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.

In the list of sexy subjects to write about, the Leveson Inquiry may appear to be low down the top 40 but this is the one that has huge potential to change working practise for every photographer in the UK.

The fourth day of the inquiry has now finished and, along with a large percentage of my colleagues, I feel truly let down at how we, as photographers, are being portrayed.  By way of a cheat-sheet for those not following the story, the inquiry was launched to investigate malpractice within the media, following on from the hacking scandal at News International but appears to slowly be turning into a witch-hunt against photographers.  While celebrity witnesses have been lining up to vent their anger at the ordeals that they have faced at the hands of the paparazzi, the differentiation between news photographers and paps has been blurred to the point where the whole industry is now being tarred with the same brush.

Having started writing a blog post on the subject, colleague and friend Christopher Pledger beat me to it with his “open letter” explaining how he feels about the situation.  He’s kindly let me reproduce it here.  If you agree with what’s been said or even feel that it’s made you consider how you feel on the topic, please share this page.  It’s important that as many people as possible get to know that there is a difference.  Over to Christopher…

“These are my personal views and are not intended to be representative of any organisation I work for as a freelance photographer.

The testimony of witnesses this week at the Leveson inquiry has included damning condemnation of the behaviour of the paparazzi. Both the celebrity and ‘ordinary’ victims of phone hacking have told of being chased, spat at and terrified by photographers. These experiences could have fatal consequences for the news photographer, a vital part of a truly free press.

There are important distinctions to be made between a paparazzo and a press photographer. A comparison of the two is like that between the cowboy builder and a professional tradesman. It is also important to distinguish between the paparazzi and celebrity photographers. Celebrity photographers work with the permission, and often to the benefit of, their subjects. This can range from red carpet premieres to organised and set up photo shoots of a celebrity out shopping or on the beach. I do not class them in my definition of paparazzi. Lacking moral or ethical guidance, the paparazzi work with little respect for the law. The composition, quality, or origin of a photograph is a distant second to its commercial value. Paparazzi agencies will often employ people with little or no knowledge of photography. The agency will provide cameras with settings taped over so they cannot be changed. It is not a photographer that is sent out of the office, simply a man with a camera.

Press photographers by contrast are skilled professionals with years of training and experience. They work within the strict guidelines of both the Press Complaints Commission and their newspaper or news agency. These guidelines include respecting both a person’s right to privacy and the boundaries of private property. A good news photograph will be technically excellent and able to tell the story in a single frame. In contrast to the paparazzi, financial rewards are low.

This is not to imply that all press photographers are angelic super-humans working to expose the truth to an unwitting public. Like any industry, there are a minority of ‘rogue traders’ who are prepared to bend or break the rules to get a picture.

The problem for legitimate press photographers is they are seen as no different from the paparazzi. Regardless of the assignment they are covering, press photographers now experience regular abuse from strangers in the street. When photographing something as mundane as a the outside of a high street bank, it is not uncommon to hear shouts of ‘pap scum’ or ‘leave them alone’ from members of the public. If a group of press photographers are gathered outside a court or government building, the first question asked by curious passers-by is not ‘what’s happening?’ but ‘which famous person is coming?’.

The problem of public perception stems from two different sources; celebrity magazine culture and television news. The dominant celebrity culture makes it hard to avoid a constant stream of images cataloguing the daily lives of the A to Z list. It is no surprise that the general public perceive the primary role of photographers as being to feed this machine. The problem is complicated by disreputable publications being prepared to buy pictures on a ‘no questions asked’ basis. This makes it hard to distinguish between photographers working in a professional way and those who aren’t.

Television news coverage is the other major factor in the problem of perception. During most stories a clip of press photographers is included as a ‘cut away’ shot to add visual interest. If the clip includes the subject of a story being surrounded by the media, reporters will often refer to a “scrum of photographers”. This ignores the numerous TV cameras both in the scrum and filming from a distance. This has been demonstrated during TV reports on the Leveson inquiry. Press photographers have been working from an official area behind a barrier to give the witnesses space to arrive without being disturbed. TV reports have consistently referred to ‘hordes of photographers’ while ignoring the numerous video cameras surrounding witnesses as they arrive. By using these tactics, TV news aim to draw a distinction between the dirty press and the clean media. In doing so, they may perhaps be driving the Leveson inquiry toward concluding tough privacy laws are required, privacy laws that will include a ban on photographing people in public without their permission.

A ban of this type would be the death of the free press in the UK. Current guidelines require that individuals should not be photographed while they have ‘a reasonable expectation of privacy’. In practical terms this means anyone in a public place can be photographed without permission, as they cannot expect privacy in a public space. If laws were introduced requiring the written consent of an individual before they were photographed, it would mean press photographers would have to ignore events unfolding before them. Some of the biggest news stories in the last year could not have been reported. Pictures of Charlie Gilmour swinging from the Cenotaph would have been taken illegally, likewise pictures of Oliver Letwin disposing of government documents in a park bin. Press photographers would be as ham strung as reporters are when they are prevented from covering stories of public interest that are subject to super-injunctions.

