Super Mario
By Kai Pfaffenbach
There were other big names supposed to be the super stars of this Euro 2012 – Portugal’s Christiano Ronaldo, Germany’s Bastian Schweinsteiger, Holland’s Robin van Persie or France’s Franck Ribery – they have all flown home by now and before the final between Spain and Italy there is only one guy left who will be recognized as the tournament’s big star: Mario Balotelli from Italy.
What a story. Adopted from African parents when he was three, brought up by Italian foster parents and now one of the most recognized strikers playing for England’s champions Manchester City and the man who brought Italy into the final with his two striking goals against an agonized German squad in the semi-final.
Covering all major soccer tournaments and big finals for the last 15 years I can’t remember one player who fascinates the media and fans like him. And it’s not only about the way he plays. The number of his nicknames seems endless. Super-Mario, after the popular video-game star, Balla-Balla Balotelli, as he is well known for his jokes with team mates or Mad Mario, as he gets quite furious on the pitch (he faced four red cards during the last Premier League) season.
Leading a Kung Fu life
By Jason Lee
I drove to a small town about 60 km (37 miles) from central Beijing. I couldn’t believe there was an International Kung Fu Club in such a quiet and remote place. The Lixian Fusheng International Martial Arts Club is the home of Master Chen Fusheng and 11 students currently studying and living there.
Master Chen was an orphan. He was sent to a local nursing home at 8-years-old, where he started learning moves and skills from some elderly martial arts experts. This marked the beginning of his Kung Fu life. Chen says he aims to promote “Real Chinese Kung Fu”. To Chen, a master of many types of martial arts, some Kung Fu has become a sort of performance. He believes though his students didn’t travel thousands of miles to study performance, they want to study the real thing which could help them defeat their opponents and protect themselves.
Master Chen has taught them the ethics and spirit of Chinese Kung Fu; always be patient and tolerant, know how to control strength and power, to resolve danger and not to hurt or kill people (some Kung Fu skills are lethal according to Chen).
Pearl of the orient; 15 years after the Handover
By Bobby Yip
Hong Kong celebrates its 15th anniversary since the handover to Chinese sovereignty from British rule on July 1, 2012. In the city’s King George V Memorial Park, a plaque from the colonial era is hidden behind the roots of a banyan tree. I found this to be a good symbol of the fading former colonial links to the territory’s past.
Bearing the romanticized phrase “Pearl of the Orient”, Hong Kong attracts visitors from around the world. Due to a fast growing economy, a flood of mainland Chinese visitors in recent years (including many big spenders) have boosted the city’s retail sales. In 2011, nearly 42 million visitors came to Hong Kong, about 64 percent of them from the mainland.
SLIDESHOW: HONG KONG 15 YEARS LATER
The “Forever Blooming Bauhinia” sculpture outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, a gift from the Chinese government in 1997, is one of the most popular tourist spots for mainlanders. To me, they enjoy a freedom of expression here without fear of political correctness. Under an immigration scheme, a few of might eventually settle in Hong Kong. With a good judicial system, low crime rate and a wide range of personal freedom, just to mention a few, becoming a Hong Kong citizen is a dream for many on the other side of the border.
The boy in blue
By Lucas Jackson
One of the ubiquitous presences when traveling through Afghanistan on an embed with U.S. soldiers is that of scores of children either watching the soldiers passing in convoys or patrolling their villages. It is not uncommon for dozens of faces to be staring at you, often while standing mere feet away from the obvious out-of-towners.
The soldiers do their best to either ignore these multitudes of staring eyes or to interact with them but most often the children react shyly when confronted or when someone tries to talk to them. As a photographer traveling with these soldiers I also stand out, even more so than the soldiers which they are at least used to seeing. I am dressed differently and instead of a rifle I carry something they see far less often – cameras. For me these trips are as frustrating as they are interesting. I try to catch moments when these children are interacting to the presence of the military in their town or with each other. But I often find that as soon as I point the camera, I either become the center of attention or my young subjects turn and run away.
A young girl carrying a baby, as she went to the town’s well to get water, kept a watchful eye on my camera, while pumping water as her friend stared. Groups of children, earlier pointing and laughing, immediately turned and hid behind a lamp post as soon as my camera was raised to my eye. The children waiting to pick up the spent bullet casings after a small firefight were not at all shy of the noise of machine guns and sniper rifles, but they instantly look down or cover their faces when a camera appears. It is a fascinating fact of life here; these children understand better and are more comfortable with guns than with a camera.
