Having been honoured with the Henri Cartier Bresson Award, she spent more than a year travelling the country, crafting a series of pictures that reflect her response to the people and places visited. The result is a series entitled She Dances on Jackson.

Like her previous work, these are quiet photographs that reveal themselves over time. There's no shock factor, or in-your-face lighting. The images offer subtle grey tones captured on black-and-white film, through the lens of her large format camera.

The title is drawn from an encounter in Jackson, outlined by Winship in what amounts to the only text in the book that offers an insight into the work.

Whilst waiting on a subway platform in Jackson, Winship was close to a group of two women and two girls, one of whom moves through a crowd that has gathered in front of a band and begins to dance.

Winship writes: "She slips into the centre of the crowd, which parts as if her arrival was expected... This is a dance of her own making, her own spontaneity. She seems unaware of the adults cheering her on and the band smiling at her presence."

As the train arrives the dance ends and they board. "It's my train too and I sit facing the group, fascinated by their understated relationship with one another. My desire is to be part of it, to ask who they are, where they are going, but I know instinctively not to do so."

Just as that moment is best savoured from outside, so too are these pictures.

The viewer must build their own story and judgement about each image - there are no captions or any indication as to who or what we are looking at.

Photographers often speak about giving a voice to their subjects, and that's great. But actually the beauty of a photograph is its silence. The fact that it is mute allows us to savour it at our own pace, and the rewards are given through considered study.

The portraits of predominantly young people interspersed with the bleak landscapes Winship has captured offer us a view of their possible futures and the backdrop against which they might be lived. Of course we have no idea what will be, but photography can be about what could be, or what might have been, not necessarily what is.

This is pure photography, and in my view, when viewed as a whole, is about as good as it gets.

All photographs from Vanessa Winship: She Dances on Jackson, 2013, published by MACK.

And to complicate matters further, Alex Boyd is using the wet-collodion process, discovered in 1848 by Frederick Scott Archer - but the results are spectacular.

His work focuses on several hundred miles of Irish coastline and is part of a larger series which maps the edges of the Gaelic speaking world.

"The title of the series, The Point of the Deliverance, is a translation from Gaelic of the name given to a prominent rock in the natural harbour of Portacloy," says Boyd.

"The name, which is at least many centuries old, was given by local fishermen who knew that if they passed the rock during stormy weather, they would make it to safety.

"It is a name which perfectly encapsulates the struggle between the sea, and those who live along this unforgiving coastline."

The use of a 19th Century process means Boyd has to work quickly.

The collodion - a colourless gummy liquid that dries rapidly in the air - is poured onto a glass plate and then sensitised before being placed in the camera while still wet.

Once exposed, the photograph has to be developed immediately and washed.

For the photograph at the top of the page, entitled Last Light Dun Briste, Boyd used a World War II bunker as his temporary darkroom, as well as a shelter from the weather.

He says the process helps him engage with the landscape.

"I'm not interested in resurrecting this old process to try and follow in the footsteps of the great Victorian and [American] Civil War photographers," he says.

"That has all been done before.

"This approach to image-making is about trying to communicate a visual, emotional and physical response to the landscape."

It also offers the photographer total control.

The picture at the top of this page is a manipulation of sorts, as Boyd deliberately underexposed the image and then poured developer on it twice to create what he calls a bolt of lightning.

"The work was inspired by a series of poems by Seamus Heaney," he says.

"These images map out the edges of the northern Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking area of County Mayo on the edge of the Atlantic.

"The photographs show a largely empty moorland landscape bounded by a coastline of high cliffs, sea stacks and temperamental and unpredictable weather systems.

"One of the last great western European wildernesses, the moors, remain as desolate as when they were emptied of people by subsequent famine and clearance."

Boyd's work is influenced by photographers such as Bill Brandt, Fay Godwin and Thomas Joshua Cooper as well as artist Norman Ackroyd.

You can see more of Alex Boyd's work on his website.

The picture was taken from the Ornamental Gallery of St Paul's Cathedral, an area that is not accessible to the public, up above the Whispering Gallery. "It is almost at the very top of the cathedral dome, so it's an unusual view of the inside of St Paul's people seldom get to see," says Lipinski.

The position was a pooled one, meaning that though Lipinski was working for the Press Association his photographs would also run on other wire services, such as Reuters, Associated Press and Getty Images.

"As the position is so high up, it wouldn't be possible for me to lean over the edge of the gallery and take the picture with a handheld camera, as the consequences of dropping a lens or a camera from well over 200ft [60m] up above a packed St Paul's didn't bear thinking about," says Lipinski. "The only safe way to take the picture was to clamp the cameras on to the scaffolding poles so they couldn't fall, and operate them remotely."

