enticing us to take another look and another.

These photographs are quite rare, because in order to work they have to be perfectly composed. Given the scale and scope of the Reuters picture operation I was able to find three such photographs shot within a 24 hour period.

The first photograph, by Denis Balibouse, shows US golfer Paula Creamer marking her ball in the 14th women’s Golf Masters in France. We immediately recognise what we are looking at, but the more we look the less familiar the image becomes.

The photograph of Barcelona’s Thierry Henry, by David Moir, diving for the ball in Edinburgh makes us look twice as his head appears to be replaced by the ball.

Synchronized swimming always makes striking images, and in this photograph by Daniel Munoz the legs of the U.S. team competing in Rio de Janeiro create an interesting pattern.

I must admit I didn’t notice it at first but the patter of tiny feet seems to have all but died away. Where did they go to? What happened to all the young wannabe news photographers touting their portfolios on CDs and websites around the picture desks?

The business has changed radically in the past 10 years; in the UK numbers of staff photographers at national newspaper have drastically diminished, but those papers are still full of pictures as are the online news media.

Maybe it’s just a capital thing, perhaps the cost of life in the big city is prohibitively expensive and they’re all out there in the provinces somewhere learning their trade.

I certainly hope so because without new blood coming into the industry we have a problem.

If the wannabes aren’t wannabes anymore, what do they wannabe instead?

Have you ever considered working abroad? Committing yourself to a new challenge. How about the role of an “Editor in Charge” on the Reuters Global Pictures Desk in an unfamiliar city on the other side of the world, in a new office with a sprinkling of old colleagues and friends and many more completely unknown new colleagues from all over the globe?

My wife Andrea and I decided it was time for a real change, not a small step forward but a leap into the unknown, into the darkness.  OK, so maybe an internal company transfer is slightly better lit, but a leap nevertheless. 

So we leapt and left “our” Berlin behind to find ourselves in Aircon City - at home, in the cab, at the office and back again, all air conditioned – and otherwise known as Singapore.

It is just as you would expect, friendly, relaxed and hot and very humid. On our way from the airport the taxi driver told us Singapore temperatures dont change much it is either HOT or VERY HOT. In fact it stays at pretty much 30 degrees all year round, so we are going to have to get used to it, but will be considerably helped by the omnipresent airconditioning.

We went for a stroll in the main shopping district  Orchard Road. It is a shoppers paradise with countless malls: Centrepoint, Delfi Orchard, Far East Plaza (over 600 retailers), Forum Galleria, Lucky Plaza (wanna buy a suit Sir very cheap?), Palais Renaissance, Scotts Shopping Centre, Ngee Ann City, Orchard Point, Orchard Hotel, Plaza Singapura, Shaw House, Shaw Centre, Specialist Centre, Tangs, Tanglin Mall, Tanglin Shopping Centre, Tudor Court, The Paragon, Wisma Atria  need more? Try http://www.singaporeexpats.com/food -and-leisure/shopping-in-singapore.htm#O rchard . The business of shopping is a serious business in Singapore.

Best of all, thay all have aircon and if you are feeling peckish all the malls have a food court in the basement. Be adventerous and try out chilli crabs, maybe a bowl of pigs-brain soup with ginger,  a frog or two, perhaps a plate of nasi lemak! Then after a restorative cappuccino you are ready to hit the next mall, but remember, once outside dont walk fast, forget running. Find your personal speed at which you can move without sweating like a pig and as quickly as possible dive into the nearest 20 degree celsius mall. The pedestrian lights on main intersections are designed for a measured approach to road crossing. They have a timer which shows how long you have left to cross the street before the lights change -  you have 11 seconds to reach minimum safety distance, so stay cool, take advantage of every one of the 11 seconds. And to think people credit us Germans with being well organised!

Orchard Road really does have everything. If shopping begins to pall after your 12th mall just follow the example of the locals and pop in for a session of deep foot reflexology, which I can personally recommend. Of course Singapore has lots of other interesting things to see and I’ll get there eventually but first I am still trying to fit in the shopping around the day job, of which more to follow…

Anyone who has ever turned on the TV expecting to watch live tennis coverage from Wimbledon and finds themselves watching Cliff Richard singing to the crowd or Jimmy Connors playing Bjorn Borg again will appreciate that English summer weather is unpredictable.

