2024 - A Year In Review

The year is done and, as has now become tradition, I find myself not only looking back on the stories that I’ve had the honour of covering, but also trying to remember how to use this site. Onwards!

One of the highlights of the year, and in fact my whole life, was seeing the Aurora Borealis while in Sweden covering the Nordic Response military exercises. I hadn’t really thought about the Northern Lights until I reached the area, at which point it very much became something that I had to try to see. A previous attempt in Iceland many years earlier had ended in failure apart from a slight glow to the sky, which meant that my expectations were low. When I headed out of town one evening after an alert on the My Aurora app to a high KP Index, I genuinely couldn’t believe my eyes. Parked at the side of the road, in complete silence and sub-zero temperatures, witnessing my own personal light show was a hugely emotional moment and one that I will never forget.

Next up and a story that didn’t have a big impact on the news agenda but allowed me to experiment with ideas that I’d picked up after hearing Dom & Liam Shaw at a phototalk, and reading their excellent book “Is This Something?”

In photography, it’s very easy to just fall back on one of the rules from The Complete Photographers’ Knowledge; “If all else fails, just whack it on f1.4 and make art” but the real skill comes in going the other way, and pushing that depth of field as far as you can while also ensuring that every element of the frame is relevant to the story. While covering a protest by the Rolling Thunder motorcycle group protesting against historical prosecutions against former soldiers who served in Northern Ireland, I think I managed to get a good example of that rule.

In the run-up to the general election, I found myself spending a lot of time with the Labour Party as they zigzagged across the country. During one such trip, a moment on the train where the woman who would soon become the country’s first female Chancellor was taking sneaky pictures of her sister Ellie Reeves and Steve Reeves through a gap in the train seats has made my selection.

Retail imagery is one of those hardy regulars but it doesn’t make it any easier to find a moment that says what you need it to. So often, the cursed blurry shopper photo rears its head as we try to get a photo from a flat story. On this day, I spotted that a chain of stores had announced it’s immediate closure, with stores selling everything off in one huge fire sale. Visiting one branch, I found the expected empty aisles and shelving, but wandering amongst it all was a customer who clearly wasn’t one of those who has made the leap to online shopping. The current speed of change must be utterly terrifying to some.

Elections often throw up amusing moments with the following two images falling into the light-relief category.

First up, during a visit to a scissor-lift (cherry picker) factory, the travelling media were placed on a platform while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke in front of one of the company’s products. Usually, images that involve something lined up have required some crawling around but this was just there for all to see. The next day’s newspaper headlines about “Mickey Mouse politics” weren’t entirely unexpected.

Meanwhile, at a press conference for the Reform Party, former Chairman Richard Tice stood aside for a guest speaker, right into the projector lights, casting the words “crap job” across his face (from the policy “scrap jobs”). High brow stuff, it isn’t, but the speed of election events just throw these images up, which often become the memorable moments.

Those of you who have had the absolute honour of attending one of my talks may remember my tip about finding single aspects of a politician that can become shorthand for the whole person. With Johnson it was his hair, with May it was her shoes, and with Farage its his mouth and chin. There’s no surprise that satirical cartoonists focus on this part of him when creating caricatures.

Further into the election, and during a ride out on a boat to see Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chatting with a lobster crew as they collected their pots, the choppy waves provided an image that fitted with the direction of his campaign.

The Glastonbury Festival is always guaranteed to provide a few of my favourite photos of the year and 2024 was no exception. The thing about Glasto is that you can never guess what those moments will be so you have to do the research and put in the miles, sixty two miles to be precise.

One such moment was with Lekiddo, Lord of the Lobsters. Nope, me neither. An early set on one of the distant stages didn’t dissuade the thousands who turned out in costume to sing along to what basically sound like Disney songs. It’s all very bizarre but everyone had fun so who cares?

Night patrol at Glastonbury always makes photos. A wander up to the stone circle, and many careful footsteps through the crowds as I avoided standing on fingers, drinks and who know what, provided a classic Friday night photo.

On the Other Stage, Idles were as excellent as expected, with the first few tracks flooding the stage with red light. This usually is an enormous pain as it’s just a bunch of silhouettes but when the singer knows how to throw some shapes (and microphones), you get a photo.

