Following my hijacking of Phil Coomes’ BBC “News in Pictures” blog last week, I thought I’d put my slightly revised selection from 2011 on here to continue the series that I began last year.

I’m obviously tempting fate as I have one shift left for 2011 on the 31st, so calling these my favourites of the year runs with the proviso that the Second Coming doesn’t happen on Saturday, with Jesus choosing to return for an impromptu monster truck session on Oxford Street while I’m on duty.

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First up is a scene from the Southbank of the Thames, during the build-up to the royal wedding.  With tourists filling the city and everything either draped in union flags or police tape, most photographers in London were regularly being sent out to find feature pictures on the upcoming marriage.  Aside from the poses looking like it could have been staged, the punchline to it all was that “The Queen” was in fact an Eastern European bloke.  I hope Phil the Greek knows.  The full blog can be found here.

The London riots saw some incredible images on the news wire from all agencies, newspapers and freelance sources. While I captured a good share of the flames and violence,  one of my personal favourite pictures came on the first night as I was leaving Tottenham to edit my photographs. Just as I was about to go, I glanced over my shoulder and saw a woman carrying two young children through the rubble and broken glass. The blue lights from the police vans lit her face as she walked towards the line of armoured vehicles and riot police. A few hundred metres behind her, the police were still clashing with rioters and missiles were being thrown in all directions. Being in that situation was scary enough, but as a father I can only imagine how scared this woman must have been for the safety of the children.  More images from the story can be found here.

The MCM Comic Con convention in east London turned out to be one of my favourite jobs of the year to shoot thanks to the ridiculous amount of pictures that were there to be taken, as nearly everyone attending was dressed in some type of costume. One of my favourites was Lindsay Vincent from Cumbria who dressed as US singer Lady Gaga and was happy to take time out to pose for me in front of the passing crowds.  The set of images I came away with have ended up being my favourite picture story of the year, thanks to the devotion of the fans of Cosplay and all that it involves.  Bravo, eccentric types!  More frames can be found here.

The show below is an idea that’s been done before but I loved how well matched the girls were.  While covering the “Vintage at the Southbank Centre” event, I’d spotted two girls playing around with the record covers as they searched through the stacks of vinyl on a stall.  As I approached them, they’d just found these two covers and were starting to play around with them.  I’d love to say I’d made the effort of finding out the exact covers and posing them just so but they made the frame for me.  While not being the hardest frame to capture, it still puts a smile on my face.  More images can be found here.

Covering the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships at Sheffield Arena in March, the photographers were given the chance to shoot from directly above, allowing us to catch the action from a new perspective.  At the time, I didn’t really appreciate how rare an opportunity it was until I’ve seen the “best of 2011″ images from a number of leading sports photographers have included shots from the gantry from over that weekend.

I was sitting in the office of Agence France-Presse, the news agency that I work for, on a particularly quiet day when I noticed the end of a rainbow over the financial district of London. I grabbed my camera and began taking pictures of the rainbow that could be used to illustrate a future business feature or story, when I noticed that it was starting to get longer. Within a few seconds it had become a full arc, and shortly after a second rainbow appeared over the top. By this time I’d called everyone over from their desks and they stood and watched the incredible light show as I frantically snapped away from under my coat (to cut out reflections from the glass of the office window). Then, as fast as it had appeared, it was gone.

Another shot from the first night of the London riots and it’s pretty self-explanatory but I liked how it captured the energy and frantic movement as the night developed.  With an appliance store on fire, the riot police moved forward pushing the rioters further down the street.  It’s always a challenge in this kind of situation to find the right place to be, as you’re facing incoming missiles when too close to the police but are at risk of being attacked if you’re in with the rioters.  More images can be found here.

Never having shot Wimbledon before, other than a few of the features surrounding the event, I got to cover the actual play this year with this shot being my favourite. After a long and frustratingly close rally, French player Benoit Paire threw his racquet while diving as he played against Spanish player David Ferrer.  A truly desperate move but it gave me a shot for the yearly round-up!  More images can be found here.

Another moment from the Comic-Con 2011 convention makes my list and this one was the opposite of the shot above, being a moment I spotted as I wandered around the main concourse during lunch.  While all of the attendees were connected by their love of cosplay, they still divided into some groups, so I had a poke around to see how they were mixing.  The guy in the centre was clearly quite proud of his costume and seemed to be a bit of an alpha-male of the group.  I’m proud of catching his flirtatious look towards the passing girl while the guy on the right eyes me suspiciously.  I also loved the Comic-Con show for this moment. More images can be found here.

It’s hard to fail on a story like this but when sent to cover the 25th annual International Kite Festival in Bristol, my favourite photo was of the interaction between a giant flying lobster and a spectator.  Even if it wasn’t a favourite picture, I’d probably include it anyway, just so that I could write that sentence.

While covering the on-going fighting around the town of Bani Walid in Libya, AFP journalist Dominique Soguel and I started chatting to a group of National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters as they sheltered from the midday sun on a dried riverbed running under the road. After shooting a few portraits of them, a senior figure in the NTC army arrived with a reinforced briefcase filled with wrapped bundles of tens of thousands of Dinar and started to pay the troops. With the fighting dragging on longer than hoped, the fighters were struggling to survive with families at home in need of income, so supporters had raised money by selling their possessions and sending the funds to the front line.  My posts from Libya can be found here.

The day of the royal wedding was truly one of the most stressful days of my life, but in the end it was saved by bridesmaid Grace Van Cutsem. The young girl became world famous after she covered her ears to protect herself from the noise of a fly-past, just at the point of the royal kiss, creating one of the moments of the day. I was very grateful that we were shooting from so far away, as if I’d been closer I may have tried to crop in really tight on the kiss and would have missed Grace’s moment.  The whole story can be found here.

During the visit to Britain by US President Barack Obama, I was covering a number of the meetings inside number 10 Downing Street. It included this one between the president, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Prime Minister David Cameron. I have absolutely no idea what was said, but I love the body language between the three subjects. While the prime minister had moved out of the way to allow us to photograph Mr Clegg and President Obama, the combination of the apparent giggling fit on the left, and the rather stern look from Mr Cameron, makes for an amusing caption competition shot.  More images from the visit can be found here.

So there we go.  Unless you hear about a series of crushed cars near Oxford Circus over the weekend, bring on 2012.

On October 12th, after ten years, the residents of Dale Farm traveller’s site lost their final bid to overturn their eviction, when the High Court refused them the right to appeal the judgement.  With every legal option exhausted, it was simply down to the matter of eviction, so I was sent down to cover the unfolding story.

By way of background, the two sides of the story were pretty straightforward. The case for the prosecution had built its argument on the fact that the Dale Farm site was based on Metropolitan Green Belt land so, as such, building and development laws were very strict.   No official applications had been made for the homes of the 80 families.  The residents had based their defence on the fact that, prior to them moving onto the land, it had been a scrap yard and a Police car pound, not protected land.  They argued that the eviction was simply based on a bias against the travelling community.

Whichever was correct, the law came down on the side of Basildon council, and I found myself driving east before dawn on the first day that an eviction attempt could take place.  Having visited the site once before for a press conference following an earlier reprieve, it was clear that this really was looking like the end this time.  Police and bailiffs had sectioned off large areas around the camp, with secure media parking, staff canteens and toilet facilities, as they prepared for the long week ahead.  While I’d been allowed inside on my previous visit, the camp was now very much on lock-down, with only a handful of journalists and photographers who’d invested more time on covering the story allowed inside.

The day cruised by with very little to focus on as the fortified defences were strengthened around the site, and warnings and murals were painted onto the main entrance.  By 4pm, it was clear that nothing was going to happen, so I volunteered to return the next day and headed home.

Arriving at 6.15 the next morning, the vibe was very different and it was clear that today was the day.  Hundreds of police officers in full riot gear were gathered in the fields and car parks around the site, and the media parking was near-capacity when I pulled up.  Thankfully, there were two of us from AFP on shift that day, as I was joined by this year’s “News Photographer of the Year” Carl Court so we had the chance to spread out and cover more angles.  With Carl on the front door, I went cross-country and found a different way into the camp.  By the time I arrived at the main entrance, the police had already got through the defences and had claimed an area around the scaffold entrance.  Tensions were running high as residents argued with police and activists and supporters clashed with riot teams.  Bottles and bricks were soon flying through the air.  Thankfully, predicting the way it would go, I’d brought my helmet with me so was spared the constant fear of looking to the air for incoming missiles.