The problem of finding a solution that avoids this type of privacy law is extremely difficult. Legitimate press photographers already have licensed press cards that are required to be shown to work in places like Downing Street. This system has not stopped any of the behaviour reported this week, or prevented the use of faked press cards. Digital cameras are cheap and increasingly easier to use, making it hard for anybody to distinguish between professional and amateur, press photographer and paparazzo. If 99 out of 100 photographers comply with a code of conduct, one will always break the rules and tar the rest with the same brush. Introducing government or police regulation and control over licensing of press photographers would affect impartiality and freedom.

It would be very hard to argue that there can be no changes following the Leveson Inquiry. We must be very careful what these changes are and where they will take us. Press photographers are in danger of being so restrained by regulation that we become like the fire fighter who cannot enter a burning building for fear of breaking health and safety regulations.”

So there we have it.  This could well be a make or break time for British press photography.  Let’s hope that the inquiry sees sense before knee-jerk reactions destroy some of this country’s powerful freedoms forever.

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.

With my self-preservation system in full effect, I was assigned to covering the events and features of Tripoli and after weeks of extensive coverage by my colleagues, it was getting harder to find new angles to cover.  Still, while ever I wasn’t being shot at, I could always look on the positive side!

One of the things that’s interested me since my arrival here is the youth culture in Libya. Coming from the UK where bars, pubs and nightclubs can be found everywhere, it’s surprisingly shocking to spend time in a culture that has nothing along these lines for the young people. While the lack of drinking venues is due to the ban on alcohol, my interest was in the lack of social opportunities for people. Aside from privately organised parties, the young people simply cruise the streets of gather outside coffee shops. Having spent the majority of my teens in practise rooms and venues, I wanted to look into music and thanks to some assistance from a local fixer, found Ausman.

When the revolution started, Ausman spent time fighting with the anti-Kadhafi forces before returning to Tripoli. During the last weeks of Kadhafi’s control, he spent his evenings writing and recording anti-regime music in his bedroom with his friend Aimen. An added complication came from the Government offices directly opposite his house. With the building in such close proximity, the songs had to be rehearsed and recorded in hushed tones before being released anonymously on YouTube. With the NTC now in power, they can finally share their music openly.  The fact that he had a huge collection of Iron Maiden served only to make him even cooler in my opinion.

The next day was another feel-good story as the fighter pilots that had defected to Malta after refusing to fire on unarmed protestors received the heroes welcome that they deserved. As was the way with nearly every official event that I covered in Libya, no-one really knew what was going on and after monstering the people getting off a completely unrelated jet, the media found the right target. With soldiers and police holding everyone back, I managed to slip the cordon and get a few personal moments before the rest of the crowds broke through.

Having opted to keep away from the front lines, the evening provided a little reminder of where I was as I made a phone call on the hotel balcony. Halfway through my conversation, I heard the now-familiar “zyip” of a bullet passing close by. Cue comical slow sinking from view and sharp exit from the balcony. Speaking to an NTC fighter later on, I was told of the continuing problem of snipers within the capital. While most of the day to day life seems to be a million miles away from the fighting, the continued presence of NTC roadblocks and threat of random sniper fire shows the work remaining for the new Government.

Continuing with the feature ideas, I visited a former Kadhafi weapons store underneath a building site in central Tripoli. Now burnt-out, it was clear from the hundreds of AK-47 clips and remains of packing crates that it had previously held some SERIOUS firepower.  With a bullets now cheaper than cartons of milk at 1 Libyan Dinar each, it can only lead to further trouble in years to come.

Next on the list of possible stories was a visit to the notorious Abu Salim prison.  Human Rights Watch believe that over 1200 prisoners were killed in 1996 and many political prisoners were held there for lengthy terms under the previous government. Now, like the former stronghold Bab Al-Azizir, the prison has become a tourist attraction but, more than that, a chance for those who were previously held here to show others what they endured. I bumped into one such man during my visit who was visiting the site with his son.  Thanks to hearing his story, I could begin to appreciate what the previous inmates went through. Cells that I’d initially thought cramped for one were actually for three and hearing of the forty+ rats that they caught one day in the communal area was quite an eye-opener.  Throughout the brutal conditions, the inside of the some of the cell doors had been decorated with pictures torn from magazines of tropical islands and even commercial passenger planes in flight.  The prisoner that I talked to told me that  he would never have believed that he would be visiting as a free man today.

That night, I received bad news. Following my previous comments on the dangers of Libyan roads and a very near-miss that we encountered on the roads to the East of Tripoli, I received a call that our Sirte team had been involved in a serious car crash while driving from Sirte back to Misrata. With the roads changing from smooth new tarmac to foot-deep holes and ruuble with no warning, I feared that this would have been the cause but instead it was simply stupidity on another driver’s part. While they were overtaking at speed, the other car decided to turn in front of them. With injuries including a fractured pelvis, dislocated shoulder and deep cuts, it truly is a miracle that they survived. Having been rescued from the wreckage, they were transported back to the medical centre that they’d only just evacuated due to increasing amounts of incoming shell-fire. As one of those involved told me afterwards, luck was on their side in so many ways that day. My thoughts and wishes for a speedy recovery to all of those involved.

While normality slowly returned to life in some areas of the city, the examples of wartime chaos continued to stand out with children playing on the beach next to a sandcastle sculpture built around an explosive missile and empty shell cases littering the floor wherever you walk.

