Matthew Doyle grew up by the beach in Santa Monica, California, and with his slim physique and tattooed forearms, looks as if he’s been surfing his whole life.

But it took three tours of duty half a world away, many sleepless nights, and meeting a woman named Carly before the 26-year-old U.S. Army veteran braved the waves on a surfboard.

On a recent Saturday, I met Doyle and a group of 11 other young military veterans trying to overcome the horrors of war at Manhattan Beach, just south of Los Angeles, where occupational therapist Carly Rogers led them in a surf therapy class.

With the exhilarating goal of riding down the face of the wave, the constant paddling out through the whitewater and occasional wipeouts, the motion of the ocean is helping former soldiers, sailors and Marines return to normal.

“I fell in love with it as soon as I got in the water,” Doyle says. “After I came back from Iraq, I lost interest in the things I used to do, and I lost a lot of friends from being gone so long. And I never really had a reason to go outside. But now every day I just want to surf.”

Rogers figures she’s worked with at least 400 war vets since she started the program with the Jimmy Miller Foundation four years ago to deal with the growing number of service members returning from war with wounds that weren’t visible.

“I had this dream of healing people with the ocean,” she says.

Surfing helped her deal with the death of her mother in 1994, when she was 18 and working as a lifeguard. As a graduate student, she had designed a surf therapy program to work with kids. The program only existed in a manual until her friend and fellow lifeguard, Jimmy Miller, took his own life. Miller’s brother said they had to make the program a reality.

WATCH REUTERS VIDEO

In 2005, they launched the foundation and began working with children at risk of mental illness, which Miller suffered from. The program was expanded after a foundation board member said they should help wounded and emotionally scarred troops returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“At that time I had no previous experience with the military, and I was actually like ‘Whoa, I don’t think so,’” Rogers says.

Many of those in the program suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms include substance abuse, insomnia, isolation, lack of confidence and anger.

Marines at Camp Pendleton showed up at the first class in their camouflage fatigues and combat boots. They were withdrawn and had little expression.

“Slowly those things came off,” she said. “Once again we were all surfers on the beach. And it gives me the chills talking about it right now – it just changed my life. … After one day of surfing they were smiling and laughing, telling jokes, high-fiving.”

Rogers used the experience to earn her occupational therapy doctorate, working at the Veterans Administration to research how surfing helps veterans with PTSD.

Doyle, who was knocked unconscious by an IED explosion and got a concussion and six stitches in his forehead, is coping with PTSD after two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

“The first year I was deployed didn’t really affect me. It was more shellshock – you don’t really understand what you’ve gone through. And by the time I got a chance to think about it, I was already deployed again.”

Nearly 50 percent of the veterans don’t show up for mental health appointments at the VA, Rogers said. Turnout is much better at surf school.

The group meets five consecutive Saturdays. She starts each day with an informal discussion, circling the troops and her cadre of volunteers at the start of the session.

Beach volleyball players kick up sand nearby and dolphins leap just beyond the surf break as Rogers coaxes them to talk about their experiences and their progress.

Then wearing full wetsuits and each with a volunteer instructor, they hit the surf for a couple of hours. They have to bust through the incoming surf, paddle to catch a wave and then try to stand up.

I attach a GoPro HD camera in waterproof housing to the front of Doyle’s surfboard and it catches all the frustration and fun. I had shot video with the camera before, but Reuters photographer Denis Balibouse in Switzerland gave me the idea to use it as a still camera. I set it to shoot every two seconds, and Doyle wades into the ocean with the GoPro attached to his board.

He wears a smile as waves surge toward his face and then floats on the board waiting for the right break. He clambers onto the board and stands for a few brief rides before tumbling into the sea. More smiles.

Perhaps the biggest benefit comes that night. After years of sleepless nights from combat stress, Doyle is finally able to sleep.