With police breaking through the defences at two points, it became harder to locate where the action was, but this was soon cleared up when a small puff of smoke went up.  Activists had dragged an empty caravan into the middle of one of the roads and set it alight.  While everyone dashed towards the smoke, it quickly became a rather embarrassing situation with photographers and camera crews stacked on top of each other to get the shot.  When a woman brought out a crucifix to hold as she stood in front of the blaze, we quickly realised how set up the shot was becoming.  Unfortunately, this is one of those situations that members of the media have to face sometimes.  While you’re sadly aware of how you’re being led into a picture, you have to shoot it.  Those that are unhappy with shooting any staged event during a live news situation will often sadly miss out as the papers want the “big shot” of the day, even it does feel contrived at the time of capture.  As an interesting side note, Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori recently released a fascinating but somewhat embarrassing film highlighting how photographers can often “create” the event without having to actually physically set anything up.

With two caravans now simply piles of smouldering plastic and metal, the focus returned to those activists that had built the structure around the main gate.  While they were in their “crows nest” above the main gate, police and bailiffs were unable to gain access to remove the military truck and debris that was blocking the access road.  After clearing most of the ground around it, the police sent in trained climbers to test the structure.  I’m well aware that I may get some criticism for this controversial statement here, but I’m constantly impressed with the police force that we have in this country.  While some of the more aggressive activists hurled abuse and rocks at them, they calmly worked out how to get the protesters in the structure down to the ground, without any injury or loss of life.  There are so many countries elsewhere in the world where, faced with this problem, the police would have gone in there with an armoured vehicle and just brought the whole thing down.  It baffles me how people can scream at these guys, accusing them of brutality when they so clearly are one of the most considered and ordered police forces in the world.

I guess I may have had different feelings if it was my house being threatened, but I like to think that I’d still be able to direct any anger I had at the people responsible.  Having said that, the police did use a Taser during the very first stages of entry into the camp which may have been a little over the top, but I guess when you’re faced with signs warning of imminent death, you may end up over-reacting a little.

Once the structure was cleared, the bailiffs entered the site, for the first time, to erect fencing around the newly secured area, and seeing that this would take some time to clear what they now controlled, I spent the rest of the day looking around the site.

With sunlight fading, the bailiffs were called off-site and the police erected security lights.  With the light gone, it was my turn to call it a day.

Now that the police had near-total control over the site, Thursday was always going to be less explosive than the previous day.  With the gate now secured, it was simply a case of clearing a path and getting on with addressing each of the blockades that had been built.  To ease tensions, police teams came onto the site to visit the houses that had been highlighted as legal, by residents, and got the chance to explain that the bailiffs would not be coming roaring onto the site to destroy the buildings today.  By now, the residents were clearly just waiting to go and most had packed up their belongings and were passing the time until they could drive away from the site.

Once the police teams had cleared the protesters from under a former Soviet army truck, they moved on to two people who had attached their hands together through a barrel.  Sensing that the end of the protest was near, other activists came to say goodbye to them as they left the site, resulting in emotional scenes.

With the “Industrial muncher” (as Sky News called it) tearing the final parts of the defences down, it was time for the residents to finally say goodbye to their home of the last decade.  Whatever you think of the travelling community, it must be so hard to see your community split apart like this.  It’s a real shame that this could not have been resolved amicably between residents and Basildon Council.

I hope their next site brings them more luck and hopefully, stability.

Regular readers may remember the first parts of the “London Knowledge” that I posted a while ago.  Having managed the previous “tips”, I squeezed out a further batch to make the century so here’s the final and complete collection.  Read and learn (or at least nod with recognition…)