Later in the year, I had the pleasure of covering the circus that is the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. I’ve photographed Trump a number of times but never on his home turf, surrounded by supporters, so I was really looking forward to seeing what happened. After a day of shooting prep photos, the news was turned on it’s head by the attempted assassination of the former President. When he finally did appear, all eyes were on the ear, something not lost on Trump as he ensured that there would be enough camera angles showing his injury, while in discussion with stage managers during a walkthrough.

The fanbase was out in force to see the walking miracle, with the Members of the Word of Faith Fellowship in North Carolina being particularly vocal with their adoration.

It was a fascinating experience to cover one of these events. This wasn’t the first rodeo for the photographers around me, as they settled in for the long haul but coming from the UK, some of the sights were astonishing; the homemade tribute ear bandages, the tattoos, the costumes, the “Mass Deportation Now!” placards. Quite an experience.

Back in England, a visit to the annual Salon Privé always makes a moment. As last year, the judging process creates a quintessentially British scene of wealth.

After my coverage of the 7/10 attacks in Israel and the subsequent enormously surprising World Press Photo Judges Special Mention, I was asked to return to Israel for the first anniversary. The country was split, as some prepared to mark a year since losing their loved ones, others raged against the Government’s inaction in returning the hostages, some protested against the actions in Gaza while others grieved the loss of those killed in the ongoing fighting.

On arriving back in Tel Aviv, I thought that there was a chance that my visit may be very quiet, as I photographed slackliners during sunset. However, that all changed very quickly.

Within an hour of the photo above, two men killed seven and injured many others near my hotel, causing the area to go into full lockdown. As reports came through that the second gunman had been killed, the sirens began and the Tzofar app on my phone went crazy, as Iran launched a huge barrage of rockets at Israel. As it happened, the Iron Dome defence system did its job, but as I sat in a shelter with other guests and passers-by who ran into the hotel, my sister messaged to check that I’d arrived in Israel safely. “Yeah…”

Across the border in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel’s actions were causing huge amounts of death and destruction which took place well out of sight of those journalists working in Israel. During my time out there, visits to the south to look into Gaza and north to see across the border to Lebanon didn’t add to the coverage of the story. With colleagues working up-close in both zones, photographing hazy plumes of smoke on the horizon from distant airstrikes didn’t do justice to the destruction that the people must be experiencing.

Back in Jerusalem, the funeral of Captain Eitan Oster at Mount Hertzl military cemetery was heavily attended, being the first military deaths of Israel’s operations in Lebanon. After the funeral service was over and many had left, a single strong shaft of light appeared, illuminating the faces of grieving friends and family as they sat at the graveside.

During the day, it was interesting seeing how the missing hostages have created a split. Some of the families of the missing believe that they have become an issue that people would rather avoid, as they attempt to get back to normal life. Due to that, the calls for their release have become more subtle as they appear where people aren’t expecting to see them, such as within the trays of ice cream at this gelateria.

On the day of the anniversary, I returned to the site of the Nova Festival before dawn and watched as families arrived to tend to the memorials which now fill the site. A DJ played the last track that was heard before the attack began, which created the unreal scene of the Israeli President standing with sobbing family members as a PA system pumped out a trance track; Clear Test Signal (Artifex Remix) by Pixel & Space Cat. As the music stopped, a woman screamed, and intermittent heavy gunfire could be heard in the distance as the Israeli Defence Forces continued to strike targets in Gaza. Word went round the site that the ongoing fire was due to intelligence that Hamas had intended to strike at the Nova Festival site again but, by this point in the war, it’s hard to know what to believe.

In quite the pivot, a brief global craze of lookalike contests triggered by an appearance at one by the actual Timothée Chalamet resulted in London’s attempt; a Harry Styles contest. What could have been a forgettable Saturday job was actually good fun, with the photos being used across the world. I think people were very much in need of a fluffy feelgood story.

To end the year, I visited Finland to see a NATO joint operation, demonstrating the strength of the artillery that just happens to be near the Russian border. While images of military hardware doing it’s thing isn’t to challenging, the surprising scarcity of things going “bang” meant that every shell fired had to count, pictorially. With that in mind, it was satisfying to catch the moments.

So there we have it; 2024. Next year will undoubtedly see plenty of political churn on the global stage, plus who knows what else. I’m also due to speak at the Photo Show at the ExCel centre this year so please do come along.

Thanks, as ever, must go to Getty Images and the editorial news team for trusting me to make the images and find the angles. Thanks to you for reading the blog and following my much more regularly updated feed on my Instagram account, too.