In a single day last week two months worth of rain fell on southern England causing flash flooding as drains overflowed and roads became rivers. Over the following 24 hours the rainwater running off the Welsh hills, swelled the rivers Severn and Avon resulting in water levels four metres higher than normal, breaking their banks and causing the most widespread flooding experienced in this country for decades.  

The Gloucestershire town of Tewkesbury at the confluence of these two rivers was cut off by the rising water, with roads impassible and hundreds of houses and businesses flooded.

My Midlands-based colleague Darren Staples and I met on the road to Tewkesbury; he hot foot (or rather damp sock) from covering flooding around Stratford further up the River Avon and I from London where the worst of the flash flooding had drowned a few white vans and left unspeakable objects previously consigned to the sewers, floating in suburban cellars.  We were well equipped with waders, bicycle, waterproof camera housings, crisp £20 notes with which to flag down lifts from passing mariners. Darren arrived convinced that we needed to take to the air to show the scale of things and at least 50 u-turns later, with mild wader-chaffing and a growing sense that we were getting nowhere, I agreed with him.

Fortunately Darren drew the short straw and I waved him back into the brown water before heading off to the convenient, dryly located Gloucester airfield and the amazingly accommodating Heliflight helicopter services. A no-fly-zone had just been ordered above the worst hit area, with only operational flights permitted but as he removed the door on my side the pilot opined that I was clearly “operating”and so off we went,  joined in no time by helicopters from Sky and ITN who were oviously ”operating” too. 

Looking down on the scene from the alarmingly small single-engine helicopter I immediately got a better perspective on the extent of the catastrophe. Hundreds of square miles of Gloucestershire and the surrounding counties, were under water, far more than I could ever have appreciated from the ground. Obvious p ictures leapt up in front of me whole towns and villages turned into islands, a single church isolated by flood waters of biblical proportions, roads disappearing into water, and hundreds of caravans under water to their roof tops.

General views of the whole area struck me as the strongest images, yet flying as high as we could under the cloud cover, my 16mm lens was not wide enough to capture the whole area, where was my fisheye? Safe and sound in the boot of my car at the heliport. However the resultant images were dramatic enough however to be the big front page pictures on three UK national newspapers the following day.

By the next day as the water continued to rise, the story had become the victims of the flooding and the potential for greater misery caused by the risk of failure of electricity and fresh water supplies. There were reports of flooded electricity sub-stations and water pumping installations being desperately defended from the advancing water by the fire service and army.  So it was back up in the helicopter, this time with the fisheye. On the way back to the airfield we hovered for a moment and I was able to shoot the whole vista in splendid fish-bowl curviness, which I am delighted to say was again widely used by the papers despite any anxiety I may have harboured about having missed my moment. 

(Pictures by Darren Staples and Stephen Hird respectively)

Stephen Hird is a Reuters photographer based in London. 

Motion blur is a technique best applied sparingly, particularly in a news context. It is often the sign of a “soft” assignment, where the photographer has the luxury of enough time to experiment such as during the eliminatory rounds of a sporting event and not something you would expect to see from a breaking news story or on the trophy presentation picture unless the “bread and butter” pictures were already in the bag.

When it works, it looks great and there have been three good examples on the wire in the past 24 hours by Andreas Stapff, Carlos Barria and Bruno Domingos from the Pan American Games in Rio, all of which feature on today’s Editor’s Choice

There is a lot of it on the wire at the moment although the last time I can remember seing one in print was Mr January in the Reuters 2007 calendar - this year we will have more than enough for the other eleven months too. 

I have just returned from a trip to Toulouse in southern France. The main reason for the trip was to drive down from Paris with a replacement people carrier for our 7-man Reuters pictures team covering the month-long Tour de France cycle race. I was also somewhat concerned about the state of the teams morale after the latest in a series of setbacks that has plagued our crew since the Tours unusual departure from London.

The Tour de France is a logistical nightmare. We start preparations the best part of a year in advance due to its unique continually-moving nature. Hotel accommodation, communications and transport are hard to assure when some 4000 people descend on the tiny towns in deep rural France.