As if Muslims anywhere would be on the side of the armies of those who bomb the hell out of them, revile the Qur’an, then act as if they’re doing their uncivilized “little brown brothers” some kind of favor.
Addicted to the needle
By Jason Reed and Larry Downing
The tattoo is as ancient as time itself.
Born out of man’s desire to draw more than straight, simple lines, today’s tattoos have evolved into beautiful interpretations by savvy artists that bend those old lines into colorful masterpieces etched onto a virgin canvas of skin with sharp needles and bright inks. Lifetimes of stories of hard love, or high adventures archived onto an arm, a leg, or for that matter, anywhere skin lives for curious eyes to enjoy forever.
The hobby of collecting tattoos has exploded into the mainstream. Look around and you’ll find them worn by anyone…. and anywhere. Annual conventions and competitions are held freely inside luxury hotels instead of hidden from view. Tattoos are even stars of their own reality television shows.
Editing the Euro 2012
By Wolfgang Rattay
If you’re really interested in understanding how we at Reuters work as a team across Europe to make sure that the right pictures from the Euro 2012 soccer championships arrive in time at hundreds of online sites and the next day in the papers, read this insight. You will understand that everyone in the team is an important cog in the machine and that not everything is someone sitting in the right corner of the pitch and triggering the camera’s shutter. If you read until the end, you will be rewarded with Amanda’s secret “spell-checker” recipe. It’s worth it — but only if you don’t have any health issues with your stomach. SLIDESHOW: BEST OF EURO 2012
At each game we have five photographers assigned to cover the match. Four are seated, preferably, in each far corner of the pitch near the corner pole and the fifth shooter has an elevated position in the middle of the tribune – more or less at the same position as the main TV cameras. The ‘tribune photographer” shoots with three cameras. Two cameras are equipped with a 70-200mm zoom lens and aimed at both penalty boxes to make sure we have the image that tells the story of the game. This can be a goal, a penalty or a disallowed goal like in the England-Croatia match. The third camera is hand-held with either a four, five or six-hundred mm lens to shoot clear action (with green grass and no advertising boards), reactions of coached players and what ever else happens on the pitch.
The pitch shooters have to operate three hand-held cameras with 400/500 or 600mm, one with a 70-200mm zoom and a third body with a 16-35 in case there’s a goal celebration just a meter in front of the photographer. On top of this, the pitch photographer has to trigger a foot-switch on a fourth (sometimes fifth camera) that is connected to a goal camera that is positioned just a yard or so behind the goal. Look for the cameras set-up behind the goal mouth next time it appears close on TV. These 19 cameras at least, for each game adds up to an average minimum of 4,000 to 5,000 frames that someone has to look at. One of these “someones” is me. But there is also another editor involved that is as important (if not more) as the photographer. This is the person known as the processor.
We are missing the cocktail picture Wolfgang … but nice story on team work.
Full gamut of emotions
By Mike Segar
One of the many great things about being a Reuters wire service photographer is the wide spectrum of things that you get to witness and photograph from assignment to assignment. Of course, not every assignment brings you to a place or a situation that excites or moves you emotionally or visually, but over the past week I have had the fortunate experience of shooting two completely different types of assignments that brought me to two completely different experiences.
From the final game of the 2012 NBA finals in Miami last Thursday night where I was front and center to photograph LeBron James and the Miami Heat as they celebrated clinching the title victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder where the pure joy and excitement of sport was on full display, to a far different type of emotion at a New York City prison where inmates earned their high school diplomas.
SLIDESHOW: GRADUATING, FROM PRISON
At the NBA finals, hours of preparation, the setting and testing of remote cameras, days of shooting the action of each game in the series and trying to capture the peak of action culminated in the release of emotion the players displayed after reaching their ultimate goal. As a photographer, the nerves and the anticipation of trying to make the best possible pictures of that emotion for our clients around the world dominate your focus and attention. When it is all over and the pictures have been sent a real sense of relief of knowing you captured the best of what happened on the court in front of you comes.
