A Week in Pictures Middle East and Africa May 24, 2019

Two weeks to go before the Women’s World Cup France 2019 kicks off. Zohra Bensemra’s picture smacks you right in the face as the ball thunders at you, making you want to duck. Once you realise you are not going to be hit you notice that the ball looks like a giant head, the player’s body perfectly positioned so the illusion appears real. Once your mind’s eye has finished playing jokes with you, you can enjoy the warm tones of the image, the bright colours, and the fact that football is being enjoyed even though the pitch quality is not as good as it might be. But that just doesn’t matter. You can enjoy the rest of Zohra’s picture story here on the Wider Image.

Gaelle Dule Asheri, 17, a soccer player, who is amongst the first wave of girls being trained by professional coaches at the rails Foot Academy, plays football with her friends outside her house in Yaounde, Cameroon, May 3, 2019.   REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa’s picture caught my eye and I’ve thought mmm that’s nice and then moved on. I’ve then been drawn back to it again, but can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s the harsh warm light that gives the colours their richness, or the strong shadows that define the features of the man who looks you in the eye. Or maybe it’s just the strong zigzag composition that draws you through the fruit market, in and out of the shadows and highlights.

Palestinian shoppers walk in a market in Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip may 21, 2019.  REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

At first glance, Khalil Ashawi’s picture is one of gentle tranquility; a child with a beautiful shock of blond hair highlighted by the rich blue in the foreground sleeps peacefully. This peace is then disturbed as you notice dozens of flies and mosquitoes around the child’s nose and mouth. The blue that initially added a cool calm colour turns out to be a ragged tent in a temporary refugee camp. Read on here. 

A displaced Syrian child sleeps on a mat laid out on the floor in an olive grove in the town of Atmeh, Idlib Province, Syria May 19, 2019.   REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Viewers of Mohamed Abd El Ghany’s wonderful picture would go completely unnoticed as people busily get on with the well-deserved business of breaking their fast. All hands, eyes and mouths are focused on eating and drinking. I can’t imagine much talking going on even though the whole community of friends, family and neighbours have all come together. That no doubt will come later when stomachs are full and thirsts quenched.   

Residents of Ezbet Hamada in Cairo’s Mataria district gather to eat Iftar, the meal to end their fast at sunset, during the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Cairo Egypt, May 20, 2019.   REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

I can’t help thinking of the painter Lowry when looking at Anne Mimault’s well- balanced and nicely timed picture. The figures occupy their own individual space against the backdrop of the flat walls of the church, which lead you into the picture, a visual movement aided by the angle of the bent arms on the left of the frame. Take the time to enjoy the shapes and space in the picture and then read on here about the horrors these people have faced. Read on here.

Protestants, some of whom fled Dablo and its surroundings leave a church after a service in the city of Kaya, Burkina Faso, May 16, 2019.    REUTERS/Anne Mimault

Bleached of nearly all colour, Sumaya Hisham’s strong political portrait looks like a still from a film noir. The empty space either side of the cameo profile is just begging for text to be laid out on the page. If I were to seek perfection, I’d like the lips not to be slightly clipped by a dark shape in the foreground. But the perfect often eludes us, so I am more than happy with this.   

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks to the media after parliament formally elected him as State President in Cape Town South Africa, May 22, 2019.    REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham

Zohra Bensemra’s picture is a collection of well-composed triangles in a landscape that is hard to understand. Where and what is this place? Why are the colours so strange? What is this person doing? No pun intended, but the icing on the cake is the perfect position of the foot, poised in the classic step position. Read on here, all questions answered.

An employee who works for Marie Diouf, aka salt Queen, harvests salt at a production site in Ndiemou on the outskirts of Fatick, Senegal, May 15, 2019.   REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra 

And a couple more pictures because I like them  

A firefighting aircraft flies over a forest as firefighters put out a fire near Kibbutz Harel, which was damaged by wildfires during a record heat wave in Israel May 24, 2019.   REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun 

A family prepares bread at their house in Egypt’s Nile Delta village of El Shakhluba, in the province of Kaft el-Sheikh, Egypt may 5, 2019.   REUTERS/Hayam Adel

A Week in Pictures Middle East & Africa, June 8, 2018

Being hit with a tear gas canister is terrifying but being hit with a tear gas canister that embeds itself in your face must be truly awful. Ibraheem’s Abu Mustafa’s picture of a man with tear gas still pouring from the canister in his face is quite disturbing but something I just can’t stop looking at as I have never seen the like before. Ibraheem followed up with him and you can see the story here 

A wounded Palestinian demonstrator is hit in the face with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops during a protest marking al-Quds day (Jerusalem Day), at the Israeli-Gaza border in the southern Gaza strip June 8, 2018.   REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Next week the world’s attention will be on Russia and the World Cup. As a preview to the football tournament, Wider Image have pulled together a global project on unusual places the game is played. Contributions from Africa were very strong but in choosing one I have to settle on Siphiwe Sibeko’s offering as my favourite. The light is beautiful and I just love those yellow trousers in the low sun at full stretch and the red ball. See the set of pictures from around the world here. 

A combination picture shows boys playing soccer and details of a football, a pitch and shoes, at a makeshift pitch in Soweto, South Africa, May 14, 2018.   REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

I can’t help but smile when looking at Ammar Awad’s picture of a vendor grabbing a fish from the tank. Do you also think that the two fish slightly on the right are gasping, opened mouthed ‘phew lucky this time, not me!’ What I also love about this picture is the colour and tone. The warm orange/yellow colours of the arm in the water against the cool blue colours of the fish

A vendor holds a fish at a market in Amman, Jordan June 6, 2018.   REUTERS/Ammar Awad

There is no mistaking for even a second what the pull is for Mohamed Torokman’s picture: it’s the perfect shadow, the great lines in the picture and the shape of the man’s body climbing the rickety ladder. The shadow of the barbed wire snaking down from the top of the frame is an added bonus.

