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  • AFP / Francois Xavier Marit
  • AFP / Francois Xavier Marit
  • AFP / Francois Xavier Marit
  • AFP / Antonin Thuillier
  • AFP / Francois Xavier Marit
  • AFP / Antonin Thuillier
  • AFP / Francois Xavier Marit
  • AFP / Manan Vatsyayana
  • AFP / Francois Xavier Marit
  • AFP / Antonin Thuillier
  • AFP / Francois Xavier Marit / Nikon D5 robotic camera

Going for the gold... again

François Xavier Marit Friday 22 July 2016

"You could call me the perpetual Olympian -- always trying to beat my previous performance," writes François Xavier Marit, technicl chief at AFP photo. "Except for me it’s not chasing other athletes, it’s capturing them all. On film."

"My job is to find innovative ways for AFP to produce spectacular images at major events like the Olympics. Over the roughly 15 years that I’ve been at it, this has gone from putting a camera behind a football goalpost for the first time ever, to planning a network of robotic cameras to capture action from places that no photographer has gone before."

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AFP / Str

I wish I'd sent that message

Issam Ahmed Wednesday 20 July 2016

ISLAMABAD- The call came late Saturday morning, waking me up on my day off.

Qandeel Baloch, one of Pakistan's best known female celebrities who had shot to fame for her suggestive selfies and no-damns-given attitude, had been killed -- strangled by her brother, who would later tell police he found his sister's behaviour “intolerable”.

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  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Yasin Akgul
  • AFP / Aris Messinis
  • AFP / Aris Messinis
  • AFP / Aris Messinis

Nothing will be as before

Bülent Kiliç, Ozan Köse Wednesday 20 July 2016

AFP Istanbul-based photographers Bulent Kilic and Ozan Kose are both fearful for their country’s future following the failed attempted coup. On Friday evening, they were both shooting separate commemorative events for the Nice attacks, not imagining that within an hour they would be covering the first bloody military coup attempt in their country in more than 30 years.

Both had close calls during the long night they spent on the streets of Istanbul, capturing the unfolding drama — Bulent got set upon by an angry mob while Ozan found himself in the crossfire between soldiers and police. And both agree that Turkey will be forever changed by the night. “Nothing will be as before.”

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AFP / Justin Tallis

No Brexpity please, we’re British

Danny Kemp Tuesday 19 July 2016

"It's not the despair -- it's the pity I can't stand," writes AFP's deputy bureau chief in Brussels Danny Kemp.

"As a Brit in Brussels, I have received the sympathies of a string of well-meaning European colleagues over the political chaos in Britain since it voted to leave the EU, often accompanied by a reassuring pat on the arm."

"Don't get me wrong, their kind gestures are always much appreciated... But every time I see their pitying looks, a sense of surreality descends on me. Am I really that guy? The one whose country is in crisis? It was not meant to be this way; it was meant to be Greece or somewhere else that went awry, not stolid Britain."

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AFP / Anne-Christine Poujoulat

When death comes for you

Robert Holloway Monday 18 July 2016

"Two images will not go away. One of a huge white truck, scattering the crowd and hurtling towards us in a clatter of metal shards," writes AFP's former veteran journalist Robert Holloway.

"The other of a family, three or four adults, a small child in a stroller and another, about five years old, getting in the way to his mother’s irritation. They were at the top of the steps as my wife Sylvie and I climbed up from the beach after watching the Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice."

"I reported from Beirut in 1982 as Israel bombed the city. I was only eight blocks from the Twin Towers in New York City when they collapsed in September 2001. But never in all my decades of reporting had I been in a situation like the one in Nice."

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