The cameras were set up on the Monday, two days before the event on 17 April, and left in place so there was no opportunity to move them. "I set up one camera with a wide-angle lens for a wide view of the whole cathedral, and another with a longer lens trained on the centre of the cathedral floor below," says Lipinski.

"During the service when I was taking the photographs, I couldn't actually see anything that was going on below, as I wasn't allowed anywhere near the railing of the gallery throughout the service. I sat a few feet back looking at the feed from the cameras on a couple of laptops and could hear the amazing sounds of the choir and organ echoing up to the top of the dome, but couldn't see a thing beyond what was on the computer screens.

"I heard the bells at 11am, and then waited to catch my first glimpse of Baroness Thatcher's coffin on my laptop screen."

Here are a few other pictures and crops that Lipinski captured that day.

You can see some more of Dominic Lipinski's work on his page on the British Press Photographer Association website, and he is also on Twitter.

Pinhole photography forms an image through a small pin-sized hole rather than a lens and its origins can be traced back 2,500 years to when Mo Ti in China observed that light travels in a straight line through a small hole like an arrow.

It is a radical alternative to conventional photography, exploring a world beyond the limitations of the human eye and human wallet. In an age of instant automated screen-based predictability it rediscovers accident, wonder and delight through experimentation - qualities increasingly absent from contemporary photographic practice.

I have been making and using pinhole cameras for more than 20 years and they have ranged in size from being small enough to fit in my mouth to using wheelie bins, which aren't, and up to room-sized camera obscuras.

I've used a wide variety of materials, from fruit to wellington boots, toilet rolls, traffic cones and Pringles tubes, and taken portraits through the holes in a cream cracker: say "cheese".

I have fired them on rockets, thrown them off buildings and bridges, used them as shuttlecocks, held them underwater, taped them on to trains, car windscreen wipers, giant tortoises, forks and snooker cues.

Some exposures have been for so long that the emulsion has been eaten by airborne mould.

Others have photographed camels through the eye of a needle, or have used holes in the Berlin Wall, eggshells, bullet holes and so on. These are visual adventures limited solely by people's imagination.

Some experiments could be viewed as unequivocal failures and many "lost" cameras are still exposing to this very day - but all encourage the unpredictability and experimentation rarely found in the commercially driven, automated conventions of modern photography.

The simplest approach could be replacing the lens on your DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera) with a pinhole made in a piece of aluminium from a drink can. More progressive approaches could require emptying a few beer cans and making cameras from these. (You can even use the can to develop the picture in.) Instructions for these cameras and more can be found on the Pinhole Day website, as well as my own.

Pinhole images have qualities that aren't encountered using even the most expensive camera. These include:

In our age of instant photographic feedback, it is amazing how a bit of time and thought can change your images from previsualised experiments to what could be the greatest photographs ever taken, something to ponder while you wait for them to be processed.

How to take part

There are several public workshops already organised and many local camera clubs will be participating. You can also build or adapt a camera beforehand using the instructions on the site.

Pinhole Day is there for everyone. It does not require being part of the consumerist mega-pixelled massive, but encourages experimentation and wonder. It is an opportunity for everyone to explore the visual world around us, using homemade cameras costing £4,000 less than the latest DSLR camera.

Pinhole Day takes place around the world on Sunday 28 April and you can find out how to participate on the website.

You can also send your pinhole pictures to the BBC, which will run a selection of those submitted on 2 May.

You can see more of Justin Quinnell's work on his website.

Photographer Neil A White's Lost Villages project documents this constant battle between the North Sea and the land in this part of the British Isles, one that endures the highest rate of coastal erosion in Europe.

He was drawn to this coastal area as it is near where he grew up and one that brings back many fond memories of playing on the beach. "It is estimated that up to 32 villages dating back to Roman times have already been lost to the sea," said White.

"The historical events which took place on this coastline are fascinating," said White. "Since Roman times it is estimated that a strip of land three and a half miles wide has been washed into the North Sea.

"One lost village, Ravenser Odd, is particularly significant. Described as a medieval new town founded in 1235, it was also a thriving sea port. At the height of its fortunes in the early 14th century, Ravenser Odd was a town of national importance, regularly supplying the king with two fully equipped ships and armed men for his war with the Scots.

"It had a royal charter, a market and annual fair, a town mayor, customs officer and other officials, as well as numerous cargo ships, fishing boats and warehouses. There was also a court, prison and chapel. Shakespeare's Richard II also speaks of a town called Ravenspurg (Ravenser).

