Eugene Richards

From his exhibition which I saw in Perpignan, 2009. A returning soldier with half of his head left, hugged by his mother (the reflection of a baby next to her head is coincidental). © Eugene Richards/Getty Reportage

Of all the exhibitions that I saw at this years Visa Pour L'image in Perpignan, Eugene Richards' work on returning injured US soldiers has produced the longest lasting impression on me.

Now you can read a very good interview with him here, courtesy of BJP.

For those of you in London, he's talking at BJP's Vision09 event in London on 27 November. Don't miss it.

Remembrance Day

Portrait of Sgt. Arnould, veteran soldier of 12 years. © Magnus Andersson

This weekend will see the marking of the 90th (I think) Remembrance Day; remembering all those who died in WWI. In today's paper we have done a piece with Sgt.Barry Arnould (above), to get the perspective on how a serving soldier views the Poppy Appeal and what it means to those currently in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

My girlfriend also did her bit for the cause, spending all of last Monday on her hands and knees (steady on) volunteering for the Royal British Legion, hammering the little crosses into the ground outside Westminster Abbey in London. Today her back (and knee) breaking efforts paid off as The Times adorned its front page with a large picture of the volunteers work, filling the page with thousands of little crosses. On Sunday we will go down there to pay our respects.

Also starting this weekend, The Guardian are serialising '100 years of great press photographs', starting tomorrow and running for nine days. Don't miss out.

And its Friday! Hopefully I'll get to check out my friend Bear down at The Wilmington as he plays in Rescue Cat, who are destined for big things. Have a good one!

Neighbours

Flipped car in South London. © Magnus Andersson

This is the sight which greeted the owner of this car one morning. She lives on an estate in south London and she is one of very few people who dares to stand up to the local gang members and drug dealers who use the communal stairwells to hang out in. She claims to know exactly who did this but without witnesses the police is powerless. Credit to her for having the guts to stand up to them though.

I live on an estate myself and there used to be a bunch of kids always smoking joints in the communal stairwell one floor below us. They always went quiet when I walked past them and I never said anything to them. One day, on the landing they always sat on, it had some furniture left on it from someone decorating their flat.

It was set alight on a Saturday morning but I didn't notice as I was asleep. I merely woke up at around 11am and found myself coughing up black bits of soot from my lungs. I opened the front door and the whole stairwell was pitch black with soot, the door, windows, walls, everything. Lots of people could have died because no one was challenging these kids.

Luckily, since this arson incident, those kids have not returned, but to this day I don't know if they actually lived in the building or not. Now I say hi to the kids around here and they say hi back. Not a big effort really, but to stand up like the aforementioned woman takes big guts.

Tree on the loose!

A warning sign in Potters Field, Southbank, London. © Magnus Andersson

Apparently the offending tree was trying to branch out but eventually it got chopped down...yes, this is an actual story I had to cover. Slow news week I guess.

To tweet or not to tweet?

Alien or chestnut? Neither; its my current Twitter background. © Magnus Andersson

Apparently that's not even a question in 2009 and I cant help feeling that me signing up so long after the initial buzz makes me a bit 2000-and-late...ahem.

The wonderful Stephen Fry was of course the reason for me signing up, especially after the huge furore over a Daily Heil article last week, but I actually got contacted by a real celebrity - yes! - only on my second day on Twitter.

The night before I had gone to comedian Lee Hurst's club in Bethnal Green to have some fun but unfortunately for me (and to everybody else's delight) we had to sit at the table right at the front. Never a good thing in a packed house.

Lee came on and started his first routine, picking people in the front row to ask a few questions about them. He got to me and it was very innocent to begin with:

- What's your name?
- Magnus.
- Where are you from, Magnus?
- Sweden.
- Aha! Thanks for your help with the Germans.
- Eh...
- So what do you do for a living, Magnus?
- I'm a photographer.
- Tell us what you have photographed recently.

At this stage my mind went blank. It was Friday night and I had put all thoughts of work behind me so I tried to remember what my last job had been that day. Think, think, think, I was telling myself. A whole room plus Lee Hurst was waiting for my answer and then it came to me, yes, I had been at a school which had held a huge celebration for their 50th anniversary, dancing and singing, etc.

But I didn't say all that. Instead, the only thing that came out was:

- School children.

Not the ideal answer in a comedy club. The whole room erupted and Lee had the rest of his first set written for him by me. I'm sure you can figure out how I was labelled for the rest of the night: Swedish...phototgrapher...school children. Arrgh!

Anyway, that experience ended up being one of my first tweets. The day after, Lee himself had found me on Twitter and sent me a message, saying that he'd hoped to see me at the club again! Nice. But I might sit at the back next time and claim to be a mute.

Anyway, if you're on Twitter, seek me out and give me a tweet here.

Time to up my game

Portrait of Alexandre, 101 years young. © Magnus Andersson

Oh dear, the spotlight is on us! Two blogs are shining the light on local newspaper photography like never before. It is true that a lot of jobs that we do are quite mundane, some are boring and some are outright stupid, so I will have to up my game in order to stay off these two blogs:

Angry people in local newspapers

Glum councillors

If you want to have a detailed insight into my working life though, look no further.

I've got another 700 reasons to be very happy...

One of my first test shots on the Nikon D700; wireless TTL left, seedy red lamp behind, TV light from right. © Magnus Andersson

...because I've just got my hands on a brand new Nikon D700! I was holding out for an updated D700s version but as the D3 got upgraded instead I couldn't wait any longer. Rumour has it that a possible D700s is likely in a years time...ho hum.

But I welcome the super fast and super accurate AF, the brilliant ISO performance, the built-in commander flash, the dream like DOF with my family of prime lenses, the solid build quality and on and on and on...yup, I'm very pleased with it.

Its not insured yet though so I am scared to take it out of the house. Frustration! Hence the random image above; shot in my living room. Hopefully it'll be sorted soon.

Yeah, I'm busy

Airplane vapour trails over North Kent marshland. © Magnus Andersson

I've got one hundred two thousand and four hundred reasons...

...to get the newly launched Nikon D3s. The ISO goes up to 102,400. That's a little bit insane. According to BJP it is actually usable as well. That basically outperforms the human eye, meaning this camera will pick up details although you are struggling to see what's going on in the dark. Gimme gimme gimme. I think it will be a little while before I actually own one though as it will set me back £4,200. Hmmm.

Embargoed

AP photographer Dominic Lipinski filing his pictures in direct sunlight, opposite the police station in Lambeth North. © Magnus Andersson

A while back I showed you some of the stuff from the early morning dangerous dogs raid that I went on and I just found this little gem of AP's Dominic Lipinski editing his shots after the raid. We had been embargoed, meaning we couldn't release any pictures until after 11am (we started at 05:30am), ensuring that all raids across the country had finished before they end up on the news...so what to do?

Grab a coffee anda croissant, edit your shots, wait for the deadline to expire and then start filing. Impossible to do in bright sunlight like that of course...unless you have one of these nice little hoods for you laptop.

I've got an early start tomorrow...