Every day, those who are cover the frontline fighting are returning with shocking stories that would sound comical if they weren’t so tragic. While one guy accidentally set his AK-47 to automatic, spraying bullets everywhere at a checkpoint without knowing how to stop it (but thankfully killing no-one), others weren’t so lucky. A photographer witnessed a truck carrying three fighters explode into pieces after one fighter accidentally fired his RPG into his own vehicle, immediately killing two of his comrades. Combining the total lack of weapons training on some in the NTC side with the highly-skilled techniques of those former soldiers and mercenaries fighting on the pro-Kadhafi side results in the frontline being a very dangerous place to work.

After covering the re-opening of the US Embassy in central Tripoli (complete with a live performance of the American National anthem that had that subtle dischordant touch, worthy of a Terry Gilliam film), I headed to Zawiya to shoot a feature on the re-opening of the oil and gas production facilities. With oil production making up 96% of the country’s income (and most of the final 4% coming from gas), getting the output up to speed again was of huge importance. While even last week, I’d have been able to drive straight into the facility, the red tape monster has begun to weave it’s official nastiness through society again so I had a long wait as we worked our way through office after office of people claiming to be in charge but invariably unable to permit entry. By now, I’d got a handful of shots but was too deep to escape so when the permission was granted, my driver and I had to endure a thorough and totally unecessary tour of the site, complete with “v for victory” gestures and uncomfortable poses from everyone we passed. Sheesh…

Saturday arrived and it was time to fly home to Blighty. After already covering the story of the re-introduction of flights to Turkey from Tripoli, I booked tickets on Turkish Airlines to fly me back to London via Istanbul. I should have known really. A few days before, I’d gone down to Matiga then Tripoli International airports to record the first planes arriving only to find that they were cancelled. Despite enjoying the last moments of bureaucratic freedom that saw us given permission to wander around freely on an active international runway, there was no sign of any commercial flights. Heavy with hope and assurances from Turkish Airlines that they were now flying, I headed to Matiga to begin the long trip home. Nope. They were still selling tickets and confident assurances to those wanting to fly out of Tripoli, despite them still not having flown or landed a single international flight in Tripoli since their grand announcement. What a complete waste of time and money.

So that looks like that’s it.  I write this from the hotel with one extra day to cover before beginning the very long journey home via Tunisia.  It’s certainly been a hell of an experience of both the good and bad flavour.  If Libya plays it’s card right, the future could be very bright indeed.  Aside from it’s huge oil reserves, cashing in on the tourist dollar is a real possibility.  While to some in the West, Libya has previously been seen as a secretive country filled with people running around in bomb vests, it’s been a real pleasure to to see this proved so wrong and to witness the early days of a whole new country.  With this much optimism in the air, my fingers are well and truly crossed for you all.

Parts one and two of the assignment can be found here;

http://www.leonneal.com/blog/2011/09/17/life-in-libya-september-2011/

http://www.leonneal.com/blog/2011/09/19/fear-and-reloading-in-libya/

I was recently asked what my ideal situation would be, regarding how I’d like to work and after some thought I settled on having the freedom to spend longer on jobs that have a deeper back story without the need to feel that I was there at the start.  Speaking to Tom Stoddart recently, he stated that he really enjoyed covering the story after the “breaking news” teams had moved on to the next story and I agree that having the luxury to cover a story at my own pace sounds very tempting.

When I was offered the chance to head to Libya to work on the unfolding story of a country finding it’s feet after over forty years under tight and often brutal rule, I couldn’t really say no.

Despite the idea of having freedom to look for my own features in this massive story, the nerves built as the day of travel got closer.  Coming as it did so soon after my last blog post on the fundraiser for a photographer who was killed covering the story, I didn’t want to find myself the subject of similar charitable endeavours.
The trip into Libya proved to be the expected welcome to North African life with an attempted bribe situation at the Tunisian border (Euros? Yes, I have plenty thanks. Euros? Why do you ask?  Euros? No.) and my taxi driver who turned out just to be some random bloke with a car trying (and failing) to charge me the equivalant of £280 for my journey.
The hotel that I was assigned was reportedly strongly pro-Kadhafi ahead of his political demise and appeared to be making up for their loss by tearing the world’s media’s daily food allowances to shreds.  A few days before I arrived, there had been no running water for the guests and, rather dubiously, the day they drained the swimming pool, the kitchen started serving pasta (or “elastopasta”, as I decided to brand it, due to the strong possibility of finding a verruca plaster in your carbonara).  All this for a mere £145 a night and £35 per dodgy buffet.  War is hell.  The only sign that I was in a warzone on that first night was the guy sat on a table nearby with twin 7.62 calibre bullet belts acroos his shoulders as he tucked into the trifle.

By way of getting to know the location/see the sights, I headed into town with AFP video journalist Paul Barber and discovered our first features including young Libyan art students painting anti-Kadhafi murals on city centre walls and the obligatory tour of Tripoli’s new theme park (AKA the Colonel’s massive compound Bab al-Azizia), complete with a web of underground tunnels and bunkers.