"By 1346 it was recorded that two-thirds of the town and its buildings had been lost to the sea due to erosion, and in the years that followed, from about 1349 to 1360, the sea had completely destroyed Ravenser Odd. It is the history of this particular village that has been an important inspiration for this project."

Today it is Skipsea that is on the front line. There is an annual rate of land erosion of nearly two metres, and in just over a year of working on this project, White has seen the coastline change markedly. His pictures chronicle those changes to the coastline and the man-made structures that cling to the earth, hoping to be spared a watery grave.

You can see more of Neil A White's work on his website.

The pictures are unmistakably Salgado's, shimmering prints that seem to leap out of the gallery walls. Each one engages and entices you to look closer, to take your time and enjoy the subject as well as the tonality.

The project's title, Genesis, is about Salgado attempting to capture the planet as it once was, unspoilt landscapes, wildlife and remote communities that live as their ancestors did.

You could argue that these pictures present a world that does not really exist, a fairy tale, though you could also argue that most photographs are constructed to some degree or another, and stand or fall on the intention behind the work.

"It is about the unspoiled planet, the most pristine parts, and a way of life that is traditional and in harmony with nature - the way we used to be," says Salgado. "I wanted to present places that were untouched and remain so to this day."

His previous two major long-term projects, Workers and Migrations, both centre on people and their struggle against both the land in which they live and their economic situation. This work does not; it is very much a celebration of what is left, and what once was, and perhaps what could be. "I am not an anthropologist or a sociologist. I am just a photographer. I wanted to show how some people are living in equilibrium with the planet, as we did thousands of years ago," says Salgado.

And indeed he does that, though there is a danger that the pictures could become little more than a spectacle for our visual delight.

"I don't want to provoke debate," says Salgado. "I just want people to feel closer to our planet. We are all so out of touch. We don't feel part of the planet any more, so we must turn back the clock to come closer to nature. We need to recover our instincts, to learn more about nature."

Salgado is aware of his responsibilities as a photographer and also aware he can use his pictures to make a difference. With his wife Leila he set up an environmental organisation, Instituto Terra, in Brazil in the 1990s. This works on the restoration of a part of the Atlantic Forest and has helped establish a nature reserve.

"We started to replant the rainforest and today we have a little bit more than two million trees with more than 300 native species. And now you see an incredible amount of birds come back to this forest," he says.

His interest in nature stems from watching the destruction of the rainforests of his childhood in Brazil, but rather than focus on destruction he offers a view of a seemingly idyllic lifestyle and landscape. "The idea came to me that we should show the incredible beauty of nature, not just the destruction that is going on, but also to inspire people to want to preserve the planet.

"In a sense, we humans are the biggest 'predator' of the planet. We are the ones consuming the resources and products it provides. We only care about ourselves, our comfort and our needs.

"We can't just criticise the companies that pollute and destroy nature, because we are the ones consuming their products and justifying their activities - and through the stock market we are, in the last instance, the 'owners' of these same companies."

Genesis can be seen at the Natural History Museum in London from 11 April until 8 September 2013.

So whenever I stumble upon a website showing some pictures from the conflict, I usually can't resist and click to see what's on offer. This week I did just that and found the work of Charlie Haughey, who it turns out was a rifleman with the 25th Infantry Division who served in Vietnam from March 1968 to May the following year.

Haughey was commissioned by his colonel to take photographs of the battalion for Army and civilian newspapers. The officer said: "You are not a combat photographer; this is a morale operation. If I see photos of my men in the papers, doing their job with honour, then you can do what you like in Vietnam."

The rifleman was stationed near Cu Chi and was part of Alpha Company, for whom he walked point or flank for 63 days. "On point, you work with the guy behind you. I didn't get to know people very well; we weren't like the band of brothers. It didn't pay to get to know people - we knew each other based on where we were from, or we had nicknames. Collins was from Chicago. He and I worked really well together. When we were on point together, I was up front, responsible for everything from the waist down - trip wires, booby traps, spider holes. He walked behind me, responsible for everything from the waist up. He flat out saved my life at least once, just from a little whistle or click or something."

His pictures of the unit have not been seen until now, having spent four decades in boxes in his home. Last year a chance meeting brought the negatives out into the open and eventually to a digital scanner with the work being catalogued by a team of volunteers. The work is now on show at the ADX Gallery in Portland, Oregon, in the north-west US.

The 28 prints are displayed in handmade frames, made by Charlie, who is now a retired carpenter.

You can follow the progress of the project and learn about Charlie Haughey's time in Vietnam on the Chieu Hoi Collection website.

