Photographers Blog

Inside an NFL Locker Room

By Jason Reed, Larry Downing and Molly Riley

Hey football fans… imagine walking past the solid steel doors guarding the locker room outside one of the National Football League’s most treasured teams and standing inside watching 60 professional athletes preparing to take the spotlight in front of 70,000 expecting Baltimore fans.

Talk about fantasy football coming true; that ultimate “back stage pass” was given to Reuters’ photographers Jason Reed, Larry Downing and Molly Riley from the Baltimore Ravens as an early Christmas present last December, extending them complete photographic access of their cheerleaders during the production of an in-depth multimedia project by Reuters entitled, “Ravens Rule the Skies.”

(Image courtesy of Shawn Hubbard)

Three unobstructed first class seats inside Cinderella’s wonderland watching “girly girls” primp and polish their image into higher splendor while transforming themselves into NFL cheerleaders. All with total access!

License to kill

By Danish Siddiqui

Mumbai provides everyone living in it with an opportunity to earn and survive. Be it a white-collared job in a multinational company located in one of the city’s plush high rise buildings or killing rats by night in the filthiest and dirtiest parts of India’s financial capital. This time, my tryst was with the latter.

I decided I wanted to meet Mumbai’s rat-killer army employed by the city’s civic body. Very little is known about this tireless force that works the bylanes of the metropolis every night. Mumbai’s municipal corporation employs 44 rat killers and also has a freelance contingent, who aspire to be on the payrolls one day. Employees of the pest control department receive a salary of 15,000 to 17,000 Indian Rupees ($294 to 333) while contract laborers are paid 5 Indian rupees ($0.10) per rat they kill. The rat killers are expected to kill at least 30 rodents per night and hand over the carcasses to civic officials in the morning. If they fall short by even one rodent, they are expected to make it up the next night or else they stand to lose a day’s pay.

Nerves of peace in troubled Kashmir

By Fayaz Kabli As the year nears its end, the Chinar trees have turned a crimson red and the water in the Dal Lake is still and calm. The peace in the troubled Kashmir region has a hold of the nerves of the Kashmiri people.

From 2008 to 2010, Kashmir saw its worst period of unrest which claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed much of its economy.

This year, the scenic valley has been relatively peaceful. Although residents who witnessed the previous three years of violence were apprehensive at the beginning of this year, the trouble they had expected didn’t materialize.

After a 15 year career with Reuters, I was able to take my days off without abrupt violence interfering. It was amazing to spend quality time with my family. In previous years my colleagues and I spent many days and nights in the office due to the violence outside and the curfews imposed.

Willing to die for change

By Claudia Daut

The day the Occupy Wall Street movement called out for global support and Mexico City was on the list, I decided to take my 12-year old son to the Monumento de la Revolucion where local activists, accusing bankers and politicians of wrecking economies, were expected to gather.

The monument is a landmark Art Deco building, commemorating the Mexican Revolution and the perfect place if you want to protest against any set establishment.

I also thought it would be nice to introduce my son to the power of the people and that there is something other than individualism and elbow culture in our society.

So we went. It was utterly disappointing. There were more street vendors offering tacos de canasta, shirts with the image of Che Guevara and Ray Ban sunglasses manufactured in China than activists. When someone took to the stage, shouting for the rise of the oppressed and the death of the president, I decided it was time to go. As far as I could see, that was it for the Mexican support of Occupy Wall Street.

The next day we took our bicycles to take advantage of a car-free Reforma Avenue. Every Sunday it’s shut down for regular traffic and people jogging, on bikes, skates, skateboards, with dogs, tricycles or anything else take over for several hours and explore the streets of the old part of town or just enjoy riding on a road with three-lanes and no four-wheelers trying to run them over.

When you have lived in Mexico City for a while you get used to protest marches, as they mean hour-long traffic jams and the already unbearable traffic worsening. According to a radio survey there are 10 to 12 marches every week and the “plantones”, when protesters camp out, sometimes for weeks or even months, are a common occurrence. But it was a surprise to see several tents set up outside Mexico’s stock market when we were passing with our bikes. Police were around the corner sitting in a truck, discreetly hidden from view but there nevertheless. So we decided to stop and find out what was happening.

NFL touchdown in London

By Suzanne Plunkett

British sports fans are a serious bunch. When it comes to football (they never call it soccer), many would rather lose their home than miss their team score a winning goal. Club allegiance is often demonstrated with tribal passion – influencing tattoos, clothing and even choice of marital partners.

When American football makes a rare appearance in London, it’s somewhat of a surprise to see the seriousness of the sport replaced with a more frivolous obsession: cheerleaders.

That’s not to say British fans have no interest in the sport. When the Chicago Bears took on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a showcase game at Wembley Stadium in October, I spoke to plenty of Brits among the American expats paying homage to their national sport. Many professed as much fanaticism as the American supporters who had traveled from the States specifically to see their team.

But as a photographer who had covered both kinds of football matches on either side of the Atlantic and grown to love both sports, it’s hard to ignore a few major differences in the fan experience.

The inevitable eviction of OWS

By Lucas Jackson

The inevitable has come to pass. Occupy Wall Street has been pulled, kicking and screaming, from Zuccotti Park, its physical home in lower Manhattan. For two months now the staff and freelance photographers of Reuters in New York have been documenting the evolution of both the idea of “occupying” and the physical campground that has planted the seeds of a global movement. Since September 17 there has been an almost daily visual record made of the metamorphosis that has taken place in Zuccotti Park. This is a man-made concrete block of a park. I must have walked through it dozens of times but it formerly had little use to anyone other than maybe offering a spot to rest while walking through lower Manhattan or a seat that could be used to enjoy lunch on a warm summer day. It took a group of demonstrators who were intent on “Occupying Wall Street” to give this park its day in the spotlight and as a photojournalist it has been fascinating to watch.