Arriving as we did a few weeks after the initial rush, souvenirs were scarce on the ground but a chandelier had been helpfully smashed to smithereens, carpeting the floor with fake diamond crystals.  It beats a postcard, I guess.  The sprawling compound has now become a hub of social activity with some coming to celebrate the political change while others just enjoy the green open spaces.  Walking among the rubble and debris, a Libyan man walked over to me and, in the broadest Yorkshire accent you can imagine, told me he was “dead chuffed to be here”.  My heart sang.   The other odd discovery was a copy of the free catalogue from the British cosmetics store “Lush Times“.  Already known by men around the world as “that place that smells a bit like chemical warfare in the local shooping centre”, I personally think they should bring out a bathbomb in his honour but I’m not sure how tasteful that would be…

Communications in Libya have proved massively problematic with British phone carriers unable to roam on local networks and most stores in the city closed.  Aside from using satphones such as the Thuraya, the only other way is to buy on the black market which, at best, gets you a £2.50 sim card for £60 and at worst gets you a sim card taken from someone who is missing or dead.  Journalists I spoke to talked of receiving calls at all times of the day and night from relatives, asking in Arabic for news on the phone’s original owner.  A lovely touch to the working day.

Travelling around in Libya is done with the help of local drivers and fixers who use their abundant local knowledge to get you to the places and people you need to see.  Having a good fixer can really make or break your day as became clear as I worked my way through the regular guys we were using.  While one man was straight on the phone after every request, sorting and arranging before rushing me to exactly the right spot, another guy took sanctuary under the nearest tree until it was time to go home.  The roads in Libya can prove quite an electrifying experience too with most feeling like that patch of “no man’s land” after a toll booth where there are no road markings and everyone just floors it in all directions, the difference being this is all of the time, on all of the roads.

To break the boredom for those journalists who have been in Libya for months, the jobs are divided up on a rotational basis.  This means that for me for every day that I get to spend in the capital chasing feature ideas, I have to balance that with a day on the front line.
120km due South of Tripoli is one of the few remaining strongholds of the pro-Kadhafi loyalists, Bani Walid.  Made up of 52 villages combined into one town, the place itself is stuck right in the middle of the desert.  Reachable only by a handful of roads, the area is filled with heavily armed soldiers and snipers so is a decidedly dangerous place to be.  On the first day that I arrived, I bumped into a colleague from the London bureau who had just returned from here after a group of media trucks came under fire from soldiers on the hillside.  While it’s now thought that they were firing at the NTC positions over the heads of the journalists, it still made for a hell of a scary experience for them.

Thankfully for me, the situation has improved due to increased security around the town and the checkpoint that media are allowed to get to being moved further away from town.  While it’s safer, it also means that there is a distinct possibility of death through boredom.  Located in the bottom of a valley, the checkpoint becomes a little media village as each day wears on with the bigger crews having vans and tents while the rest of us search desperately for shade from the midday sun.  All that’s left for the media to do is photograph the soldiers on guard and the families fleeing the threat of attack.

Having got the guns and bullets out of my system within a few hours, the first day there provided a little bonus when journalist Dominique and myself (AKA The Kickass Katiba) were invited to sit with a group of fighters as they ate.

After shooting a few portraits of them, a senior figure in the NTC army arrived with a briefcase full of money and started to pay the troops right in front of us, underneath a bridge on a dried-up riverbed.  With the fighting dragging on longer than hoped, the fighters are struggling to survive with families at home in need of income so supporters have raised money by selling their posessions and sending the funds to the frontline.

While the money was a welcome sight, it was heartening to see that a good percentage of those that were paid simply gave the home addresses of their families and parents, asking for the money to go straight to them.  One guy said he’d only need a tiny part of the cash as the NTC were providing everything he needed; “food, a bed and cigarettes”.

On returning to the hotel in Tripoli, we were alerted to shouting in the lobby and fearing the worst, dashed down to find what passes for normality in the midst of this fractured society; a literal shotgun wedding (or an AK-47 one if you want to be picky.)  Here’s to the next eleven days!

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.

On Saturday, I spent the day in Hyde Park, covering the Women’s Elite Triathlon event before heading off to a barbecue.  After a settling in for the evening at home, I got a text from my picture editor telling me of trouble in Tottenham.  As it’s only down the road from where I live, I jumped in the car and wandered over there, expecting a few fisticuffs and swearing before it fizzled out.  I was wrong.  After four consecutive nights of violence and looting on a level unseen before in London, it seems as though the city may finally be starting to move into a state of healing.

Arriving in Tottenham, I walked into a scene of chaos as riot police held a group of people in an area on the main street from both ends while blocking people from entering from the non-enclosed side.  Groups were gathering outside the cordon trying to get in and soon realised that they could easily walk down some of the many alleyways and find themselves right in the centre.  As I moved around, I saw a camera crew working in the outer area and introduced myself.  After checking who I was, they warned me that they’d just seen the first photographer mugging with the guy losing his gear before being beaten up.  Thankfully, I’d anticipated this and was carrying a very stripped kit, hidden under my jacket.

After following the camera crew down one of the alleys to enter the central area, a group gathered and started to egg each other on with cries of “The media are targets too!”.  I checked with the crew and decided to get out of there so I could find another way in.  After trying and failing, I headed back to the same spot and walked in alone.  As I got to the main area, the police helicopter searchlight lit the street and I saw exactly how bad it was already looking; the burnt-out remains of two police cars lay in the road while a nearby shop was collapsing in on itself as it burned.  Within a few minutes of arriving, the police charged and I hid behind a phone box until they’d passed then switched to the other side as the area was pelted with rocks and bottles.