All photographs copyright Charlie Haughey, A Weather Walked In/The Chieu Hoi Collection

The photographer is Reni Burri, a member of Magnum Photos since 1959. His pictures have graced the pages of some of the world's leading pictorial magazines, such as Life, Paris Match, Geo and Stern. His photograph of Che Guevara is repeatedly used by such diverse groups as revolutionaries and canny marketing teams the world over.

Yet it appears that alongside his black and white work, he was also exploring the world in colour, capturing a more abstract view of events and the places he visited.

Of course he shot stories in colour as the Sunday supplements took up the new opportunities offered by the medium in the 1960s, yet it has always played second fiddle to his monochrome work.

A new book Impossible Reminiscences attempts to end that second-class status and brings together more than 130 of Burri's colour photographs that were taken over 50 years. The diversity of the work and indeed the ground covered shows the broad range of subjects he has tackled.

"Burri's colour work is to a large extent worldly, devoted to life, full of curiosity about other ways of life and cultures and their colour palettes. It also shows a distinct degree of political interest. The use of colour in his photographs is never the result of purely formal intentions," notes the photography critic and curator Hans-Michael Koetzle in the book.

For many photographers it is one or the other, as to shoot in both colour and black and white at the same time is not something that many can achieve. They require a different line of thought and approach, and most tend to concentrate on one or the other. Today most are working in colour, and the realm of black and white is now that of the art photographer. News is most definitely in colour, but back in the 1950s the serious work was done in shades of grey.

Yet Burri travelled with at least two cameras, one for colour and the other black and white, switching between the two at will, both with his own interpretation of the view in front of him captured to maximise the characteristics of the media.

Here are just a few of Burri's colour frames, along with his reminiscence.

Impossible Reminiscences by Rene Burri is published by Phaidon.

So when I stumbled upon a photographic project called In the box by Tom Groves on this very subject I had to take a look. Back in the 1970s and 80s Subbuteo could probably be found in many boys' bedrooms, yet as computerised football games grew the magic of flicking those little plastic figures around a green pitch seemed to fade, and indeed its availability has been off and on for many years, until a re-launch at the 2012 London Toy Fair.

Despite this, die hard fans have stuck with it and continued to compete, some at an international level for the Subbuteo World Cup.

Groves has been documenting those clashes for a number of years, focusing on the moment of celebration as players react to a goal scored. "One of my closest friends has been playing competitively since we were 12 so I've had the game around me for the past 16 years," says Groves. "But it wasn't until he organised a tournament in 2010 that I saw the potential for a photographic project which would reveal the players and their bizarre yet delightful world to many others who would have no idea that it exists."

Groves has travelled widely for this project, visiting tournaments in Berlin, Leicester, Paris, Cardiff, Tuscany, Bristol and Frameries. Many players travel long distances to represent their country with dreams of winning. "For most this will always be a fantasy, however the camaraderie and the friendships that stretch right across Europe has been one of the nicest and least expected thing I've witnessed over the past years," says Groves.

Alongside the football games that are now available on mobile phones and tablets the game could be seen as out of place, yet its popularity seems to be on the rise once more.

"I think the appeal today leans towards a slight nostalgic glimpse of their childhood for most, but for the minority its a way of competing in a sport at a high level that perhaps on a football field would not be possible. The game is now fully available on the high street after several years and is enjoying record sales, so I really think there is a surge of interest in the UK when its been thriving in Europe for the past two decades."

There's is certainly a dollop of nostalgia in there I'm sure, yet it can also bring together different generations of players each able to compete on one level and for most that's where it ends. Yet Groves' pictures reveal a serious side to Subbuteo, the competitive ambitions of the players.

"There is quite a healthy respect and rivalry between top players, however when there is an important game and lots of people gather around to watch, the goal celebrations can be very intense, especially when there is some form of title at stake, like the World cup or the Europa cup.

"You have to remember that most of these players have been playing the same circuit for many years so have made friends and bonded with those they respect. You do see some elements of tension between some, whether for personal reasons or due to previous results it can get quite heated sometimes with emotions running high.

"I've witnessed some impressive things over the course of the project both good and bad. I think the most surprising was at one point a man was knocked out of the competition in the semi-final and he spent five minutes on his knees crying inconsolably as he had such belief that he was going to win.

"Saying that some players just get maddened when a decision doesn't go their way and will argue with the referee, the crowd and anyone else who's listening."

The skill levels are impressive, for anyone who has played there are certain shots and techniques that are hard to master. "The special flicks such as the superman where a player can get his figure to jump over the oppositions figure to get to the ball and to immediately shoot is an incredible skill.

"With the team events results can change in an instant so I think seeing Spain win the World Cup last year was one of the best moments for me and the most excited I've seen these players."