REUTERS PHOTOBLOG

REUTERS ARTICLE

REUTERS VIDEO

MSNBC

Kids playing streetball or millionaires performing in a highly choreographed show? Sport or showbiz? Welcome to the NBA All-Star weekend slam dunk contest.

Photo by Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

One of the most satisfying moves to watch in basketball, and one of the easiest to photograph is the dunk, as the player soars above the rim and jams the ball through the net.

Photo by Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

The contest pits some of the most athletic NBA players against each other as they compete to execute the flashiest, most difficult, or original dunk.

Photo by Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

We’re only given one floor photo position next to the basket, so the challenge is to capture the winning dunk from the best angle. Previous winners have leapt over other players, twisted 360 degrees in the air, extended the height of the basket with a forklift, and jumped over tables.

I mounted a camera with a 400mm lens in the catwalk in the roof of the arena, which I triggered with a Pocket Wizard radio transmitter, to give an overview of all the dunks. I positioned another remote camera on the floor to the side of the court with a wide-angle lens. I was sitting on the baseline to the right of the basket, Gary Hershorn was up in the stands with a 400mm lens and Danny Moloshok was shooting the action from the far end of the court.

Washington Wizards’ JaVale McGee dunked three basketballs in one leap.

Photo by Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

Oklahoma City Thunder’s Serge Ibaka snatched a stuffed animal from the rim with his teeth.

Photo by Danny Moloshok/REUTERS

Los Angeles Clippers Blake Griffin performed a 360 degree corkscrew dunk, and then hung on the rim with his forearm dangling through the net.

Photos by Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

With only one dunk remaining, the stadium went silent in anticipation. A gospel choir walked out onto the floor and began to sing ‘I Believe I Can Fly.’ An NBA official told us all to remove our remote cameras from the floor as a car drove onto the court.

I hastily repositioned my wide-angle remote camera to my left underneath the basket, made a quick, rough focus, and sat down. Seconds later, Griffin ran towards the car, leapt over the hood, fielded a pass from teammate Baron Davis poking out of the sunroof, and lunged at the hoop. Shooting at 1/1000 second, I squeezed off a frame of him sailing over the car, and then swinging on the rim in the aftermath of the basket as the ball shot through his legs. The novelty of his move and its swift execution sealing victory before the ball hit the floor and the crowd roared its approval.

Photo by Gary Hershorn/REUTERS

Photo by Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

Photo by Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

REUTERS PHOTOGRAPHERS BLOG

Vancouver was the third Olympic Games I’ve covered, but my first Winter Olympics, so I was excited to be shooting winter sports.

At Reuters we generally cover one venue for the whole Olympics, and I was fortunate to be assigned to figure skating and short-track speed skating with Beijing-based staffer David Gray.  David was great to work with, and gave me the freedom to be creative during the heats in my photo position.

I really enjoyed experimenting with different shutter speeds to convey motion during short track.  I found that if I followed one skater, panning and zooming the camera lens with a shutter speed of 1/20 second, it would freeze that skater, while blurring the others.

Short track speed skating I quickly learned, is demolition derby on ice.  The first time I was covering it, I was propelled against the wall when Korean skaters Lee Ho-Suk and Sung Si-Back crashed into the barrier in front of me during the 1,500m.

Photo by Bob Deutsch/USA Today

The collision gave US skater Apolo Ohno the silver medal, and me a cut lip.

It was a crash course in how to shoot short track: use only one camera with a 70-200mm lens and a 1.4x tele-converter (so the second camera lens doesn’t obscure your peripheral vision and hit you in the face when the skaters crash).  Also I learned that the barrier is only rooted to the ice with a long cable and has a lot of give, so it’s important to jump fast if the skaters begin to lose control in your direction!

WATCH THE VIDEO

Watch the video on the Reuters photographers blog

The remote photo I took of the Olympic flame from the roof of the Bird’s Nest stadium during the opening ceremony ended up on the cover of Time Asia this week.  I had thought the photo was a failure because the torch bearer lit the cauldron with a long fuse, so he ended up being cropped out of my remote camera frame. 