As I’ve often found in these situations, the riot police were exceptionally helpful to the media allowing myself and the other three or four who’d got through to work with impunity as long as we stayed clear of their front line.  With so much pressure on and possible danger, it’s amazing that more don’t snap at the press but all was fine for a good ten minutes, allowing us to shoot the events as they unfolded.  As the barrage of incoming missiles grew and a double decker London bus was set on fire, the police needed more room so asked us to move further back and I decided to head out.  Just as I was reaching the police line to exit the cordon, I glanced back and saw a woman walking through the rocks and debris with two terrified children.  Knowing that deadlines were fast approaching, I dashed back to my car, edited the stills and video and pushed them through to Washington for validation.

Returning to the area the next morning, I discovered just how badly the night had ended.  Getty photographer Matt Lloyd had left the scene at the same time as me to edit, but then returned without any professional equipment due to the danger to photographers and shot the events on his iPhone 4.  After being pushed from the main area by the police, the rioters had gone on to devastate the area.  Driving down to Bruce Grove station was like entering a war zone.

The road leading down to the station was half blocked by burning bins and kids on mountain bikes zig-zagged across the street.  As I parked my car and walked around the corner, I got to see the remains of what had, up to the previous day, been a busy bustling high street.  Firefighters were still damping down the remains of a pub as police officers stood guard around an ATM that had been ripped from the wall and emptied.  The few emergency vehicles that were moving around were slowly cruising as they crunched over the bricks, rocks and bottles that covered the road.  The double decker bus that had blazed so brightly the previous night was now so reduced that I had to explain to another photographer what it was that he was looking at.  Further down the street, a massive carpet warehouse had been torched, destroying all of the apartments of those living above.

The ground was covered in looted mobile phone packaging and blue plastic cases from the jewellery taken from the now-destroyed store next to the smouldering pub.  Travelling a little down the road with Reuters photographer Luke MacGregor, we came across the local retail park where looters had run amok for hours on end, with no police intervention due to the escalation of arson and violence just around the corner.  Massive electronics, computer, mobile phone and home goods superstores had been totally stripped.  Speaking to one of the security guards who was standing next to some of the plasma televisions recovered from the car park, he told me that the looters had clearly been professional thieves as, on entering the buildings, they’d headed straight to the security offices where they disabled the cameras and removed all recordings.

Realising how serious it had been, it soon became clear that this was likely to happen again, I went home to get some rest ahead of the evening and any possible repeat.

By 6pm, word was beginning to spread that the looting looked likely to spread to nearby Enfield.  Heading up there, I again stripped my gear down to the bare minimum of a single D3s body with one 50mm f1.4G lens and one 28-300mm f3.5-f5.6G “lazyboy” lens.  On arriving, it was clear that there was likely to be trouble as small groups of teenagers wearing hoods, masks and balaclavas roamed through the parks and side streets around the town’s retail centre.  Not wanting to risk my car, I parked outside the centre and walked in.  I’d only been walking two minutes when a large group appeared around the corner of a side street and came walking towards me.  My hope that they were peaceful didn’t last long as one of them punched his fist through a pub window as he walked.  A bottle landed near my feet as I crossed the road and turned the corner.  Thankfully, I walked straight into a line of riot police in full gear but the fact that the group was walking around freely smashing windows only metres away from the police front-line set the mood for how the evening would go.

After the previous night’s foray into no-man’s land, I decided to start out near to the police lines.  Like the night before, one of the riot police broke away from the line to come and check on my safety wear before advising me that if I was injured at any point, to shout “Man down!” to alert the medic as the police line would be looking forward.  After minor scuffles, the main group broke away from the front line and seemed to disappear.  After checking out a smashed-up police car, I joined forces with Getty’s Peter Macdiarmid to try and track down the action by car.  Reports soon started to come in that large groups were hitting a nearby retail park, so we headed over to find the police protecting two large electrical stores as a gang smashed in the front windows of a supermarket opposite.  Within moments, the police raced over there and the group dispersed.  This went on to be the pattern of the night; reports on twitter would speak of an incident, we’d race over to the location to find that the police had intercepted the same messages and had secured the area.  A long night of frustration as we chased our tails around Enfield.

Day three of the riots was when things truly became unbelievable.  Starting in Hackney, I arrived to find cars burning and riot police desperately protecting small sections of the main thoroughfare, Mare Street.  With police helicopters swooping dangerously low, the action soon moved to a nearby housing estate.  Again, more cars were burned and rioters charged before riot police counter-charged.

After seeming to secure the area, myself and a group of other photographers sat down in a shop doorway to wire only to suddenly discover that the police were pulling out.  Looking up the road, we were suddenly faced with the same group that had, until moments before, been held back by a large group of riot police as they walked down the street to our position.  One very fast exit later and I was in freelance AFP photographer Ki Price‘s studio a mile down the road.  After a hasty recharge of batteries, I headed off to South London with photographer Jules Mattsson to check out reports of looting in Clapham Junction.