You can find out more about the project on Tom Groves website, and if you are interested in learning more about the world of Subbuteo then the website of the English Subbuteo Association is a good place to start. And for a light hearted look at the game, this gallery by Terry Lee recreates classic moments from footballing history.

I reported on his work at the time and indeed the many visits he has made since whilst working on a long term documentary project which eventually became UnknownSpring. This tells the story of Yuriage, a small town that was destroyed by the tsunami. This work has recently received an honourable mention in the World Press Photo Multimedia Awards.

Here though I wanted to share his pictures taken whilst travelling along the coast in Tohoku. Seeing the journey as a break of sorts from the project Price didn't take any traditional cameras but just his phone camera, which he says, "proved to be the best tool I could have imagined as these photos came about spontaneously."

These pictures are not news photos, they are reflections of the journey and those he met along the way. Full of mood, and despite their initial sombre appearance, many of the frames are in fact filled with light and perhaps a new dawn.

"Throughout the tsunami zone people's attachment to land stretches back thousands of years," says Price. "Fishermen, farmers, artists, labourers, so many people whom I've met would rather die on their land and risk the consequences of radioactive poisoning or another sudden tsunami than move away and die of a broken heart disconnected from their heritage.

"I have seen the same thing along the Mississippi coastline, in earthquake battered Haiti and in New York after it was struck by hurricane Sandy. In each place identity is intertwined with the land and water. To abandon them is to abandon an essence of what makes us who we are."

Previous reports from Jake Price on the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan:

Pictures from Japan weeks after the tsunami

OAudio slideshow: One month after the tsunami in Natori

Audio slideshow: Six months on in Yuriage

Yuriage one year on

A new exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is showing some of the pictures he left behind for the first time and photographer Stephen McLaren went along to report on the show.

One of the great mysteries of 20th Century photography had been solved - albeit partially - at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The mystery concerns the later years of Garry Winogrand, a major figure in American and world photography, who died prematurely in 1984 at the age of 56.

Although dead for nearly 30 years, Winogrand remains a totemic figure to many of today's generation of street photographers. His ballsy attitude, dynamic and kinetic compositions, and refusal to repeat himself have made him a hero for photographers grappling with the challenges of shooting candid situations in everyday life.

Always prodigious, Winogrand left behind 6,500 rolls of film from which he never made prints, or even had processed. For a photographer with a reputation for shooting brilliant images from all corners of America this was a massive amount of material which had never been evaluated - until now.

Leo Rubinfien, a New-York based photographer who was a friend and former student of Winogrand's, decided in 2001 that it was time to reappraise the career of his mentor and finally draw some conclusions as to how his work had played-out in his later years.

This major retrospective of Winogrand's working life includes more than 300 pictures, one-third of which which have never been seen before in public. As a result, we finally get to discover what Garry Winogrand was shooting at with his Leica and wide-angle lens so furiously in the last decade or so of his life.

A hastily produced retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1988 made an attempt to grapple with the posthumous archive. However, after reviewing a selection of images from some of the unprocessed films, the curator, John Szarkowski, judged that while living in Texas and Los Angeles in the 1970s and 80s, Winogrand had lost much of his creative focus and had not been applying himself with the same level of intensity as he had in New York.

Reasons given for the abrupt change in his work included family break-up, possibly leaving him despondent and disillusioned, and also a suggestion that his relocation from the energetic streets of Manhattan to the wider, emptier, less claustrophobic spaces of the West had robbed him of that energy which courses through New York's sidewalks.

The considered opinion on Winogrand's posthumous archive was, "nothing much to see here".

Finding it hard to believe that his mentor's creative powers had deserted him so abruptly, Rubinfien decided that he would have to look deeper and more inquisitively into the archive.

To gain a new appreciation of what Winogrand was shooting in California and Texas, a team of specialists including Rubinfien and assistant curator Erin O'Toole have spent the past few years sorting through and appraising the massive stockpile of films stored at the Center for Creative Photography of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

As you enter the section of the exhibition devoted to those later years, it quickly becomes apparent you are looking at pictures of a different order to the ones which brought him recognition in the 1960s.

Gone are the punchy chaotic street scenes chock-full of oddball characters, animals and apparently haphazard framing. Instead we see more solitary and introspective characters, the mood is typically foreboding and in the pictures from Los Angeles, no-one seems to be living the Californian dream which had the Beach Boys harmonising.

"The late Los Angeles work is one of the great discoveries of this show," said Rubinfien. "We were told, and we believed, that he dissolved in the last 12 years and trailed off and ended up nowhere.