• You can tell a long-term Billingham bag user by the fact they look as though they’re carrying one particularly heavy shopping bag, even when their hands are empty.
• When filing a zoom-burst, the automatic punishment is to text your colleagues to alert them to your heinous photocrime.  The allowable amount that you can file varies from once a year, to once in your whole career, depending on the employer.
• It is important that news photographers stay in town until 6pm in case of the ever-present threat of the 5.59pm atrocity.  The 6:01pm atrocity is unheard of and could never happen.
• Despite it possibly being the future for us all, not many people aspire to shoot film like their favourite cameraman.  Photography will always be cooler.
• Being a professional photographer means that it will be assumed you know all about the latest point and shoot Sony cameras when your friends and relatives need a new camera for their holidays.
• All accreditation, particularly festival wristbands, should be removed when leaving the site for the final time, due to a distinct danger of looking like a cock if wearing it on the bus three months later.
• The length of time that you’ve been shooting professionally is directly proportional to the size of one of your photos in the paper that actually please you.
• The chamois leather is an often-overlooked essential for every jobbing photographer.
• Every photographer has an early project in their archives along the theme of “rusty locks and old painted doors”.
• When a client asks for all your raw images from the shoot, ask them if they ask for all the spare ingredients after enjoying a delicious meal.  If they don’t take your point from this subtle refusal, a monopod makes a great blunt instrument.
• You can tell a photographer who’s covered Downing Street jobs for a decent length of time by his comfortable use of the word “counterpart” in captions.
• Press photography grants you seats that others would kill for, to events that you’d sometimes rather be a million miles away from.
• That external drive on your desk is just an insecure archive until it’s duplicated at least once.  A backup isn’t a backup if it’s the only one.
• If you get the only frame and everyone uses it, it’s a great picture.  This even applies if you only got it by accidentally dropping your camera as you ate your Big Mac, firing a frame of the subject by accident as they passed behind you.
• If you’re accused of getting a shot out of focus, set the critic straight by explaining that you were merely “bracketing your focus”.
• Union Jack umbrellas were originally designed to keep desperate news photographers happy.
• Once you’ve gone RAW, you’ll never need more.
• Street photography is more than just photos of people walking past the camera, converted into a heavy black and white.  Using a retro-style digital camera or even film doesn’t gain any extra points either.
• Save the selective colour for your Grandma.  Any self-respecting picture editor will be dabbing the tears of laughter from their eyes if you put one in your portfolio.
• What IS the very best way to respond to someone who calls you a pap on the street?  SURELY there must be an intelligent retort other than the previously mentioned blunt instrument?
• There is no real need to take a camera, especially your Leica, to Focus.
• When cleaning your lens with a cloth, it will invariably be the final wipe when the cloth slips and you smear a Dorito-grease covered finger across the front element.
• The World Press Awards must be something to do with the Corby Trouser Press as the pictures that win every year rarely have anything to do with the images that we see in the daily newspapers.
• Both of the major camera manufacturers’ products are pretty much the same in terms of quality, features and price so no, I can’t tell you “which one is best.”
• When photographers are gathered together, conversation soon turns to their loved ones and, in particular, whether or not the new firmware has improved performance.
• The fastest way to make money from your cameras is to sell them. (unknown origin)
• The photojournalism festival in Perpignan does a great line in depressing monochrome care home pictures, angry people with machetes and dead soldiers in desolate locations, but really falls short when it comes to shots of kittens dressed as cowboys.
• For those of you wanting to get into the industry, consider the fact that careercast.com listed photojournalist as being below “sheet metal worker” in a list of 200 careers in 2009 in relation to salary, working conditions, serious risk of injury or death, and poor employment prospects in the future.  Nice.
• Nothing ruins the line of a good suit more than a belt-pack and camera bag.
• When working on the same job as paps, there is no point in thinking that common sense, reason or the need to actually get a good photograph is on the agenda.  They will inevitably rush in as close as possible with their pre-f8-welded wide angles, ruining everyone else’s shot.
• Taking hot weather pictures was probably a lot easier in the days before pointing a camera at anyone under eighteen automatically made you a child-hungry paedophile.
• If you drop a lens while in the company of other photographers and the inevitable “Ooooh” is heard from all around, you will invariably scoop it up quickly and put it straight into your bag as if it escaped perfectly unharmed, even if you’re left standing in a small pile of finely powdered optical glass.
• Photographers who choose to become known only by one name deserve all the flak that they get.  (See Zoriah and his “intimate” $4000 Haiti-based earthquake masterclasses.)
• News photographers keep the British stepladder industry alive through a combination of forgetfulness and desperation.
• For some reason, Canon and Nikon both give away huge bulky camera bags at events rather than something really useful like laptop shades or monopods.  I know you shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth but surely there won’t be that many photographers who travel to the venue with all of their gear in carrier bags on the off-chance that their gamble might pay off.
• Having said that, ebay will always manage to find someone who wants to pay rather a lot of money for team sheets, programmes, press passes and, yes, camera bags.
• Heart surgeons are nothing compared to the photographer who decides to clean the sensor in his/her brand new £4,500 camera for the first time.
• Jolyan Turrall‘s law of  “Subject Gravity”  means that all photographers will end up 6 inches from the subject matter, even if the shoot started with everyone 20 feet away.
• As soon as your local Council starts accepting a “photo credit” as a valid form of payment for your council tax, you can start giving away your pictures to all those people who enquire about using them without payment.
• When using a busy urinal during the working day, turn off your cameras before squeezing in between the other users.  This particularly applies if your camera has a fast motordrive and a delicate trigger action.
• If you actually prepare for the bad weather for once and get fully waterproofed up, by the time you arrive at the tube station in central London, you’ll emerge to blistering sunshine.  The same also applies in reverse.
• You will see the politician that you waited 10 hours outside the House of Commons for on a daily basis as soon as the story that involved him/her has passed.
• A celebrity on the red carpet that points at an individual camera is incredibly irritating to forty six photographers and very pleasing to one.
• The kid who got the blurry picture of the burning building on his 4mm ultra-wide angle camera phone never quite understands that the image isn’t worth a grand.
• The first casualties of press photography are your lens caps.
• A standard “Grip and Grin” photo inside Downing Street lasts around 10 seconds. When the press officer tells you “this will be a quick one”, be concerned.
• The Met Police do actually have rules to follow, regarding the working relationship with photographers.
• There are only so many times that you can manage to genuinely laugh when a passer-by “amusingly” offers to swap their Praktica sure-shot for your full-frame DSLR with 300mm f2.8 lens.
• Nobody wears photographer vests (See also “Wanker jackets”).
• Your friends and family don’t care about the 15-month project that you’re doing on inner city deprivation but will want to hear all about the 8 seconds that you spent photographing David Beckham at the launch of his new branded Thermos flask.
• Try to lead by example and make sure you wear deodorant when shooting London Fashion Week.
• No matter how many times they’ve been shot, the Politico Top Trumps cards given away during party conference season are always a must.
• Mentioning the name “Paul Delmar” is the press photographers equivalent to the masonic handshake.
• When you’re slapping your laptop for only connecting at 7kb/s when wiring a job in the countryside, remember that it was only a few years ago when you’d have been high-fiving anyone close to you for getting such blistering speeds.
• Nothing redresses the balance with PRs better than a full photographer walk-out.
• The free photo recovery software that you get with your memory cards is no good to you uninstalled, sitting at the bottom of your desk drawer at home when things go wrong.
• When shooting boxing, don’t assume that you’ll have the first round to get your settings adjusted.
• When trying to board a plane with a very large camera kit as hand luggage, they may weigh your peli-case, but they won’t weigh your extra-pocketed jacket (but always consider “the wanker jacket”).
• Nail your tight, bright and shite before you paint with light.
• A photograph taken using Hipstamatic is not necessarily a great photograph.  It is more than likely a very average picture of an old car, slathered in faux retro image filters. (See also “fashions and trends”)
• It’s good practice to get on with all the photographers you come across as it’s guaranteed that you’ll end up stuck on a doorstep for three days with the one you told to piss off.
• Stand next to the loudest shouter at film premieres. (See “Ian West”)
• Even if the object that we’ve been sent to shoot is stationary and there’s an hour available for pictures, photographers will instinctively end up scrambling into the room and monstering it.
• If Nikon or Canon brought out a single pocket-sized camera that did everything, we’d still be inclined to carry the whole stockroom of Jacobs camera store on our backs most of the time.
• Playing the age old game of “Where a photographer can and can’t take pictures” with the private security that work in office blocks and company headquarters is the modern equivalent of bear-baiting.  As a vague hint, if you’re on the public pavement and you’re on the outside edge of any studded boundary markers on the ground, snap away.  This may not apply if you’re doing a project on “The security systems of the MI5 building”.
• Cameras may have been around since 1814 but every year, manufacturers manage to create exciting new ways to make photographers spend their wages.
• Don’t expect to get eye-contact from the baked bean.
• There’s only so much you can do with an old painting, a pair of white gloves and an auction house assistant.  See also “For Sale” signs, burning gas hobs, petrol pumps and credit cards.
• Fashions and trends are just as common in the world of photography as anywhere else.  Lens babies, old film cameras, tilt & shifts and all-prime lens kits anyone?
• Some photographers are just always in the right place.  These people are known as gits.
• Freebies make the dullest job a little better.  The only exception being the 128mb USB stick.  I mean, come on…
• Remember to take advantage of the incredible access that the job gives you.  If you’re somewhere cool, get a picture for yourself.  If you’re shooting someone you like, get a picture with them.  You’ll only regret it if you don’t.
• The general public has no idea. If you’re stood with a 5d over your shoulder with a 50mm lens on, you will be asked which television channel you’re filming for.
• The most anticipated jobs are often the biggest let-down for quality images and vice-versa.
• Never think that you’re a better photographer than anyone else as someone with a sure-shot will come along and spank you (photographically speaking).
• There’s no point in being a photographer if your camera isn’t ready.
• Photographers that smoke can make any overdue event happen by simply putting their camera down and lighting a cigarette.
• Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium is the best stadium.  This has nothing to do with any team preference and everything to do with the free wifi, three course meal before the match, personal editing areas with power points and free mini portions of fish and chips after the game.  If only I didn’t have to shoot football to get in.
• Legendary stories can be found in the bar during Party conference season, listening to incredible stories of Fleet Street photographer history from one of the old guard.
• The moment you stop shooting to entertain and satisfy yourself, you might as well go and work in an office.
• Not much can compare to feeling the first hot rays from the sun as you leave Downing Street on a Summer’s day after an 8 hour stakeout.
• No matter how sure you are of the job, the longer you wait for it to happen, the more likely you are to feel the need to frantically change your lens at the last moment.
• The occurrences of Photoshop locking up and causing a system reboot is directly related to how urgently the pictures are needed by your picture desk. See also Laptop battery-life.
• The habit of saving all of your newspaper cuttings grows less important as you realise that your house is beginning to resemble something from “Life of Grime“.
• Working London photographers are walking encyclopaedias of where the nearest free toilets, wi-fi or shelter can be found at any time.
• First three songs, no flash.
• Every camera is designed to randomly refocus at the moment that the subject looks directly at you for the first time during the critical press conference.
• Jacobs, not Jessops.
• If you’re covering a story in a dodgy area of town, the first thing that the ever-so-friendly youth who comes over to chat will ask you is “how much is your gear worth?”  The answer is always “..about £300.  It’s all years old and knackered.  Your phones probably got a better camera”, even if you’re actually holding both of your D5 bodies with a 400mm f2 lens on each.
• The silhouette is the last bastion of the charlatan. (Edward Mulholland 2004)
• Anyone accepting a job on any picture desk automatically has their sense of time/distance awareness removed.
• The photographer’s life is one constant rollercoaster of going from having the photographic Midas touch to feeling like an Amateur Photographer also-ran.  This is rarely a reflection on your actual abilities.  Dem’s da breaks.
• There’s a very good reason that PR photography pays so well.
• 250th/sec, f8, 1/4 power, manually focused to a metre and 45 degrees to the glass.
• If you decide to pad out your filed images from a job with a few of lesser quality, they’re the ones that’ll be all over the papers the next day with your name in a larger than normal font.
• Opposite number 10, Downing Street and the road outside the Old Bailey are the coldest places on Earth.
• However long you’ve been doing it, there’s nothing like seeing a stranger really studying one of your published pictures in the paper.
• “Only fools rush in” could have been written about digital camera purchasers.  When firmware version 1.2 comes out, they might have finally managed to get rid of the “freak-out during operation” glitch.
• No matter how distinctive the person you’re all waiting for is, the collective of photographers will get more and more random with their choices of “possibles” to hose down as time goes on.
• If all else fails, just whack it on f1.4 and make art.