It’s hard to explain how unreal this whole experience was by now.  If you’re outside the London or the UK and in an area untouched by these riots, just imagine your local high street being totally torn apart by looting and violence with the police nowhere to be seen.  My picture editor was told to collect his child early from nursery as they wanted to close early.  I was driving between every flashpoint using every bit of the small amount of hazardous environment training I know, making sure to keep distance between myself and other vehicles at all times for fast getaways and braking early at lights so that I never reached total standstill.  A colleague of mine was surrounded in his car at one point with youths in balaclavas and masks grabbing at the door handles and when he raced down the road, he saw that they’d been setting up roadblocks at the junction so that they could stop every car to burn them.  Truly insane and often terrifying.

Arriving in Clapham Junction was one of these moments.  Kirsten used to live here so I know the area reasonably well, but turning onto the main road we found ourselves looking down a long open road, littered with debris as youths in hoods loitered on both sides.  I seem to remember that I did actually whistle the opening bars to the theme from “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” at this point.  After some evasive driving when passing through the centre including a very fast getaway through a large group in the middle of the road, we parked up and walked down to the main shopping area.  I’ve written this too many times already so far in this blog, but by this point I was running out of ways to comprehend what I was seeing.  The same road that Kirsten and I had shopped in and enjoyed lazy Sunday breakfasts on was destroyed.  A smashed plasma screen was lying in the middle of road and everywhere people milled around looking in the remains of the shop windows at the total chaos.  While the police battled a large group of rioters and looters a few hundred metres down the road, two remained on guard outside a branch of Currys electrical store to protect both the stock and the injured man that they had discovered on entering the premises.  He was later taken away in handcuffs.

It was clear that we’d arrived too late to record the looting, but Sun photographer Lee Thompson and AP photographer Simon Dawson had seen it all and were clearly shocked.  Heading back to Lee and Simon’s apartment to wire our pictures, we’d just about reached the door when we heard that it had kicked off again and the looters had set fire to a shop and apartments on the main junction.  Racing back we caught the fire crews tackling the blaze before more rumours came through of a blaze at a nearby cinema.  You can hopefully get the idea of how frantic this was all getting.  If we were at the major news story of the night, this kind of action would have been insane enough but to consider that a few miles down the road, absolutely massive fires and riots were tearing Croydon apart, while similar smaller flashpoints were occurring all over the capital was truly shocking.  We head back for a recharge and an edit session and discussed where to head next.

Leaving Lee and Simon in Brixton, Jules and myself headed back up north to Waltham Abbey where reports were coming in of a huge fire at the Sony distribution centre.  Forty five minutes later, we arrived and managed to gain entry to the cordoned area to see the fire crews as they continued to tackle the blaze.  One fireman there admitted that the heat was so great that the spray was turning to steam before it even hit the building due to the sheer volume of flammable plastics and media in storage.  By now it was 6am and the end of another very long night.

The fourth night arrived and the whole of London held its breath as it waited to see what would happen.  With the weather forecasts predicting fair weather, there was no reason that the crime and violence of previous evenings would not continue.  Joining forces tonight with Matt Cetti-Roberts, we monitored the news, the local radio stations, Twitter and other photographers to see where the action was occurring.  Unlike previous nights, it seemed that the violence had begun to move on from London.  While other cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool were about to face their first evenings of riots, the capital seemed to reach its first point of near-calm in days.  With the police flooding the streets with 16,000 officers on shift, and groups of vigilantes and “protection groups” patrolling their neighbourhoods, we watched and waited to see if the peace would hold.  Sporadic reports of looting came in and Twitter was alive with gossip and rumour but knowing how to sift through the lies and speculation has become quite a well-worn skill.  With five photographers on shift for AFP, we ended up with very little to cover.  Following the community angle, Matt and I headed up to Enfield to see if we could find the group that were said to be patrolling the neighbourhoods.  After half an hour we came across the main group and started to walk with them.  While it contained people of all races, the vast majority were white and in a very heated mood.  We walked with them for an hour or so, the mood was mainly one of bravado and community strength, but I can’t deny that I saw some disturbing outbursts.  During our time with them, the group at one point targeted a young black man who was walking alone.  While some were wanting to injure him, it was good to see that there were also many who were shouting for them to leave him alone as he was only one man against four hundred.

Moving on from this, we headed down to Southall in South London to find one of the Sikh temples that was reportedly being guarded by members of the local community.  Arriving at the Sri Guru Singh Sabha temple, it can’t be denied that the vibe was entirely different.  While Enfield had opted for a marching show of force with cars honking their horns and the police on hand to break up any signs of violence, Southall’s residents had chosen to remain in position outside their temples, sending out motorcycle patrols around the area to report back on movement of the hooded gangs that were seen in the outer streets.  The police were showing trust in the group’s peaceful means and were happy to leave them to it.  A cup of tea and a chat with one of the spokesmen proved a much needed return to normality after such a hard few days.

On Tuesday night, I tweeted that despite the fact that I have so far avoided conflict photography due to responsibilities to my family, I found myself using evasive driving to avoid masked gangs who were out to torch cars on the streets of my home city.  I truly hope that in years to come, Max will be as shocked as we all are today at what happened and that this will remain one of the most bizarre and unique periods in UK history.

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I should point out here that there are also some incredible examples of the work by friends and colleagues over the last few days available to see elsewhere online.  As ever, the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” site has put together a strong collection of images from the first two nights.  My favourite set of images has to be by PA photographer Lewis Whyld who has put together a slideshow here.  He managed to be at all the right places at the right times through a combination of all the usual factors, and has come away with a strong collection of work.  Nice one, bud.