Our crew is made up of two mobile photographers , Eric Gaillard and Stephano Rellandini each with our regular professional motorcyclists Jacques Clawey and Michel Vatel driving them. A large camping car, used as our mobile bureau, is driven overnight to the following days arrival site by team leader Jacky Naegelen. This assures us a good position in the Technical zone close to the arrival line. Lastly our Renault Espace mobile transmission vehicle driven by a third photographer, Vincent Kessler and manned by journalism student Ian Langsdon who sits in the back to edit and transmit pictures by GPRS or 3G. This vehicle drives a few kilometres ahead of the race and picks up discs from the two shooters on motorcycles throughout each stage. It also carries all the extra equipment too cumbersome for a motorcycle and the personal bags (packed for a month away from home) of our motorcyclists, photographers and editor. So, all in all, we strive to leave as little to chance as possible. But sometimes, I guess, chance just insists on working against us.

Despite immaculate preparation by team leader Jacky Naegelen, a veteran of some 20 TDFs, our own mobile transmission vehicle, a 1-year-old Renault Espace turbo, still under guarantee, was not released from its pre-Tour checkup at Renault because of  a consistent problem of the battery discharging. Renault was unable to pinpoint the problem and by the time we were ready to leave for the Tour, our car was still in a thousand pieces in the shop. So Renault, after much insistence, loaned us a similar vehicle for the duration of the Tour. Then we had re-kit this vehicle at the last minute with the special aluminium rear editing desk, radio communications and antennas. We also had to change all the paperwork with the Tour organisers, so the mood took a downturn. But the crew took off that afternoon and headed for London.

The mood darkened more as soon as our crew pulled up outside their Whitehall hotel where in the middle of unloading our bags, our two motorcyclists were given parking tickets.  The mobile office (camping car) just missed getting clamped and we were obliged to park the other transmission vehicle in an unguarded lot over a mile away. Obviously the police were making no exceptions for the Tour de France press.

The following morning in London, photographer Eric Gaillard had a brand new Canon Mark III and lens stolen. Then, in the afternoon, photographer Vincent Kessler complained of pains in his arm.  After being checked by the Tour de France doctors was diagnosed with a suspected coronary irregularity and he had to be repatriated to France for further tests. Zurich photographer Christian Hartmann came to the rescue and kindly replaced Vincent in London until we could find a permanent replacement for the rest of the Tour. So far, not so good.

Things kind of improved for a few days when the race moved back to France and the crew picked up its coverage rhythm. Brussels photographer Thierry Roge had replaced Christian for the remainder of the tour and took up his duties driving the Renault Espace and covering arrivals. We were doing very well with our pictures coverage and things were looking good . But on July 19, as the race wound its way between Marseille and Montpellier I had been sitting at my desk in Paris communicating live with Ian on Instant Messaging when suddenly he typed  S—t, S—t, were on fire!. Receiving this kind of communication from  anyone you know is bad enough but from ones own 21-year old son is indescribable. I called his cellphone and he picked up. O god, were on fire, the whole Renault is going up in flames. I told him to keep calm, forget the gear and move away from the vehicle. Then we lost communications.

What happened, it appears, is that while the vehicle was cruising along at about 60 kph ahead of the pack, awaiting an arrival of disks from the motorcycles, the Renault’s turbo caught fire, sending a ball of fire from the front right-hand side along the underside of the vehicle. Within seconds the car was completely engulfed in flames. Thierry Roge, driving, managed to grab his camera bag on the seat beside him and jump out.  Ian, seated at our custom made desk in the back, baled out as the car slowed and immediately tried to remove as many personal bags as possible from the back door of the vehicle.

Eric Gaillards computer bag was hurled out first, Ians personal bag was next.  But the personal bags were very big and heavy and he was only able to throw them about two meters away. Within seconds the heat was too intense to stay anywhere near the vehicle and he had to back off and as the raging fire spat large flaming pieces of burning plastic as far as the few bags he had saved. Thierry and Ian had no choice but to watch helplessly as the burning plastic sparks set their bags on fire just meters out of reach.

 Eric Gaillards black laptop bag (R) and Ians personal bag in flames (arrow)

By this time our two motorcyclists carrying Eric and Stefano had arrived, but neither photographer realized immediately that it was the Reuters car on fire so they started shooting pictures. It wasnt until they spotted Thierry and Ian, both somewhat in shock, that they realized the horrible truth. By this time there was not much left to do but to cover the event  journalisticaly. The race had been re-routed to a parallel road because of the thick smoke, so the fire became part of the story. Stefano and Thierry made stills as Ian was shooting video clips on his Canon Ixus. Despite a warning by gendarmes to the contrary, Eric made a dash and grabbed his burning computer bag, which because of its smaller size, Ian had manage to hurl the farthest from the fire.
We see Erics dash in the sequence used by Reuters Television from Ians footage.
 