Sportsshooter

My Olympic opening ceremony endurance test began with an 8am call to be on the roof of the Bird’s Nest stadium for a meeting of photographers.

I began my first of three climbs through the maze of steep narrow catwalks with IOC pool photographers from AP, Getty, AFP and Xinhua.  On either side of the path were sheets of glass through which the colored lights of the stadium are projected.

We were told to wear fireproof suits, helmets and climbing harnesses over our clothes.  The Chinese fireworks technicians on the roof had sensibly chosen to wear t-shirts and shorts.

(L-R) Julie Jacobson of AP, me, Ezra Shaw of Getty, and Christophe Simon of AFP.

It was 90-something degrees Fahrenheit and humid on the ground, but felt a lot hotter on the roof — especially after lugging 3 camera bodies, 5 lenses, a bag of magic arms and 50 meters of remote cable up there.

The door to the catacombs of the roof was barred by Chinese police who confiscated any water, food, cigarettes and cell phones.

The show was filled with interludes of fireworks, and we were told to crouch on the floor every time another burst came.  So I quickly mounted a wide angle Canon 5D with 15mm lens on the edge of the stadium, which I could fire remotely every time we had to duck.

I set the camera on aperture priority at f8, 200 ISO, with minus one stop exposure compensation so the camera wouldn’t misread the dark sky.

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

We were told we would have to crouch in a sunken part of the roof when the main fireworks and cauldron-lighting occurred, sometime after 10.30pm.

So we mounted a couple of pool remote cameras to be triggered with zip cord to shoot the Olympic flame being lit.  The Chinese police said it would be fine to clamp onto the pole holding their video security camera, so I trained a 70-200 in the direction of the torch, and Ezra Shaw from Getty put a wide angle very near the flame.

“Top secret, no-one will know until the last minute,” was the response from everyone when we tried to imagine how the flame would be lit, so we could frame it correctly.

Julie Jacobson from AP suggested we put our Canon Mark IIIs on monopods while we were stuck in our ditch, so we could hoist the pole and shoot using the camera’s Live View.

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

As we huddled and waited for the grand finale, a policeman came over gesturing and shouting in Chinese for us to go down the stairwell and shut the trap door over our heads.

One of the fireworks technicians translated and told us the rail we were sitting next to had been electrified to carry a trolley that would transport the athlete carrying the Olympic torch around the inside rim of the stadium.

We huddled on a 6×6 ft platform above the stairs.  Below us were sheets of glass and below that sat the world leaders watching the extravaganza, known as “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

A Chinese policeman who looked barely 20-years-old stood on the stairs.  We had a narrow slit through which we could watch the rest of the ceremony.  The cop grabbed my arm as the parade of athletes progressed.

“China’s coming! China’s coming!” he said as we heard a huge roar from the crowd of more than 90,000.  I could barely make out any of the athletes but saw Yao Ming, who is probably visible from space.

The torch bearer glided around the top of the stadium, passing inches from the narrow gap we were looking out of.  He ignited the flame with a long fuse, outside the frame of my vertical remote which was trained on the massive cauldron.

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The final firework explosions reverberated around us in our metal cage.

I had met the head pyrotechnics engineer when I first came on the roof.  When he found out I was from London, he said he really wanted the contract for London 2012 and asked me to put a good word in for him.  He didn’t seem convinced when I told him I didn’t have that kind of clout.  I hope he gets the gig.

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Thanks to Ezra for taking the photos of me with my Canon G9 point and shoot camera!

Josh Reviews Everything

Reuters article

When I’m out shooting around Beijing, people often come up to me to ask if they can take a photo of me with their family.  Jessica Rinaldi & I took a break from holding babies to pose in front of the Bird’s Nest National Stadium on a typically smoggy day.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Watch the video on the Reuters photographers blog

Rob Galbraith

SportsDesigner

Prodig

NFL

Growing up in England with 4 tv channels, I didn’t get to watch much basketball.