At first we had no idea how long the demonstrators would stay. In the early weeks they slept on cardboard pads on the ground in sleeping bags. In the beginning we documented them asleep as office workers gingerly stepped through them on their way to work. At first the NYPD would resist the attempts of the campers to attach tarps to trees, lines holding tarps would be cut, structures would be taken down almost as soon as they were raised and people slept underneath plastic to shield themselves from the rain.

The seemingly haphazard layout, centered by an ever-evolving kitchen area, changed to include more specialized sections that were ringed by campers who claimed any open bench or ground space that was not already ‘occupied’ by someone else. A deadline to evict the movement came and passed. I was there that night. Jessica Rinaldi arrived at midnight and I followed in the wee hours of the morning to document a massing of support for the movement in the park in the face of an impending NYPD eviction that never came. We documented the elation of the demonstrators as they marched through lower Manhattan and resisted the attempts of the NYPD to contain their physical presence. Tents came, and were allowed to remain. The campground morphed into a small town complete with covered areas for congregating and planning. “Working groups” managed the planning, cooking, and met to come up with when and what to do for future demonstrations, they came together to think or brainstorm how to reach out to help the movement grow.

In the eye of the Greek storm

By Yannis Behrakis

(View a slideshow of Yannis’ photos from the Greek financial crisis here)

In the past 20 months the Greek financial crisis has been one of the world’s top stories. Day in, day out words like, IMF, ECB, and Troika are mentioned as some of the most common words in my country. People who knew nothing about economics and had never heard of strange words like “spreads”, “haircut” and “bailout”, now seem to have become almost experts in financial matters. Everywhere you go in Greece people talk about the same issues — an upcoming default, the economic meltdown, the misery the unemployment, the rising prices, the possible loss of their deposits in banks if Greece goes back to its old currency, the drachma.

According to the latest polls, Greeks are the most unhappy people in Europe and it’s easy to see why. On the streets of my home town Athens, people don’t smile much, they argue a lot and on some days it seems that misery looms over the capital. If you add to that the terrible traffic jams caused by one or more protests that occur every single day, on top of the increased number of beggars, drug addicts, illegal immigrants and homeless, Athens seems in its worst shape ever. According to another study last year, the center of Athens was “closed” for 2-3 hours daily due to protests, resulting in, according to shop owners, a financial catastrophe for many in the once booming downtown Athens.

These daily protests often lead to very violent riots and clashes between protesters and the police, or even clashes between rival groups of protesters. The words austerity measures are the most “painful” though — the government has agreed along with the troika to impose some of the toughest austerity measures ever imposed by a government in Greek history. There is not a single Greek who hasn’t be affected by the austerity plan — many people lost up to 50% of their income. Greece has the most “new poor” people in Europe and many people believe that “the worst is yet to come”.

So how do you cover a story like this? A story that affects you and your family, a story that left some of your friends and colleagues and members of your family without a job and hope for the future? A colleague who has worked as a photojournalist for over 25 years at one of the top Greek dailies was marching along with several thousands of press people towards the parliament in protest against recent layoffs and pension reductions and other tough measures said to me: “Yannis, I walked from home today. I have no money to put petrol in my motorbike.” and “My last payment was 450 Euros and it’s the first payment after July!!” It was a sunny Tuesday, October 18, 2011.

Circus nostalgia

By Vivek Prakash

There are a couple of stories I’ve been waiting to do since I heard that I’d be moving to India last year. Maybe it’s part nostalgia, part fascination, but I’m happy to be able to interpret these stories visually, finally.

The last time I was at a circus was some twenty-five years ago. My father brought me to the Bandra Reclamation in Mumbai to see it. I can’t remember which one it was, maybe the Apollo Circus? I remember the smell of fresh dirt and popcorn. There were fireworks. There was a dome where three people on motorbikes rode on the walls without crashing into each other. There were big cats; lions and tigers with some jumping through flaming hoops. I was wide-eyed and thrilled. I’ve dreamed of seeing and photographing that show for years.

Twenty-five years later, I came to the very same location, with a camera in hand. When the Rambo Circus pitched tent, I jumped at the chance to spend a few days documenting what Indian circuses are like. This place has been in my imagination for so long.

Occupying Starbucks

By Paul Hackett

I left the Occupy protest camp at St Paul’s cathedral in London to go to Starbucks to file the pictures that I had taken. As I walked through the door I saw this man sitting there; of course it made me smile. I took a few images of him and then a member of staff put their hand over my lens. I knew that I had something, so it was fine. I sat close to him, got his name (Adam Murray) and sent the picture in. It was with the office a few minutes after I took it – I wish they were all that easy!

Moments between isolation

By Bobby Yip

Those who have visited Hong Kong know how packed the buildings are, how busy the traffic is and how quickly people walk. When there was a global photo project on the world’s population reaching 7 billion, the first image that came to my mind was Mong Kok – one of the most crowded places in the world. The Guinness World Records lists Mong Kok as having a population density of 130,000 per square km or 340,000 per square mile.

Unlike the two high class shopping districts for tourists, Causeway Bay on the island side and Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon Peninsula, complete with world famous fashion brands, Mong Kok has a more authentic feel of the territory. Here you will find older residential buildings, smaller stores of all kinds with tags displaying cheaper prices. It’s packed with people on the pavements, crossing the streets and even sitting on the ground.

I tried to illustrate my feelings by showing many of those walking past, isolated; seeing what happened within a split second of this isolation.