A Palestinian uses a ladder to climb over a section of the controversial Israeli barrier as he tries to make his way to attend Friday prayer of the Holy fasting month of Ramadan in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, near Ramallah in the occupied west bank June 8, 2018.  REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

Wissam al-Okili’s picture is one that makes me want to scratch my head and wonder why the people in the picture are doing what they are doing. I just keep on looking and wondering, unable to pull myself away from this image. Eighteen people killed and over 90 injured in the blast and these young men are sitting on this half-buried car as if it’s garden furniture. Maybe it’s the contrast between the landscape of sheer devastation and the nonchalant relaxed manner of the men that gives this image its strength as you wonder ‘Wow! What happened here?’ If you want to know read on here

People gather at the site of an explosion in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, Iraq, June 7, 2018.    REUTERS/Wissam al-Okili

Jordan’s new Prime Minister Razzaz is being squeezed between the demands of the IMF trying to put the Jordan economy back on track with austerity measures and the demands of the people protesting on the streets because they can’t make ends meet. Muhammad Hamed’s picture seems to sum up all his problems in a single frame. 

Jordan’s designated new Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz speaks on the phone after leaving parliament building in Amman, Jordan June 7, 2018.  REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

 The newly repaired road cuts through the hills dotted with destroyed buildings from which a stream of vehicles seem to flow downhill. What catches my eye first in Omar Sanadiki’s picture is that it’s such a great shape. It also took me a while to realise what is a little strange: the traffic is moving in the same direction, towards the viewer on both sides of the road.  

Vehicles travel on the road between Homs and Hama after it was re-opened in Rastan, Syria June 6, 2018.   REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

On the Sidelines of the Brazil 2014 World Cup

As national soccer teams and the photographers who have been covering them start to trickle home from the Brazil World Cup, it’s time to revisit the “On the Sidelines” project.
This Reuters Pictures project was billed as a chance for photographers to share “their own quirky and creative view of the World Cup”. I thought that I’d examine what has been achieved

As a way of introducing the project, let me use a comparison. I’m intrigued by the notion that an animal that has been caged, but is well fed and well treated, will not exchange freedom from its pen for the uncertainty that this freedom might bring.

Likewise, working as a photographer at the World Cup comes with a kind of cage of security. You know what you are going to do, what time you are going to do it, and what is expected of you. You need to capture pictures of great sporting action, goals, celebrations, red cards and, of course, every important incident, be it Suarez’s teeth marks or the collision that led to Neymar’s broken vertebra.

For editors too, life can fall into a regular pattern. First, arrive at the office two hours before the start of the game and make sure all the technology works, and that tests have been received from the photographers.

Then, with three other colleagues, look at between 12,000 and 20,000 frames per game, select the right pictures and make sure the captions and image quality are good (all while trying to block out the sound of drilling from builders in the next room… See video below).

As the game finishes and the last end-of-match celebration and dejection pictures are being picked through, the photographers from the next game are already starting to send in tests for their match.

Eleven hours after arriving in the office, the World Cup editing team here in Miami leaves and tries to find something (healthy, of course…) to eat. And hopefully there is no polite but disgruntled call from a photographer claiming you missed their best picture…

Here is my screen after the Netherlands v. Costa Rica quarterfinal match.

It’s not at all easy to cover the World Cup. Photographers face all sorts of struggles: travelling for hours to get to the ground, avoiding being robbed, dealing with technical issues, setting up and shooting in the rain, not to mention getting the best picture. All of this can make you feel like you are trapped in a cage when it comes to being creative with your photography.

The “On the Sidelines” project was intended as an outlet from this hard work – an opportunity to enjoy the freedom to shoot additional creative and unexpected photographs, just for fun’s sake.

The guidelines for the project were simple. You could photograph anything that you liked, with any camera or even phone that you liked, and use any caption you wanted as long as it had the correct date and location and didn’t offend.

The photographers were not to use filters (who needs amateur filters when you can compose and expose professionally anyway?) and, of course, they had to follow all of our professional ethical guidelines.

We added the following sentence to the caption of each picture so that some of the stranger shots would be put into context: “In a project called “On The Sidelines” Reuters photographers share pictures showing their own quirky and creative view of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil”.

And which photographers took part? Every one of them.

What amazed me most was the energy and sense of fun that came through in the hundreds of pictures produced by photographers who were tired, hungry, and sometimes wet and grumpy, but never bored.

After a hard day in the cage, it was time for some freedom.

Having edited thousands of pictures from the matches, I also enjoyed looking at and processing “On the Sidelines” images when they were filed. They can all been seen here.

As we prepare for the final four matches of the World Cup, we are sending our mainstream clients an edited picture package, showing a selection of some of the hundreds of images produced as part of “On the Sidelines”.

We hope that our media clients and their readers will enjoy this second package of new material as much as they enjoyed a previous set of Sidelines pictures that we sent out.

So, what has been achieved by the “On the Sidelines” project?  Our professional photographers have had a lot of fun producing yet another set of amazing pictures, all of which are in the archive to show “their own quirky and creative view of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.”

It’s a great record for them to look back on, in addition to the thrills and spills of the soccer action.

Now, bring on the final.