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While there are many stories of loss that have come from these nights of violence, one that has caught the attention more than others is the case of Aaron Biber, the 89 year old barber who lost his store to looters.  An online collection was set up here and has, at the time of writing, raised £25,000+ to help rebuild his livelihood.

I was recently sent a parcel of goodies to review/torture and while some items won’t be of use to me as a press photographer, one item stood out as being of interest; the Godox PB820 Propac battery pack.

To those of you who work in press, wedding and entertainment photography, you’ll already probably own either a Lumedyne or a Quantum battery pack.  While these are the market leaders for portable flash power, the combination of very high price and user reports of less-than 100% reliability always left me wondering what else was out there.

I originally bought two Lumedyne “Tiny Cyclers” (VHTF) before realising that I’d rarely need both so sold one.  The remaining power pack only ever comes out at major events such as the Brits or the BAFTAs so the £300 that it cost me seems a little extravagant.  If I was starting out again, I’d certainly think twice about spending so much on such a rarely used item.  With a price tag of just half the price of the Lumedyne, the Propac seems to be a much more pocket-friendly option.  Available in Black or Lime Green (only cowards go for black), the unit itself is light but well built.  With a protection cap to cover the standard Quantum cable input when not in use and a clear display showing how much charge is remaining in the unit, the design is well thought out.  While some other brand’s models opt to have a single light that changes from green to red when the juice is gone, there is no way of actually telling how much is left.  With the Propac, the top display features a charging light, a status light to indicate that the unit has recycled and is kicking out power and four charge lights that show the remaining power in the cell.  When handing it around to working press photographers in London, one of the first things that people comment on (after “what the hell is that bright green box?”) is it’s low weight.  It’s a gnats arse over 500gm, making it 2/3 the weight of its closest competition.  Aside from that, it’s a battery in a plastic case.  There really isn’t that much more to say.  Here’s a neat comparison of the Propac with the Quantum Battery 1+ though.

As I said above, I rarely use portable battery packs but, as it happened, shortly after receiving the kit, I shot two weddings as a second shooter for Kirsten Mavric.  Where better to give it a go?  The first one was the marriage of wedding photographer Nick Ray and his fiancée Camilla.  I can honestly say that the day provided a whole range of new experiences, from an open-top car-shot of a classic vintage car, through to bouncing on a trampoline with the happy couple.  It all used flash and the unit kept up with whatever I threw at it.

The tech spec of the battery cells state that the PB820 can deliver 250 – 320 flashes at full power on a single 2 hour charge, with just a 1 second recycle time at full power.  From the weddings that I shot, I used flash quite a lot in the evening and the power indicator is still showing full, so it really does store a serious quantity of juice.

In fact, I used it for a wedding, Kirsten shot a Barmitzvah with it and then I gave it a hard test with three days of car shots at half or full power during the recent News International hacking scandal, with consistently solid results.  Even after all of this, I still didn’t need to recharge.  A colleague gave it a look over as we waited for a job to begin and carried out a few tests with his Quantum unit and found that the much higher priced Quantum was only fractionally faster to recharge from a full power shot.  Pretty good for such a cheap option.

As you’ve guessed from what I’ve written so far, this is a genuinely good option for those looking at buying an external flash battery pack, but who don’t want the considerable outlay of the high-end products.  Sure, there are advantages to owning the higher-end products from Quantum or a Lumedyne, such as marginally faster recycle times and bomb-proof construction, but for those who just need the occasional extra punch, I’d suggest you give it some thought.

I should point out here that despite my praise, I’m not in fact the new owner of “Godox Industries” and desperately launching my new venture on the world but was simply lucky enough to be approached to test the battery.  They are interested in how many sales it gets through this site though, so if you want to place an order, please keep me in their good books by placing your order via this link.

With the Royal Wedding supplements only just hitting the recycling bin, London had to spring back into gear once more for a visit from the American Eagle himself, President Barack Obama.

Having already produced some great moments during his visit to Ireland, it was going to be hard to beat some of the fantastic photos that were filling the papers.  From rock star-like fervour from the crowds in Dublin to his taste of Guinness in his ancestral home of Moneygall, Ireland was always going to be a tricky act to follow.

In the days leading up to the arrival, I volunteered to step in and help out with the logistical organisation in Downing Street.  Some of those reading may base their concept of a photographer’s working conditions on either the scrums they see on breaking news stories, or the pap fights outside nightclubs that fill the gossip pages.  The truth is actually far more organised than that, with the major events seeing photographers come together to work out the best way to allow a fair chance for everyone to get the shot.

In years gone by, a photographer wanting the front row would be forced to arrive in the early hours of the morning, if not have to sleep outside the venue overnight.  Thankfully, a powerful force of self-preservation has won through, resulting in positions being decided through a lottery draw with press cards going into the proverbial hat (or lens pouch, in many cases) and the photographers being allowed into the pen in the order that they are drawn.  This only happens on exceptional events in Downing Street such as budget day, elections or major visits such as this.  On top of the draw, there is also the issue of marking up the pavement into a grid so we can guarantee the maximum amount of people into the best positions.  With slim places at the front for the lucky few drawn early, through to the wider spots at the back for those balancing on the top step of their ladders, everyone has to be considered.  You see, we’re not horrible scummy types as some media outlets like to imply, are we?