From “bad-men-in-town” to just plain badminton.  Oh the puns…  So many many puns…

Following the weight of last week’s work, it was quite a nice break to be sent to cover something new for me; the Yonex BWF World Badminton Championships 2011 at Wembley Arena in London.  Regular readers will know of my complete disinterest in all things sporting but with this big Olympic thingamajig on the horizon, I’m being thrown at all sorts of test events in an attempt to find something that I’ll enjoy.  First on the cards was badminton so off to Wembley I went.

Like my first moments of covering tennis recently, the immediate concern was working out how the game worked and how it scored.  This may seem laughable, but not only am I totally ignorant of the game but if you don’t understand the time-line of a game, you’ll miss the chance to spot the critical moments.  For those who need the info, it’s as follows; two sets of first to 21 or above with three clear points with a break after the eleventh point each time.  If there’s no winner after the two sets, it goes to a third with the players swapping ends at the eleventh point.  I’m already expecting the majority of emails that I receive on this post to be corrections on my woefully inadequate grasp of the rules.

Having shot two weeks of tennis at Wimbledon, I thought that I may have an idea of how fast it was going to be but I was left in shock by how fast the player’s reactions are.  It was hard enough to follow with the eye, never mind the hand.  By the end of the second day, a common phrase heard from the photographer’s area was a self-berating “stop watching and shoot, damn it!”.  When the opponents break into a fast-paced rally, it really is a sight to behold.  Definitely a sport that would not mix well with a hangover.

Even with only two days of badminton to shoot, I still managed to get a bit bored so played around with what I could see.  The chap below is Peter Gade of Denmark, demonstrating his rather startling technique of collecting all of his sweat on his hand, then flicking it towards the photographers.  I’m hoping it wasn’t intentionally aimed but it certainly made you keep your eye on him between points.

With China such a dominant force in the world badminton leagues, it was quite a shock to see a team from Great Britain making their way into the finals of the mixed doubles.  Chris Adcock and Imogen Bankier looked for a while like being the only chance that the chap who pressed play on the CD player might have of loading something other than “Now that’s what I call the Chinese National Anthem IV” into his player.  In the end, as is the way that we’ve come to know and expect, the Chinese were simply too strong and romped to victory.  Ah well, it gave us another chance to enjoy that stone-cold classic “March of the Volunteers” one more time…

By the end of the final day, we’d been treated to the Chinese National Anthem five times; a clean sweep of every match.  I think the rest of the world may need to get a few more practise sessions in before 2012.

While finalising my entries for this year’s photography competitions, I realised that I never look back on the year’s output other than during the hunt for prizes.  In light of this, I decided to put together a somewhat belated collection of my personal favourite images from 2010.  These aren’t necessarily the ones that I’ve entered into competitions but more a selection of pictures that I’m pleased with when I look at 2010. While some aren’t the most technically incredible or most breathtaking, I’ve tried to describe why they stand out to me as proud achievements.  Some regular readers of this blog (bless your every pore) will have seen quite a few of these before in previous posts, but I guess you’ll have to suffer through the emotional turmoil of seeing them one more time before they’re locked away into the digital vault that is my 2010 archive.

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(Okay, I know it’s a bit late for a round-up of 2010 but I’ve been busy, okay?)

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My first picture comes from the Winter Olympics in Whistler, Canada.  Following the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili the previous day, I managed to spot some movement around the site of the accident as I was passing over a footbridge.  After a few minutes, Kumaritashvili’s team-mate Levan Gureshidze appeared and spent a few minutes on the spot of his friend’s death.  Alone, he didn’t say anything but touched and held the pillar that killed his team mate before simply standing, deep in his loss.

While covering the General Election in the UK, I was one of the first photographers to travel with the Conservative Party as David Cameron began his campaign to become Prime Minister.  A combination of good luck, internal politics and my trademarked smile managed to get me the opportunity to spend a few seconds with Mr. Cameron after a speech to supporters at a college in Plymouth.  At the time, I thought it would end up being something that was offered to each of the photographers but it turned out to be a one-off.  Either I treated him so badly in the seconds that I had that I put him off for good or I managed to be rather lucky.  Either way, it made a frame that’s made my selection.

With the election dominating the news, I was sent to follow Bridget Fox as she canvassed for support and votes in the borough of Islington South and Finsbury in North London.  In the short time that I was with her, it was incredible to see just how little encouragement or hospitality she received from the people whose houses she approached.  With some refusing to open their doors, others ignoring her knocking and a handful being either openly dismissive or offensive, I think this shot manages to sum up the strange situation that these people put themselves in, knowing that the person about to answer the door is very probably not a supporter, yet still being prepared to try.

With the power of hindsight, the next picture has become even more significant to me.  At the time, a playful gesture by a child during a Liberal Democrat campaign event made me chuckle. However, with accusations of Nick Clegg selling out the party values in the current coalition, the lack of respect coming from the young boy seems to mirror the feelings of many young people who previously supported the party but now feel let down over tuition fee rises.

After weeks of touring the country and a few days of meetings and deals behind closed doors, being there at the conclusion was a good way to wrap up the story.  As is the norm with stories of this size in Downing Street, a massive grandstand had been erected opposite the door of number 10 with news crews, journalists and photographers camping out for the big moment.  When you’re shooting with such a large number of photographers, it’s hard to get excited about your pictures as you know that everyone is shooting from a similar angle.  It just becomes a case of looking for that particular fraction of a second that captures the event. After doing the usual posturing that anyone would do when they’d just become the new Prime Minister, this little hug stood out as an unusually intimate move to share with the world’s media.  Combined with eye-line from Samantha Cameron, it becomes one of my favourites of 2010.

On a slightly different tack, the World Naked Bike Ride Day presented me with plenty of pictures but not that many that most of the British papers would want to print due to the presence of naked middle-aged men.  Nearing the end of the route, I’d reached Parliament Square and was just checking I’d not missed anything special when this paramedic cycled past.  When it comes down to it, a naked official on a bike will always make the grade.

Not being a massive sports fan, it may seem odd that the one picture that I’ve chosen from Glastonbury festival is from the live screening of the England vs Germany match.  The reason that this one still appeals to me is due to the fact that in a field of tens of thousands of England fans, there was a single Germany supporter who was quite happy to show off her pleasure at the disaster unfolding on the screens.  In the groups all around her, some seriously big (and drunk) England fans were starting to get angry with the result with one guy tearing his team shirt off in disgust.  Despite this somewhat threatening environment, whenever England let another goal in and the whole field groaned, this girl jumped into the air, cheering.  Like the Cameron shot above, catching natural eye-line during the right moment got it a spot in my top sixteen.

Working in news, it’s actually quite rare that I get to work in a one-on-one environment anymore so when I was sent to shoot a feature on the BFI’s restoration of a Hitchcock classic, it was somewhat disconcerting to find myself in a room with a bunch of guys that were prepared to do whatever I wanted.  After months of doorstep shots and long-range photography, it was decidedly disconcerting to have control over a subject!  After playing around for a while, I managed to combine all of the elements of the story into one frame that captures everything that I wanted to say.

I may receive death-threats from a million bloggers across the world for this but 96%of live music photography is like shooting fish in a barrel.  Controversial, I know, but when you have someone on a big stage, lit professionally as they perform for you, you’d have to be quite an eejit to not get something.  Once you’ve got the basic rules under your belt, it becomes somewhat formulaic.  With this in mind, my hat is truly doffed to those music photographers out there that manage to get something special.  The longer that I work as a photographer, the more I want totally clean and neutral backgrounds in my images so this shot stands out for me.  Unlike the majority of live music photography, it looks more like a portrait, even though it was shot on a 400mm f2.8 lens from about 25m away during  Thom Yorke’s set at the Big Chill festival.