Gendarmes arrive at the scene as Ian shoots video at left

Stefanos still-burning 300mm 2.8s and other lenses made an eerie image.

Behind the car, the contents of Ians bag he couldnt quite reach

      
The keys to Ian’s flat                              Trail of burned bags  

 Later that evening our motorcyclists went off and bought basic toilet kits for everyone and in the morning Jacky organized a trip to a nearby sports outlet to buy enough basic clothing and bags for the remainder of the tour.

Last night, around the dinner table, we talked over the incident and managed to put everything into perspective. Nobody had been injured, the equipment was largely replaceable and our old people-carrier was brought back into service soon after. Coverage, which had been excellent up until then, even continued in our favour the following day with many of Stefanos and Erics pictures of the fire published including in the International Herald Tribune. Eric had the entire front of Liberation and Ians video was picked up by RTV used on Eurovision. In a show of solidarity, AP, AFP and lEquipe had offered up all of their production until we were able to resume coverage.

This morning I left our team in goods spirits, ready to tackle the critical Pyrenees mountain stages and the following swing north, back towards the French capital. Maybe it was the good nights sleep after a hearty dinner accompanied by a rather generous amount of Gaillac wine, but something seemed to have cleared the air. There was a noticeable renewed energy amongst the team, almost as if their perceived Tour de France curse had been lifted along with the smoke from the fire.

Lets all wish them well for the rest of the Tour de France.

Thierry Roge ready for the rest of the Tour

Our Video 3 weblog links  (you need sound ON)

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoI d=61009&videoChannel=45

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoI d=61231&videoChannel=45

http://www.picturepage.reuters.fr/tdfmov ie/tdfinterview.wmv

Mal Langsdon

Joseph Davies won the under-16 photographic section of the British Library Front Page competition. His prize was work experience as a photographer with the Evening Standard newspaper in London.

Working for a week as an Evening Standard photographer certainly exposed me to many experiences I do not think I will forget – my first press scrum when Pete Doherty arrived at West London Magistrates Court, witnessing a bishop abseil from the Tower of London and stalking Sarah Brown at the European Women of Achievement Awards. It may not sound all that exciting to an experienced photojournalist but for me, a sixteen year old student seeking a career in press photography, it was a compelling start.

The picture below was taken in the City of London. After the foiled terror plots in previous days the brief was ‘heightened security’. This was taken outside the Old Bailey where it may be a fairly routine procedure, but it has some rather important looking armed police officers and enough police cars to be illustrate the point.

 On Tuesday I went with Jeremy Selwyn to West London Magistrates Court for Pete Doherty’s latest appearance. He was late by a few hours which gave me a chance to observe the way the paparazzi operate and also talk to a few other photographers. Eventually he arrived, skipping childishly up to the doors of the court I felt lenses in the back of my head. I managed to get a few of him but this one below was the most interesting. Not the most conventional image there is too much noise and empty space. It was an exciting thirty seconds, which left me saying to myself ‘if only I had’, but I guess that is the way it goes.

Later on in the week, I was asked to get some pictures of affluent middle eastern shoppers outside Harrods, after spending about an hour hovering around outside without much luck I got this one below.

On my last day I went with Jeremy to the European Women Of Achievement Awards 2007. The picture below of Moira Stewart and Sarah Brown (who were among the winners) managed to make the West End Final. It was a fantastic end to an amazing week. Seeing my picture and name in print was such a great feeling and something I hope to see again soon.

Joseph Davies

I don’t know whether Brendan McDermid knew when he moved it that his picture of a shocked woman covered in muck and blood at the scene of a steam pipe explosion in Manhattan was the “iconic image” of the incident but he must have had an inkling by the time he saw it on the cover of The New York Post, USA Today, splashed across five columns in the New York Daily News and inside the New York Times next day. The New York Times online even wrote about it - http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/200 7/07/19/a-bloody-face-in-the-blast-and-t he-man-who-helped-her/.