After marking up the street with Telegraph photographer Eddie Mulholland and Rex photographer Ray Tang, I found out that I wasn’t even going to be working on the street anyway.  I was on ‘pool’ duty.  With two on the first day and one on the second, I was to be given more exclusive access to different aspects of the visit to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and Downing Street.  I’d love to say it was due to my unbelievable photographic skills but in reality, like the draw for the positions outside, the pools are decided on a rotating basis and it just happened to be AFP’s turn.  It was very pleasing to have been picked from within AFP though!

The first job of the visit was to cover the President’s official welcome to his hotel for the next few nights, Buckingham Palace.  With Brenda acting as landlady, he’d no doubt been looking forward to her famous fry-up as soon as he decided to stay.  After an early start, I was led into the gardens of the Palace and onto the stand at the bottom of the lawns.  Having only been told that it was a rota pool job in the Palace, I had no idea what to expect.  My heart sank when I saw the distance we were looking at.  The lawns stretched on and on between our position and the door where they would appear.  With only a 300mm to hand, I thankfully was able to borrow a 1.7x converter from fellow AFP photographer Nicholas Kamm and with the aid of the 3LeggedThing 1LT monopod, I managed to rescue the situation.  After the stress of the Royal Wedding, I hoped I wouldn’t be put in this situation again for some time!

With the shots still on the card, I jumped into a cab with AFP colleague Adrian Dennis, and headed on to the next job, Westminster Abbey.  With three pool positions, the group that I was with had possibly the most interesting of the choices, with the President and First Lady being given a guided tour of various aspects of the architecture in the heart of the Abbey.  While it might look lovely, it is dark.  When I say dark, I mean DARK.  The kind of dark that makes you think your light meter’s broken as you dial the ISO up and up and up to get a balance.  Finally, with the D3s creaking like Das Boot, I settled on 6400ISO at 200th/sec at f2.8.  With all of the photographers in the pool looking at their gear and pictures with dubious expressions, the President arrived and duly walked past us as planned.  Just as we were thinking the moment had passed, he found a single shaft of light, beaming down onto the alter.  I’m sure you won’t need many guesses as to where he decided to pose for a while.  Argh!  From the depths of darkness to the purest brightest light.  All you could hear was the frantic spinning and twisting of dials as we all scrambled to drop our exposures down to a decent level before he moved on.  Someone joked afterwards that it was one of those moments where you daren’t look at the EXIF information on the image as you know you’ll probably have ended up shooting at 60th at f18 on 1600ISO.  I will forever love RAW.

Wednesday started well, with the news that the previous day’s shots from Buckingham Palace had done well in the papers.  The Grauniad ran the fourth shot above of the wind damage across two pages.  Yay!

With Obama set to pose up with Cameron on the doorstep, the mass of media on Downing Street was a bubbling swarm of chatter and discussion as I arrived for my internal rota jobs.  Due to the sense of occasion, I’d broken out the suit again and stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the sea of jeans and North Face jackets.  To remedy the situation, I decided to defect to US security instead.  With the help of a handful of bored colleagues, a pair of shades from Ki Price and a spare Lumedyne cable, I was ready for the West Wing.

When the Downing Street media team came out to collect those invited inside, I found that there were two pool jobs that morning.  One would be recording two “grip and grins” followed by a shot of a meeting around the Cabinet table, while the second would see Cameron and Obama holding a barbecue in the back garden and serving tasty treats to a select gathering of military personnel and their families.  On hearing which I had, I proceeded to spend the next half hour whining, pleading and hoping to swap with no luck.  With AP’s Matt Dunham getting the barbecue, it would be handshakes all the way for me.

Once I was inside Number 10 with the Evening Standard’s Jeremy Selwyn and a BBC cameraman, we sat down to wait for the job to happen.  Only a few minutes beforehand the press officer told us that we were to be joined by thirteen other photographers and cameramen from the travelling rota.  For anyone who’s shot in there before, the “Terracotta room” has a sweet spot for maybe two people.  There is certainly not room for sixteen and knowing how little time we’d have, it was going to be all about forward planning.  With this in mind, Jeremy and I used our local knowledge of working inside Downing Street to make sure we were always going in first and always into the right position without wasting time.  The shoots last about 20-30 seconds from entering the room to being tapped on the shoulder to leave.  Thankfully, our experience paid off and we got what was available to us, however uninspiring!

With the shots edited and filed, I moved outside to get the exit picture as the President left Downing Street for the final time of the visit.  Thankfully, colleague Carl Court was called to Lancaster House to shoot another rota so I could slip into his central position.  As is tradition, Downing Street managed to present it’s usual lighting challenges with the doorway featuring a wonderful concoction of pitch black shadows, a strip of brilliant sunshine and two men of different skin colour.  When camera manufacturers are trying to test their highlight protection and shadow recovery features, I can think of only one place that can give the gear a true run for the money!

As the US President’s tour of the UK and Ireland drew to a close, it was quite a relief to think that things are going to be returning to relative normality after months of Royal wedding planning and VIP visits.  With June shaping up to be a month of tennis action, it’s time to learn a whole new skill.