"But he didn't end up nowhere - he ended up in the middle of a very dark poetry full of its own kind of pathos and we've managed to give that a shape and a character and its here in the show."

He was a photographer who showed little interest in editing his own work for publication or exhibition, instead leaving it to trusted curators and friends, so the question of how this archive should be approached is also troubling for Rubinfien.

"Winogrand would have been the very first person to say stories should have no endings. If you give my life's work a conclusion you are distorting the reality, you are falsifying the story.

"But the requirements of the living man and his surviving appreciators are not the same, and it seems to me, sentimentalist that I am, that this provides a very beautiful and appropriate conclusion to our sense of how the larger arc of his work developed."

Interviews would find Winogrand veering away from ascribing easy meanings or narratives to pictures which he felt could and should be read in a multiplicity of ways. Instead he found it more convenient to describe his art as grappling with photographic problems, or even as a form of play.

At the opening reception for the exhibition I found Paul Graham, a world-renowned British photographer whose work, like Winogrand, thrives on open-ended narratives and a multitude of competing interpretations.

"He is one of the reasons I love and embraced photography," said Graham. "He is one of the most unique and important figures in post-war photography without any question at all. I admire his ability to read the world and to get all that into a photograph, so that other people can read it too. And to keep the image open, not close it down, not give it a simplistic humanistic message like the magazines were saying in the 50s and 60s, go way beyond that."

Graham expressed some doubts as to how willing the general public who are not into photography might be to engage with what he described as "300 little grey rectangles on wall" , but added that those able to give the exhibition the time and patience necessary would find it immensely rewarding.

The assistant curator at SF Moma, Erin O'Toole, believes that Winogrand's "shoot first, edit later" methodology will strike a chord with many modern photographers.

"I think this will resonate with people because this work is so much of and about the world he experienced. It's like people shooting lots of digital photos on their phone or cameras and showing people, 'This is what I saw!' .

"This is what this is about, him being out in the world, marvelling at all the things he experienced. When you see how much he created it's on a scale of what people shoot digitally. He was incredibly prolific and like people who shoot digitally he didn't print a lot of his images."

Despite his poor, almost non-existent, editing, Garry Winogrand left an immense body of work which is a startling account of America in the late 20th Century. It appears that right to the end he lived just to go out shooting the next day and to see what photographic challenges he could set himself.

Speaking not long before he died he said: "What I found out, over photographing a long time - the more I do, the more I do. When you're younger, you can only conceive of trying a limited amount of things to work with. The more I work, the more subject matter I can begin to try to deal with."

This eagerly awaited exhibition, which opens this weekend, was jointly produced with the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. More details can be found on the website of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art . It tours other American cities next year and then visits Paris and Madrid in 2015. As yet there is no news of the exhibition coming to the UK.

Stephen McLaren is a street photographer and co-author, with Sophie Howarth, of Street Photography Now.

Format was founded by Louise Clements and Mike Brown in 2004 and its last run in 2011 saw more than 100,000 people make their way to the Derbyshire city.

This year's show promises much, though for me the pick of the bunch will be Ken Grant's series, No Pain Whatsoever, which looks at his home city of Liverpool from the 1980s onwards.

Grant's work has been compared to that of Martin Parr or Chris Killip so it's a real treat to be able to see this for the first time. Grant is currently a Senior Lecturer in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales in Newport and his work is held by a number of major collections around the globe.

"The work is drawn together from long-term, over-lapping projects that eventually coalesce," says Grant.

"In that respect, there was no clear starting point or green light in a particular direction, or a clear brief to follow - my subjects are my contemporaries and I tend to photograph what I know, what I recognise, what we do, or what we sometimes have little choice but to do. I simply started to notice certain things recurring in the work,- certain qualities that seemed to prevail as themes."

"Photography is good at showing what's on the surface, it's descriptive and has a strange currency and relationship with reality, but I'm interested in things I recognise that might be a little less obvious and perhaps hidden or even betrayed.

"I like the possibilities that arise when pictures from discreet situations sit with others, strangely enough this often seems to make more sense than neat and tidy picture stories that we can often find in this history of photography.

"I'm interested in those connections. What happens when pictures are used in series and what that series starts to suggest.

"No Pain Whatsoever includes pictures from many locations and, unlike my earlier book The Close Season this work is consistently outside in the streets and docklands, in temporary work spaces and at the coast. I tend to photograph times outside of work, or time when work has paused or just isn't there.

"Work in my experience has always been intermittent - feast or famine - and I've been drawn to photograph both. I've had no real opportunity to reflect on the project's success, that will come as the book is published later in the year and the sequences are resolved, but I'm happy with how things are looking and what is starting to happen."