From the same festival, installation artist Spencer Tunick gathered festival-goers into a field, stripped them naked, painted them up and took their picture.  Now whenever I suggest that to passing women, I just get blanked.  Anyway, the PRs at the event were distinctly unhelpful and told the photographers that we would only be able to shoot the installation from a fixed position.  Realising that this would be useless, I took a long lens and sat on the opposite hillside.  With the shoot complete, the naked subjects dispersed from the field and just as I was about to move on, I noticed a final participant being helped from the area.

Wanting to take advantage of the make-up, I grabbed a handful of participants and found a black cloth backdrop on the side of Mr. Scruff’s Tea Shop to shoot them against.  Again, my love of neutral backgrounds really allowed the subjects to be the only focus so with a little encouragement to out-perform the previous model, the expressions became more and more exaggerated.  Myfi Baron was my particular favourite with her perfect example of the classic Goth/Smurf/Riotgrrrl look that never seems to be out of fashion.

Despite getting a reasonable selection of shots of the man himself, my favourite shot of the Papal visit came from his Mass in Glasgow where a cluster (flock? herd?) of bishops moved out into the park to allow the congregation to take Mass.  Each bishop was assigned a teenager to hold a bright umbrella over their head as they walked.  As they moved from the stage, the shot from above was quite strong but I realised that I should be taking advantage of the low afternoon sun so rushed down to ground level from the photo position and managed to get this frame.

One of the biggest stories of the year was Wikileaks with the website’s founder Julian Assange taking centre stage.  On my second opportunity to photograph him, a press conference was held in the basement of a London hotel and, as expected, the world’s media was very evidently in attendance.  During the event, I set up a remote flash gun off to the right of the stage and using a 400mm, waited for a decent expression or moment that would be relevant.  Thankfully, while another of the guests was speaking, Assange went to touch his mouth and for a moment was covering it, which I think the US Government wishes he’d done from the start.

During a trip to Afghanistan with British Prime Minister David Cameron, I visited an Afghan patrol training college where I got the chance to see the latest graduates.  The combination of them looking like an Afghan version of Dad’s Army in ill-fitting uniforms, along with the fact that at least one of them (2R) could kill me from a mile away, made it a favourite.  Unlike others in this selection, when I came to choose which frame of this shoot to file, I went for the one where I wasn’t making eye contact with any of them, as I like the feeling of vigilance in these new patrolmen.

While the day of the student protests was owned by Matt Dunham’s shot of Camilla getting a good poke in public (with a stick), it was left to the rest of us to see what else we could find.  My favourite image came towards the end of the day after a security hut was set on fire.  With acrid smoke from the burning plastic filling the air, a guy came wandering through the plumes with a full gas mask on.  “Be prepared”, as anarchist scouts will tell you.

One of the last jobs of 2010 for me was the appearance of Mr. Assange at the High Court in central London.  Having only been able to see him in shots taken through the thick and darkened windows of a prison van, the nation’s media was out in force to catch sight of him.  Thanks to some prime position marking by freelance AFP photographer Warren Allott, I managed to get a spot on the front row of the gathered photographers.  Just as we were all ready for a nice easy picture, the security staff set up a partition wall so that we wouldn’t be able to see him.  Now from this distance, there was only the thinnest gap when he would be visible.  Thankfully, I decided to push my D3s to DX crop mode, giving me the faster burst rate of 11 frames per second and this was the only shot that I got of him.  While I’m all for the “decisive moment”, sometimes a kick-ass motor-drive helps out.

So there you have it.  Now let’s get this decade started…

Foreign jobs often drop out of the blue with no warning as happened a couple of weeks ago with a trip to Afghanistan as the pool photographer for British Prime Minister David Cameron.  Never having been to any war zones before (however securely protected), I was actually quite excited before going.  Knowing that I would be the only photographer on the trip added a few nerves to it too as I’d be using a Bgan satellite terminal to transmit my images while working in a whole new environment.  As is the way with these kind of trips, the photographs were shot by one agency and shared on a pool basis between all of the other agencies that had put their names forward to send a photographer.  With the rotational system landing on AFP, I was picked and off I went.

One of the most memorable parts of the two-day trip was the variety of transports that we took, ranging from a private business-class plane from the UK that was last used by Tom Cruise to an Apache helicopter over the streets of Kabul.  With Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Suite at Heathrow providing an array of magazines and biscuits including, I kid you not, “What Pool and Hot Tub” magazine, the 8 hour flight in the back of a Hercules transporter plane was never going to quite match up.

Unfortunately, this was never going to be the fulfilling assignment that I’d hoped for as the schedule essentially said “run, shoot, fly, run, shoot, fly…  Repeat until asleep”  On landing in Camp Bastion, while the text journalists headed into the camp to settle in and have a poke around, I was straight onto a Chinook and off for a day of handshakes, long-distance walking shots and general hurrying.  Covering these kind of jobs certainly gets you up to speed on your backwards running and obstacle detection abilities.

Logistically, I quickly became very grateful for the advice from AFP colleague Carl de Souza that I should ditch the 300mm that I had planned to take.  When carrying my backpack, beltpack and cameras, I’m usually pretty heavy but adding a Bgan transmitter, helmet and body armour just makes it ridiculous.  All previous ideas of taking time to play with feature ideas and lens choices quickly became “get it sharp and all in the frame before the helicopter starts it’s engines again”.

After visiting two mid-point bases between Camp Bastion and Lashkar Gah, it was time to head back to base and transmit.  As was crushingly predictable, this was problematic with no uploads seeming to transmit via satellite and only two network cables for a room full of journalists.  With the transmission taking way longer than normal, the offer of the evening meal in with the soldiers and PM came and went.  Thankfully, one of the soldiers in charge of dealing with the media offered pizza and soon enough, a stack of branded boxes arrived from the on-base branch.  I’d heard that there were regular stores on the military bases before but to call out for Pizza Hut while in the middle of the Afghan desert was decidedly surreal.

After a night of inhaling dust in a room heated to sauna-like temperatures by what sounded like a jet engine, it was off into the skies again.  Tuesday’s schedule involved a visit to a MERT base, a visit to a post office on a military base and then on to Kabul to meet with President Karzai.

As David Cameron wrote a surprisingly long “Fax Bluey” of Christmas thanks to all military personnel serving in Afghanistan, one of the few unusual pictures of the trip presented itself, thanks to a well-placed soft porn calendar.  Aside from this, the day was a deja vu of meetings, introductions and inspections.  The problem with these type of trips is that the thought and preparation is put into the logistics of getting around and little is focused on if the content that the location provides will work as an image.  On a number of occasions, I was nudged by the Downing Street media team as I was “missing a shot”, when in fact it was simply another opportunity to photograph the Prime Minister walking across some tarmac with a soldier.  A couple of opportunities for pictures appeared but these were noticeable for their rarity.  It’s a real shame as the fear of having a possibly embarrassing moment being captured results in such close supervision regarding angles and proximity that the iconic “happy accidents” are never allowed to occur.

The final visit before heading to Kabul was to a training base for new members of the Afghan Security Patrol with what was possibly the fastest visit of the whole trip.  I think I could have possibly held my breath for the length of time we were on the ground but it managed to give me one of my other favourite frames, below.  On landing, we were taken straight through to a training yard where the latest graduates were lined up, ready to meet the PM.  What may look like a somewhat motley crew contained a bit of a surprise in that the chap second from the right with the false hand is currently the Afghan security force’s top sniper.  Yup, you laugh at that ‘tache and he’ll pop a cap in your dome from a mile away.

Tuesday concluded with a day where, if the military gave out air-miles, I’d have enough for a nice weekend away.  Flying from Bastion to Kabul on a Hercules and into the Presidential Palace on an Apache helicopter, a wonderful grip and grin followed by a sparkling press conference in an artificially-lit room was the extent of the Kabul leg.  A planned stop-off at the British embassy to edit and transmit pictures was shortened to 15 minutes, leaving no time to transmit any images at all.  Somewhat frustrated, it was back on the Apache then onto the Hercules for the first stage of the flight home.