It was only part of a wider team effort, of course, some of which can be seen here – http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/sli deshow?collectionId=778 -  and included valuable contributions from non-editorial staff, but that this picture was also one of the first frames moved on the story that day would have helped keep all eyes on the Reuters feed. As Senior EIC Jim Bourg in Washington commented wryly, “always lead with the iconic images”.

Further images can be seen at http://www.msnbc.com/modules/interactive .aspx?type=ss&launch=19838329,19844481&p g=1 (if you set your browser to accept pop-ups).

 Hunting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan with Finbarr O’Reilly

SANGSAR, Afghanistan, July 17 (Reuters) – The grinding metallic noise of tanks and diesel engines fade into the desert night and the only sound is our breathing and the crunch of dozens of army boots on dry earth.

It feels like we are alone in the barren, moonlit landscape, but we’re not. Somewhere out there lurk the Taliban.

A cacophony of barking floats through the heavy air as dogs from nearby mud villages pick up our scent.

Foreign troops from the NATO-led coalition and the Afghan National Army (ANA) are on the hunt for Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province.

It is a strategic point in the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban drug smuggling routes into neighbouring Pakistan.

As a photographer embedded with Canadian troops, I tag along for combat missions.

“When the shooting starts, your heart rate will go up to two or three times its normal rate,” says a medic, explaining the body’s and mind’s reactions to combat.

Covering Africa for six years, I’ve experienced conflicts, armed clashes and civil unrest before, but I’ve never marched directly into battle with a unit intent on engaging the enemy.

I follow in silence for two hours as the patrol moves from the open desert into grape fields lined with mud walls providing welcome cover, but also perfect hiding ground for Taliban.

Using night vision goggles, the troops take positions around targets, mud compounds where dozens of insurgents are camped.

Then we wait. This is the worst part, the tension of waiting for contact, but not knowing where it will come from.
“They usually hit us at first light,” says the Warrant Officer in charge of my unit.

The Muslim call to prayer drifts from mosques just before dawn. I can’t help thinking that some people in these dusty fields are hearing it for the last time.

A coppery taste fills my mouth and my bowels shift uncomfortably.

UNDER FIRE

The first shots ring out as darkness fades. Then shooting erupts from seemingly every direction. I stay down until there’s a brief lull, then move closer to the action.

“Remember you’re not bullet-proof,” says one soldier, as if I need reminding. My flak jacket, ballistic goggles and helmet only make the rest of my body feel more exposed.

Crawling along mud walls and ditches, I reach a unit coming under heavy fire from Taliban positions 20 meters (yards) away.

I see a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) whiz past the treetops above our heads. A mortar explodes 10 meters (yards) behind us. Bullets hum through the air and rustle nearby bushes.

“How’s your heart rate now?” asks the medic lying next to me in a dry riverbed.

Like I’m on crack cocaine, probably. But fear has been replaced by adrenaline and I concentrate on keeping low and getting pictures of the Canadian soldiers.

The Afghan and Canadian troops move up and I run too, shamelessly using troops as a shield before stepping briefly in front to snap some pictures of them rushing forward.

After about an hour, air support strafes the Taliban with hundreds of high-calibre rounds.

Canadian and ANA troops move in to pick up the pieces. RPGs are found next to one of the two recovered bodies and two wounded Taliban are treated and evacuated by helicopter.

Several Taliban have been killed, including a local leader. The only Canadian casualty is a soldier who shot his own left index finger off in the heat of battle.

The thin, barefoot Taliban in pyjama-like outfits look frail and weak next to the meaty and tattooed Canadians loaded with heavy equipment and supported by aircraft and armoured vehicles.

But while NATO-led forces train to stay alive, the Taliban are ready and willing to die, making them a formidable foe.

The operation is not over until everyone is safely on base. One Canadian soldier has been killed in combat during the past six months in Afghanistan, but roadside bombs have killed 19.

Less than 24 hours after our operation, six Canadian troops and an interpreter are killed by one such bomb while returning from a similar mission.

Roadside bombs have become the favourite weapon of the Taliban, who are overpowered on the battlefield, but know how to erode political will for a long and bloody foreign presence in their country.

On this day, the battle is won by NATO and ANA forces. But Afghanistan’s long history of resisting outside influence suggests that winning the war against the insurgents will be a much longer, more difficult task.