Hello Mike,
What a great story. As a photographer (memoriesofmephotography.com) I had only one similar experience back in September 2011 when my organization PPSNYS wanted a group of members to capture events throughout the city commemorating the tenth year anniversary of 9/11. Being fortunate not to lose anyone dear to me in 9/11, the feeling of loss I felt while covering events from people that did was overwhelming.
Again great story.
Regards
Peter Joseph
Faces of football
By Kacper Pempel
Three weeks of the Euro 2012 adventure are already behind us. Three weeks of hard work, meeting thousands of people, driving thousands of miles and shooting thousands of pictures.
As a photographer based in Poland, I was assigned to cover not only matches but also news stories in Polish cities like Wroclaw, Poznan and Gdansk. So I had a chance to meet people from many different parts of Europe who made the journey here for the soccer fiesta. They were genuine football lovers and real soccer fans.
The Irish fans made the most remarkable impression. The party they threw for all three of their games was incredible and they showed they know how to have fun even when their team is losing. They transformed the Old Market in Poznan into a “green island”, singing and cheering their national team before and after matches and through the night. After a couple of hours sleep they would be back again to kick off the next day’s festivities.
Just Beautiful !! Really liked the Pictures
Amit Sharma
Photographer at Indian Institute of Photography
Hunting hogs
By Michael Spooneybarger
“They are fast, smart and dangerous – the most prized hunting animal in ancient Greece, the wild boar. Considered a test of bravery, wild pigs have thick bones and a tough hide, making anything but a death shot a potentially fatal mistake.”
That was the first message I got after agreeing to a weekend hog hunt in Alabama. I have hunted pig many times as a BBQ aficionado, but that has been scanning a menu trying to decide on pork ribs, pork sandwich or going with beef.
SLIDESHOW: HOG HUNTING IN ALABAMA
The next memo from writer Verna Gates: “Photography equipment should be as silent as possible without flash as pigs are very keen and will run away. We don’t want the other hunters shooting at us….”
On the road at Euro 2012
By Kai Pfaffenbach
As a news photographer working for Reuters in Germany it is quite normal to spend some time in your car. It is not unusual to drive between 3000-5000km per month. So I expected nothing different when coming to Poland for the Euro 2012 covering the soccer matches in Warsaw and Gdansk. During our tournament planning we agreed on traveling in a big van with our team of three photographers and one technician. That seemed a lot easier than spending more time getting all the equipment to an airport than actually flying. Four times we had to hit the road towards Gdansk and back to Warsaw. About 360km one way shouldn’t last longer than 3 to 4 hours. “It’s about the ride from Frankfurt to Munich to cover some soccer at Allianz Arena. Entering the highway in Frankfurt and three hours later you take the exit in front of the stadium”, I thought to myself. As a matter of fact our trips were different and we experienced quite a few new things on our journey – everything in an absolutely positive way. Even though there’s not much of a highway to begin with, we had a lot to see. In retrospect we divided the trip in three parts.
Part 1: the strawberry and cherry alley – not one or two people were offering self-harvested fruits here, but dozens. They displayed the freshly picked fruits on the hood of their cars, sitting next to it under a sunshade waiting for customers. Of course we took the opportunity, made a good deal and used the strawberries for a refreshing milkshake after coming back. Some refreshment was needed as the drive on the country road is somewhat challenging as well. Some Polish drivers are very “creative” when using the space of only two lanes. It is nothing special if you face three cars driving towards you next to each other. Thank god that didn’t lead directly into the next part of our journey….
Hello My Fellow German Friends,
as I am one of the members of this wild nation behind your eastern border and I am glad to see this footage combined with not so biased commentary. I would say even, a decently friendly point of view.
Please note this kind of perception of Poland hasn’t been common abroad, that’s why I am quite frankly surprised.
Note also that taking into account our history, often bleeding through ages, death, I can say, is a central part of Polish historical identity. From age XVII onwards, of course with the peak during WWII, we were being fed with extensive experience of death, often being forced to leave our homemates or even relatives rotting right on the streets. I am pretty sure this might be taken as an exaggeration, but I would say, we live in a culture of death, cultivating all of the related aspects with great thoroughness. That’s why we’re letting relatives lay six feet under, in peace. That’s why I think we’re so reluctant to let old graves being cleared.
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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The Wall