With the images un-filed, I sat on the Hercules for three hours as we left the country fuming over how I could manage to transmit while changing to the commercial flight to the UK.  With this ruled out, I reverted to dumping the images onto a memory stick and handing it to embassy officials during the cross-over.  The biggest headache of the trip though was the security embargo in that, despite flying out on Sunday night, no word or image of the trip could be released until 5am on Tuesday morning.  This resulted in a situation where the journalists could file their copy and have the words sat on the page ready to publish while AFP had to hold the images back until way after the publishing deadlines.  Due to this, a handful of my earliest pictures that I took of the PM with the machine gun eventually made the newspapers on the Tuesday but by the following day he was home and the story was quite literally yesterday’s news.  Damn this speeding news cycle!

As I walked out of Heathrow airport and climbed into the back of a taxi, the driver asked where I’d flown in from.  Where to begin…

Before I begin, I should explain my own experiences with fees and student debt.  When I was 17, I took a Foundation course in photo-journalism with my A levels.  On passing this, I applied for and secured a place on the next stage, the Pre-entry NCTJ Photo-Journalism course.  However, when I was told this good news, I was also informed that I’d have to fund the course fees of £2000 myself.  Being far from wealthy, this actually forced me away from the course and I moved on to pursue music.  Eight years later, the European Union began to cover the fees for those accepted and I managed to get a position once more.  Without that financial assistance, I would never have completed the course so I can thoroughly understand how some can say that £9000 of fees will be enough to dissuade them from attending University.  Fees are bad, mmkay?

Having managed to time my days off with all of the three previous student tuition fee protests, the fourth demo became my first full day of revolting students.  With other photographers having already experienced the fun and games involved, many were already complaining about the long day ahead before it had even started.  Not a good sign.

Speaking of signs, a group holding oversized model textbooks gathered at the front of the march before it set off, making quite a nice frame.  It only dawned on me later in the day that it was a “novel” (snigger) way to disguise your riot shield.

The march from the University of London to the Houses of Parliament went smoothly enough with a few kids at the front running ahead and taking a different route but eventually regrouping with the main body of protestors.  When they finally reached the arranged destination, it quickly became clear how odd a decision it is to march on Parliament; the square is one giant containment area surrounded by buildings with bomb and bullet-proof windows.  Basically, the march led itself into the kettle.

While the people filed in, all was calm enough but within a short period, a handful of protestors began to kick off with the odd missile being thrown at the police, barriers being pushed down and statues being vandalised.  While the majority of the crowd were happy to just be there and make their presence speak for itself, it was clear that others had come to cause trouble.  It didn’t take long for it to begin.

At the junction of Victoria Street and Parliament Square, a flashpoint soon became apparent with the police line being consistently tested by surging crowds.  For those that have never been in this kind of situation, allow me to give my take on how the stories of police brutality against innocent youngsters occur.  Firstly, Mr. or Mrs. “FightThePower” gets to the front line and starts kicking off and pushing the police around.  Once it’s started to get loud and aggressive, others come over to see what’s happening.  The initial troublemakers take a step back from the front line, allowing the less-aggressive protestors to slip to the front.  Once they’re safely away from the danger, the incredibly brave soldiers of anarchy begin throwing sticks and rocks at the police line while surging forwards, pushing the ones at the front into the police.  The police respond by pushing back and inevitably someone gets hurt.

Throughout the day, you could clearly see that the majority of the masked kids that were shouting for people to target the horses and throwing broken chunks of concrete were conveniently never on the front line.  Way to go, tough guys.

It was around this time when the first photographer casualties occurred with colleagues James Vasey and Luke McGregor both suffering cuts during crowd surges.  With the crush becoming more severe, a number of photographers were pushed to the floor under fencing with two of them saying that they thought that it could be about to get REALLY serious.

With the police horses now out to hold the line, a few small groups in the crowd started to take out their frustration on what was to hand with construction fencing and a security shed being targeted.

Before long, the fencing was being used against the police back at the flashpoint.  It was so clear how this was going to end up by this point.  If you try to force a large metal section of fencing at police and they start wrestling it back at you, who’s going to come out worse; the police dressed in body armour and helmets or the guys on the front line with nice soft heads?

As the sun went down, the fires began with benches and the previously mentioned shed getting the lighter treatment.  With all this happening, I have to restate that the vast majority of the people in Parliament Square were chatting, chanting and remaining calm.  From what I saw, there is very obviously a smaller element that are just there to break things, or in their words, “fuck things up”. A man mentioned to me that he’d asked one of the masked protestors if he’d heard when the vote to decide if the fee increase would be going through in Parliament.  The masked man responded by asking him what vote he was talking about.

By 4pm, the police decided to close the area of, effectively forming the “kettle”.  From this point on, only accredited media or those with medical emergencies could pass out of parliament Square.  By now, the marchers had been in the square for around 3-4 hours with at least a few more hours in containment ahead of them.  A small area in the centre of the grassed area became an impromptu toilet with a definite “festival” feel to the mud around that corner of the square.

As it got colder and people got hungry and tired, more of the demonstrators headed towards the exit but found the “kettle” still in place with nobody allowed to leave.  With nowhere to go, the flashpoint moved to Whitehall with huge numbers funnelling into the closed off road.

This time, I decided to get right into the thick of it and managed to both lose my protective headgear and have a flashgun smashed.  Whoopee.  Still, it resulted in me having to shoot catch-flash instead which, thanks to an abundance of photographers in the area, was pretty easy with some decent results.  Like most of the protests and demonstrations that happen now, the media is there in the front line with agency, newspaper, freelance and amateur photographers scrambling for positions.  A number of times in the evening, there were similarities with the clashes at the G20 demonstration in central London where I was half expecting a PR to come along and start handing out press releases to the rows and rows of media.

By now, word had come through of THE incident of the day with Matt Dunham of AP managing to be at just the the right place at just the right time to capture the moment that a breakaway group of protestors attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.  Now when something like that happens, it’s game over.  Everyone very quickly realises that with an image like that on the wire, there’s no point in even thinking of another angle.  Sure enough, Matt secured nearly every front page in the UK the next day and very probably in countries all over the world.  Up to that point, Ki Price had been the man of the day with his picture of a guy swinging on a Union flag, suspended from the Cenotaph war memorial.  Thankfully, he also managed to get his day of front pages the day after Matt, when it was discovered that the boy in question was the son of Pink Floyd‘s Dave Gilmour.  Despite him being a history student at an exclusive University, he claimed to have no idea what the Cenotaph was.  With today’s news that he’s been arrested, I guess he’s going to be learning something for free after all.

After smashing a few windows on the Treasury building and the Supreme Court, the Police managed to push the group back and after holding them for a little longer, the containment was slowly opened along a secured route, allowing the remaining group to slowly make their way over Westminster bridge and home.  With this being the final protest scheduled for 2010, the new year promises to hold more demonstrations, despite the bill passing through Parliament.  With neither side appearing to want to back down on their opinions, it looks like this story is set to rumble on for some time.  Looks like I might need to get that hard hat replaced…

Like a bolt from the sky from a flaky A380, my Picture Editor decided to throw me a challenge in the shape of the WRC Wales Rally.  Up to this point, my only experience of motor-sport rally was climbing in the trees of Sherwood Forest when my Dad took me to watch the Lombard RAC rally many moons ago.  My only actual memory of it now is seeing all the gimps in Halfords-bedecked Fiestas racing each other out of the car park at the end of the day.

The first call was to other photographers to find out who else was covering it and to gain any advice that I could on how to begin my coverage.  With one photographer only offering “It’s great for your mileage expenses”, I finally found a colleague who would be both covering the four days and was prepared to offer a whole selection of hints and tips; Mr Alastair Grant from the Associated Press.  After booking hotels all over the route of the rally around central and southern Wales, I headed out to Cardiff to collect my accreditation before heading north to Aberystwyth.  An evening’s discussion of routes, plans, angles and thoughts later and I was ready to tackle my first day; “Sweet Lamb”.

Never having covered the WRC before, I didn’t know what to expect regarding information and had assumed that I just rocked up to the area and wandered around until I found a corner I liked but thankfully the organisers are a bit more prepared.  In the media guide, a map of the course is accompanied by example images and plan maps of the corners, obstacles and jumps that they believe make the best image.  This means that the hardest part is finding some random dirt track up a mountain side with a name like “Crossways” or “Sweet Lamb”.  It goes without saying that satnav is of no use really so I was hugely grateful to be following Alastair who had covered the Wales rally last year.