The first game I ever saw was during the 2001 NBA Finals when I worked as a runner for Agence France-Presse in Los Angeles, taking disks from the photographers and keeping the editors happy with beer.

Allen Iverson was darting all over the court for the Philadelphia 76ers. I was mesmerized by his energy and acrobatics and quickly became hooked on the game. With its breakneck pace and emphasis on rhythm over rules, it was instantly more attractive to me than reading through ‘The Complete Idiots Guide to Baseball’ and ‘American Football for Dummies.’

I’ve photographed every subsequent NBA Finals as basketball trickles its way across the Atlantic.

There are now three British players in the NBA – Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, and Ugonna Onyekwe, all on the Chicago Bulls – as well as a smattering of talented players at U.S. colleges and Spanish clubs. They add up to potentially the first-ever remotely competitive British basketball team at the London 2012 Olympics. Former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman even played last year for my hometown Brighton in the British Basketball League.

First stop for the 2007 NBA Finals is San Antonio, Texas. First challenge is to carry most of my camera equipment onto the plane as hand luggage.

Fortunately U.S. airlines don’t yet weigh hand luggage, so I walk past the boarding gate pretending my bags don’t weigh more than I do and then find a guy to lift them into the overhead bin.

Straight to the arena to set up remote cameras…

These finals orbit around Cleveland Cavaliers player LeBron James. The U.S. media are crowning him King James and hailing him as the next Michael Jordan. If Cleveland wins (or even if they don’t) the Reuters photo report will be heavily weighted with pictures of LeBron, so shooting multiple angles of him in action with remote cameras makes for a varied edit.

On an overhead catwalk I mount a 400mm lens which I will trigger when players jump for a rebound via a button attached to one of my hand-held cameras.

Dallas-based Reuters freelancer Jessica Rinaldi (top) holds a focus card.

Photographer Mike Blake set up an overhead remote during the recent NHL playoffs with a Canon 5D camera and a USB cable attached to a computer running the Reuters Paneikon editing software. I decided to try the same thing so that the editors could have a live feed instead of having to wait until the late-night end of the game. We used Paneikon for the first time at an NBA Finals with Gary Hershorn, Peter Jones, and Mike Blake editing from New York, Toronto and San Diego respectively, and everything ran really smoothly.

The Canon 5D, 400mm lens and pc computer set up with a Sprint card & Paneikon.

The story of Game 1 was how the Spurs’ Tim Duncan dominated LeBron James and the overhead camera came through with a good illustration of his aggressive defense.

Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James (L) is fouled by San Antonio Spurs’ Tim Duncan as he goes up to shoot. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The NBA only allows one camera behind the glass for the finals (in addition to the NBA & Sports Illustrated cameras), so Reuters, AP, Getty, EPA, and AFP take turns to set it up and we pool the images. We shoot Game 2, which produced a photo of finals MVP Tony Parker.

Lucy setting up the camera behind the glass.

San Antonio Spurs’ Tony Parker goes up to score during Game 2. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

I was shooting with the new Canon Mark III cameras for the first time and they were pretty impressive in low light. This is a crop of a third of the full frame of LeBron James sitting in a dark corner waiting to be interviewed, which I shot at 3200 ISO.

This finals was one of the dullest, most unemotional I’ve seen. It ended abruptly in Cleveland as the Spurs won four straight games with a defensive lockdown on LeBron James’ magic.

The only spark came from Tony Parker, the diminutive point guard from France, who energized Game 4 as he became the first European player to earn the NBA Finals most valuable player award.

San Antonio Spurs’ Tony Parker of France kisses the NBA Championship trophy as he holds the MVP trophy in the locker room defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 4. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

www.PDNPulse.com/2007/06/shooting-hoops.html