You can see more of Ken Grant's series on his website.

A trip to Derby to see Grant's work alone is well worth it but there is of course much more to see, indeed 70 photographers have pictures on show, as well as film screenings, workshops and a conference. There's also an interactive mobile photo exhibition you can take part in, though it's not all about the latest technology as you can also learn how to take pinhole photographs should you wish.

Here's a selection of some of the other work on show.

Format International Photography Festival takes place in Derby from 8 March to the 7 April 2013. The book No Pain Whatsoever by Ken Grant will be published in Autumn 2013.

While President Barack Obama has now embraced Google Hangout to reach out to his constituents, the latest photography exhibit at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library highlights how photojournalists used an increasingly old-fashioned medium to present US presidents to the world.

Thirteen presidential administrations from the 1930s to today are featured in News to History - Photojournalism and the Presidency, which uses photos from the Briscoe Center for American History's archive to capture the interaction of each president with his time, as well as the tumultuous events that swirled around each man.

Photos by the likes of Dirck Halstead, David Kennerly, Lucian Perkins, Margaret Thomas, David Valdez and Diana Walker - all of whom attended the exhibit's opening reception in Austin - convey both the violent and tragic as well as the exuberant and inspiring trajectory of the American experience during each administration.

"It is the photojournalist equivalent of having the likes of George Clooney, Harrison Ford and Meryl Streep all in the same room," says Mary Bock, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism.

The photographic component of the Briscoe Center for American History's resources consists of more than five million images. Its photograph collections cover in great depth and diversity important national and international events in the years since 1950, such as the Vietnam War, Watergate, the ongoing Middle East conflict, and the civil rights movement. It also covers regional subjects as the cowboy, oil, Mexican-American life in Texas, recreation, agriculture, domestic life, architecture, entertainment, business, and politics.

Original prints included Elvis Presley wild-eyed and snarling into a microphone while cavorting on stage in Tampa, Florida; white female students yelling abuse at an African-American student during school integration in Montgomery, Alabama; the anguished face of Jacqueline Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery as she accepts the folded Stars and Stripes that covered her husband's coffin; three fireman raising an American flag at the World Trade Center site on the afternoon of 11 September 2001 and many more.

The ability of journalists' photographic images to affect politics was not lost on presidential incumbents.

"Because I'm president of the United States and commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation in the world, I take orders from no-one - except the photographers," remarked President Harry S Truman. President Richard Nixon called the press "the enemy".

While the photographs conjured up the past, those who had taken them voiced their opinions about the future of photojournalism in a social media-saturated world.

"I have been doing this for 50 years and now more people see my work than ever before thanks to the internet and Facebook," says David Kennerly, who won a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for his portfolio of Vietnam War photographs.

Diana Walker, Time magazine's White House photographer for 20 years, pointed out a photo she took of Hillary Clinton using her smartphone on a C-17 military transport plane, which went viral on the internet after Tumblr posted it.

She is pleased how many more people are now empowered to enjoy photography thanks to smartphone camera technology, but noted there was still a huge difference between people taking photographs for fun and those who dedicated their lives to photography.

"Today you have to get out of your head the idea of being a photojournalist - you are now a producer," says Dirck Halstead, who holds the record for the most Time magazine covers shot by a photographer.

He shot 49 of them, including perhaps his most notorious photograph, that of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky embracing President Bill Clinton during a fundraising event in 1996.

There has been a paradigm shift in photojournalism, Mr Halstead says, and the days when he got paid $750 a day to shoot for Time are long gone. It's now about producing - whether photographs, video or a written article - and delivering to your sponsor and being paid for the end product, he says.

Journalists used to research stories for up to two years, says Lucian Perkins, a double Pulitzer Prize winner who for 27 years worked as a staff photographer for the Washington Post. But the funding mechanism no longer exists to support such investigative journalism, and Mr Perkins wonders who will be able to tell America's important stories.

"You cannot beat black-and-white photos," says Margaret Thomas, who in 1966 became the Washington Post's first female photographer. She lamented how the mystique of the darkroom had gone, and with it a sense of community. "Now everyone just plunks themselves down in front of a computer."

But today's photography concerns have been seen before. When 35mm cameras first emerged there was uproar, similar to present concerns about the impact of new technologies, says David Valdez, former personal photographer to George HW Bush and general manager of photography for Walt Disney Attractions. Mr Valdez embraced the new technology back then, just as he is doing now to continue working.

"I'm a big fan of Instagram," Mr Valdez says, "though I would love to sharpen up the black and white of its signature filter."

For further details of the exhibition visit the Briscoe Center's website.