Having been warned by Getty sports photographer (and confirmed petrol-head) Clive Rose how fast Sebastien Loeb would be, it didn’t take long to see that he wasn’t kidding.  Unlike other sports that build up to the main attraction, rally sees the #1 ranking driver take to the course first.  In some ways, this is great as you get the best drivers through quickly but for a total eejit like me, it just means that I have nothing to practise on.  It goes without saying that on some of the stages that I covered, there weren’t THAT many frames to file.

As a prime example of the glamour involved in press photography, I thought I’d include a test shot from my remote camera set-up on the peak of the “Myherin” section of day two.  Never in my life have I worked in such truly miserable conditions.  It was so bad, the unhappiness passed through into insanity and mania with bursts of laughter and giggles as the torrential rain whipped across the moorland.  On arrival, the massive turbines of the wind farm dominated the horizon creating the perfect setting for a nice feature shot.  Ma Nature clearly hates photographers though and as the roar of Loeb’s car first came into earshot, the fog fell and covered all but one.  With gusts tugging the protective bags from my lenses and triggers, it made for a truly dismal location.

It’s about now that I should probably try to sum up my experiences with Pocket Wizards.  Not being a regular sports photographer, I have little reason to play with them so on deciding to use them over the weekend, I faced a steep learning curve.  After making the beginner’s error of leaving the flash on TTL rather than manual, I was then deep into the world of completely illogical firing.

As top MTB photographer James Porteous explained to me, “if you ever open one up, you’ll discover that the case just contains magic and confusion”.  A perfect description as they would both decide to work for no reason and vice versa with absolutely no changes being made.  Utter utter confusion.  Bring on the Pocket Wizard Nikon-compatible TTL system as these rather battered Multimax units are just prime shoddiness.

The following day was spent at the “Fourways Crychan” and “Halfway” sections of the course and proved to be a marathon of hiking and endurance.  With the media car park 2km from the first jump and the second point of interest being around 4km away, the addition of a 400mm f2.8 lens plus full kit and laptop including three camera bodies, remotes and clamps was a nightmare.  Within five minutes of leaving the car, the decision to wear thermals and loads of layers proved to be a bit of an error, resulting in the drenched feelings of yesterday being replicated but inside my clothes this time.

With full accreditation bibs and passes, photographers are allowed access to any stage of the route and, aside from being told not to sit in the middle of the road, are left to their own devices.  While common sense initially tells you to steer well clear, it doesn’t take long before everyone is edging closer to the roadside and balancing remote cameras and flashguns on hay bales within inches of the track.  It’s only when you watch in-car footage of what the drivers get to see that you realise how insanely close to complete wipe-out these vehicles are.

Halfway through my second day, I didn’t feel that I was really getting anything of much use (or interest) so suggested to Alastair that we headed into one of the wooded sections of the course.  After yet more cross-country hiking, I settled on a corner of the track that would see the drivers power-slide round, allowing me to play around with the temperamental pocket wizards once again.  An early test shot resulted in a perfectly exposed frame being taken, followed immediately by a BBC sound effect album-style splintering sound as the branch that I’d clamped the flash and trigger to gave way and the toys fell 30 feet into a muddy ditch.  Incredibly, the triggers didn’t see this as a perfect opportunity to fail and continued to work for me.  As ever, first through was Sebastien Loeb and, with my timing unpractised, I missed the point of firing that I’d been after but got a happy accident in this unusual lighting pattern.

A few cars in and I really started to play around with what I could get.  As you may have already decided, I was straying somewhat from the brief of “rally photographer” but I guess that what comes of experimentation!

On the last day, we headed to Margam Park and, like all of the other stages, covered the leaders of the race before heading out to the finish line in Cardiff centre for the cup presentation.  With a large amount of amateur teams taking part, it really is only the top ten that are likely to be in contention so, aside from missing some unplanned aerobatics, it makes sense to get them shots in the bag and head on to the next location every time.

The Wales rally proved to be quite an odd experience in that not only was it a new discipline to get my head around but also, the winner of the whole championship had been decided weeks before and right from day one, there had been little doubt that Loeb would take the Welsh rally title too.  When the time came for the cup presentation, it was a decidedly muted affair with no real sense of excitement or celebration.  As the main cup had already been presented to him weeks before, it was a bit of a damp squib.  Added to this, it’s so weird to cover an event that gets so little press coverage in the UK.  Thankfully, I can see my play reports so get to see that the images are being used across Europe but here in the UK, it’s as if it didn’t happen.

In conclusion, I actually enjoyed covering the rally.  Yes, I know that goes against my usual anti-sport feelings but a combination of a new field of photography to get to grips with and having such an open physical area to find angles and ideas really does make for a creatively challenging and fun experience.  If I’d been writing this blog while sheltering behind a turbine, it may not have been quite the same answer.

As I’ve said in #12, photography is a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows and, recently, I was feeling in a bit of a dip.  “What I need”, I moaned at the ever-patient Kirsten, “is a job that really gets my mind working”.  Then Satan answered my call.

From 12-17 October, the Old Vic theatre has arranged for their newly aquired space in the arches underneath Waterloo station to host a show of artists’ interpretations of the underworld, “Hell’s Half Acre”.  The owner of the gallery behind the event, London-based Lazarides, has recently said that his version of hell is the current coalition Government but thankfully, the artists involved had pushed the boundaries a little further and created a truly beautiful thing.

Not only did I get the chance to look around the show before the doors opened but it was also arranged just for AFP, meaning that there wasn’t the usual fight to get positions, copying of ideas and general stalemate that photocalls of this nature often become.  After a handful of gallery and auction house photocalls this week, it was so refreshing to get to think about things for a little longer, come back to pieces that I had new ideas on and generally enjoy the shoot.

Including work by artists such as Conor Harrington, Vhils, George Osodi, Antony Micallef, Doug Foster, Todd James, Paul Insect, Mark Jenkins, Boogie, Ian Francis, Polly Morgan, Jonathan Yeo, Zak Ové, the aging arches naturally have the smell of damp and darkness to them that sit perfectly with the artwork on show.  While some artists have gone for truly nasty concepts such as Marc Jenkins’ “Chrysalis 1-6″  (identical female mannequins encased in shrinkwrap, hanging from the ceiling), others have opted for more satirical digs such as Vhils’ portrait of “Bernie Made Off” above.

Jonathan Yeo’s “For what we are about to receive” is another piece in the style of his regular work where fragments of paper from porn magazines are suspended in sheets of glass and hung from the ceiling, creating a whole new image when viewed from one angle and chaos from every other position.

The wonderfully helpful Julia from Purple PR proved a top help in the shoot as she posed with a live projection of a tray of maggots crawling on the screen in front of her.  My requests to hold the pose for a bit longer due to a “maggot just crawling out of your nose” couldn’t even put her off the job at hand.

Having worked your way through the show, for a spiritual ending, you pass through the glowing fluffiness of heaven before you find yourself in the glamourous Station Approach.  I consider myself well and truly uplifted.

Within hours of returning from the heaven on earth that is Villa Cenami, I was up in Manchester for the annual Labour Party Conference, preceded this year by a knife fight to the death between rival candidates hoping to become the new party leader.  With a brief speech by the previous Guvnor, Gordon Brown, it was on with the inordinately drawn-out process of announcing the winner.

While TV shows like “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and “X Factor” think they’ve cornered the market in faux suspense, the key element that they’ve missed is to draw out that weighted silence before the winner is announced by around fifteen minutes, filling it with fractional voting tallies at different rounds of the elections with third and fourth choices taken into account.  Boy, we were on the edge of our seats.  As colleague Oli Scarff pointed out, when it came to the final head to head between Ed and David Miliband and Dave’s score of 49.35% was announced, the hall was still quiet in case somehow Ed could have managed to score less than 50.65%.  Way to go, brainiacs!  Eventually, with both voting results and adrenaline used up, Ed Miliband was declared winner over his brother David by just over 1% of the vote.

Despite Radio 4 reporting that the bookies were edging towards Ed, I was a little surprised to actually see it go his way.  I realised in the following days that I was being  decidedly hypocritical as, on the one hand, I really dislike slick soundbite “jazz hands” politics but at the same time was chuckling at the fact that Labour had picked someone who is clearly uncomfortable in front of the camera.  Bad Leon.

After a quick hug (that I managed to be in the wrong position for), Ed took to the stage for his first speech as leader.  With his mentor, former party leader Neil Kinnock looking on, he thanked the other candidates individually with major praise going to his defeated brother.  During the announcement and most of Ed’s speech, David smiled, applauded and looked on with encouragement but, in between this, there were moments where he couldn’t quite hide his true feelings.

New day, new leader, new Labour.  Sunday kicked off (chortle) with the traditional annual Journalists vs Labour MP football match.  Always worth a look, this year’s “Finest Specimen” award went to Ed Balls for his near-perfect impersonation of David Beckham’s Armani adverts.

Back in the hall and it was on with the business at hand.  As usual, the area outside the main conference hall was handed over to organisations and groups that support Labour, are campaigning for help from political parties or simply want to get their brand and services noticed.  These ranged from a fantastic demonstration by a guide dog charity where delegates could be blindfolded and lead through a course by a guide dog, to pro-Hugo Chavez groups selling t-shirts and mugs.  One university was demonstrating it’s use of 3D technology but no matter how long I hung around, I couldn’t catch anyone worthwhile giving it a go.  Boo to coawardly senior politicians…

In the afternoon, after a bustle of activity outside the Midland Hotel, David Miliband returned to face the media onslaught.  Grinning and bantering with the TV crews, he made a quick statement of support for little Ed and headed into the sanctuary of the hotel.

The next day, we all knew that David would be addressing the conference and, up to now, had made no comment whatsoever on what his plans were now that the race was over.  With this kind of job, I always fall into the trap of over-thinking the options and possibilities.  Everyone knew that the only picture that would be used the next day was from this speech but without knowing how everything would happen, nobody knew what the “moment” would be.  Spending too much time trying to pre-empt these jobs can drive you insane so after driving myself insane, I opted to just sit directly in front of the podium.

After a session of speeches and debates on foreign policy, David took to the stage and immediately had the audience in his hand.  A very natural speaker, he wandered the stage without an autocue or notes, delivering both a passionate speech and a strong show of support for his younger brother.  During his speech, it was hard not to look at Ed and see a look of fear in his eyes as he saw how comfortably David handled the delegates.  Knowing that his keynote address was set for the next day, I really wouldn’t have wanted to follow that.

As had happened for the leadership announcement, I managed to retain my 100% record of being in the wrong place due to being blocked by the huge podium that I’d oh-so-cleverly dumped myself in front of.  Genius.  After missing the initial hug, thankfully, I managed to scramble to a slightly better angle and get a moment as they came together during the standing ovation.

With the applause still echoing in the hall, the pressure for Ed to perform the next day was mounting.

The following morning saw rule #12 spring back into life for it’s annual moment in the spotlight.

In the conference hall, votes, meetings and Q&A sessions rumbled along with the afternoon’s keynote hanging over everything.  It’s always a shame when there’s such a big event on a day as it just kills everything else.  The features and fluff that you find are very unlikely to make the papers when, in a few hours time, the wires will be crammed to capacity with pictures of the main players.

With colleague Andy Yates on long lens duty from the back of the hall, I opted to go for the scrum on the floor so stripped my gear down to the basics and stretched off ahead of a long session of crawling about on my knees.  The aches and pains of squatting down so low on hard floors while trying to crawl over each other to change positions are not particularly nice and, every single year, I vow to get in shape so I can just sit cross-legged in a Zen-like state rather than cramping and slapping my numb legs every few minutes.

The keynote is another example of an opportunity to over-think a situation as no matter how much thought you put into your position, the speech goes on for forty minutes so you’ll inevitably move all over the area to get different angles.  Once you have a good white balance, there’s very little that changes over the week so it’s up to you to make the picture through different angles and lenses.

As ever when shooting a performance of any kind, it’s very easy to switch off your ears and just look at the pictures and I must admit that is what I did here.  It was only afterwards that I was told of his controversial criticism of Iraq and only in the evening when I saw the footage of David Miliband’s furious response to his brother’s comments.  Speaking to the cameraman that spotted David’s heated comments to Harriet Harman, he said that he noticed it at the time and lip-read him asking Harriet why she was clapping but kept it under his hat until after Sky and the BBC had done their main evening bulletins.  When ITN did their evening news, out came the footage and a whole new story was born.  By the end of the evening, David Miliband’s career in frontline politics was all but over.  Journalists boldly claimed that we would never see him on the stage again despite him still not having made any statement on his future.  That announcement would be coming the next day.

The one bit of planning that was necessary came at the end of Ed’s speech as we’d been pre-warned that he would not be bringing his heavily-pregnant partner, Justine Thornton, onto the stage.  This resulted in all of the photographers camping around the poor woman for the last twenty minutes of his speech as we waited to catch the hug.  It almost got to the point where no-one was shooting the actual keynote address for fear of missing “the moment”.  As is depressingly common in these situations, when the hug came, it was a definite let-down as no-one could get a good angle .  Yet another lesson in learning not to expect a “guaranteed” picture to actually work.

Aside from the main events of the day, it’s still worth a regular patrol around the stalls as you never really know what you might stumble across.  Limited edition Ed Miliband mugs were hurriedly produced with a queue forming to buy them as I took pictures.  They didn’t quite have the flair of David Cameron’s “Fire up the Quattro” mugs but that didn’t seem to be slowing sales.  It really does seem as though the Conservatives have the upper hand in eye-catching souvenirs.  The latest one that I’ve seen from the Conservative conference is bottled “David’s bitter” ale featuring a sketch of David Miliband on the label.

After days of speculation, Wednesday brought the deadline that everyone had been waiting for; Shadow Cabinet nominations and, with it, a definitive announcement from David Miliband on what he planned to do.  With a final registration point of 5pm, the media in London gathered around his family home for any sign of a statement.  In Manchester, all eyes were on Ed.

This year’s special guest speaker was Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a Social Democrat from Denmark who was the focus of attention until halfway through her speech when Ed arrived onstage.  Cue a mass scramble to the area in front of him to shoot every single twitch, sniff or glance that could be the tell-tale sign of upset (or at least look like that).  It’s amazing how someone scratching the tip of a nose can end up in the following day’s papers with a caption talking of the subject “wiping tear’s from their eyes”.

It was around this time that I really began to feel sorry for the guy.  Having won the leadership of the Labour Party, he was now under intense media scrutiny for the first time in his life, had potentially ended his brother’s frontline political career, caused a division within his family and was clearly suffering from a rather heavy cold.  It got to the point during the afternoon session that he truly looked on the verge of vomiting as he tried to find something to do with his hands.  Not the best way to “celebrate” your victory really.

As expected, at a few minutes after 5pm, David announced his retirement from frontline politics and a hastily organised “doorstep” was set up outside the Midland Hotel.  After an hour-long wait, Ed walked down the long corridor to the front door alone with the applause of his team coming from the rooms behind him.  With a fine example of upper-lip stiffness, he delivered his words of support for David’s decision and headed back in, leaving the TV reporters to spring into the gap to continue their live reports.

With the Party hoping that the whole Miliband soap opera was behind them, the Conference reached it’s final day.  By now, Ed’s cold was in full effect giving all of the photographers the chance to fire off copious quantites of frames whenever he blew his nose.  This is serious photojournalism in full effect, people.  “Can’t you see?  He’s crying, dammit!”

The morning was filled with various speeches and Q&A sessions in front of a decidedly thinned-out audience.

As tradition dictates it was down to the Deputy Leader to officially close the conference for another year with a light-hearted rallying cry to supporters to get out there and do lots of good Laboury things.  With a number of regular Cabinet members deciding to step down this year, it was the last time that we’d see Alistair Darling, Jack Straw and Bob Ainsworth on the stage  but attention was already shifting to the Shadow Cabinet election results, to be announced on the 7th of October.

With rumours that Ed Balls and wife Yvette Cooper have both decided to stand for the same position, it’s starting to look like the soap opera isn’t quite over just yet.