All photographs copyright Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

Sometimes though photography can be used as a way to communicate a point, or illustrate some research, and a new exhibition in West Bromwich attempts to do just that.

The A41 Project - visualising inequality, features photographs by artist Colin McPherson taken as he travelled through the West Midlands, passing through some of the wealthiest and some of the most deprived areas of England.

"The project has been one year in the making: the last six months of which I have spent on the road, travelling the length of the A41 from near my home on the Wirral down to London - and back again several times," says McPherson. "Photographers are particularly fond of road trips and journeys as they instil a sense of narrative and direction in the work being made."

"Through the Equality Trust, participatory photography groups were established in London, Milton Keynes, the West Midlands and Merseyside. These groups consisted of people with an interest in the subjects of inequality and photography and who were keen, like me, to experiment and look creatively at how the issues could be illustrated using the photographic image."

McPherson's pictures are based on themes, statistics or ideas he researched, or those that emerged from the workshops with the participatory groups.

"Often I would be looking to illustrate a specific fact or quote, and in the final pieces of work, I turned these into questions," he says. This means that the pictures are shown with a question below them as you can see here.

"Without answering these questions, I am requesting the viewer to consider what is being asked, therefore allowing a degree of ambiguity which is often a necessary part of the artistic process and presentation," McPherson adds.

Professor Kate Pickett from the Equality Trust said: "The evidence that inequality damages society is overwhelming. It affects many aspects of life including physical and mental health, children's well-being and rates of violent crime. We hope that the A41 Project will provoke debate and help advance the movement for a more equal society."

Throughout the project McPherson visited many parts of the country he had not seen before, including parts touched by the Industrial Revolution.

"I also came across Riches Street in Wolverhampton, except the word Street was no longer there. It seemed to be a perfect and poignant message, and I couldn't help wondering whether there was a Rags Street close by which could have illustrated the gap between rich and poor symbolically."

McPherson worked on film for this series, something he notes was an antidote to working in a fast-moving digital world. "It has been an opportunity to apply the handbrake and really think meticulously about how the work is conceived and made.

"The result is a collection of 25 images, each one metre by one metre, which forms a body of work which aims to question, inform and stimulate - and start to define how to take a concept such as inequality and set it to photography."

The A41 Project - visualising inequality is on show at The Public gallery in West Bromwich 6 May 2013.

You can see more of Colin McPherson's work on his website.

The by-election in Eastleigh was no exception and photographer Paul Russell spent a few days with camera in hand tracking down the candidates prior to polling.

"I was initially interested in photographing the Eastleigh by-election as it was the first one where the partners of the coalition, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, were going head to head in a reasonably close seat," says Russell. "On my first visit I was struck by the visual interest of the election being played out against the backdrop of a fairly awkward time for the country."

For all the gloss and glitter of election campaigns once you get on the ground they often seem very mundane, with colourful banners placed against shop windows or balloons mingling with street furniture.

Russell found Eastleigh to be a pleasant small town. "It is certainly not doing too badly compared to some places I visit, but it has its share of disused shops, so I often found myself photographing candidates and supporters with a background of boarded-up buildings.

"I started to try and capture a little of the town, as well as the election. UKIP have a campaign office in Eastleigh town centre in a disused Julian Graves shop, which possibly would not have been an option in better times."

Russell also looked to capture the media presence which at times he notes seemed to outnumber the local population. "I became interested in photographing the influence of the media on the events - situations specifically set up for the benefit of the press. I noted how keen politicians seemed to be on getting their picture taken with anyone they could find in a wheelchair."

He used a small discreet digital camera, the Fujifilm X10, which meant he could get quite close and photograph unobtrusively. "I often found myself a few feet away from subjects, while the press photographers who arrived this week were further back. With the silent shutter, people usually forgot I was there, allowing me to get mostly naturalistic photos, rather than staged looking pictures."

The results are now in with Mike Thornton of the Liberal Democrats being elected to parliament, though UKIP saw its best-ever performance in a Westminster poll.

Here are a few of Paul Russell's pictures.

You can see more of Paul Russell's work on his website.

Last year I ran a selection of the work and thought it would be good idea to do so again as the project still has many years to run, their aim being to continue for 24 years.

The photographers are tasked with capturing a single moment within their allotted hour on an annual theme, this time it was Sign of the Times.

The original 24 met while on a postgraduate photography course at Central Saint Martin's in London, though some have gone their own way and new faces have now joined the pool.

This year six pictures will be auctioned off for Hope and Homes for Children and the exhibition was guest curated by Magnum Photos' Peter Marlow.

"I was delighted to be asked to curate the collection of images from the 10th year of 24. It has always been my feeling that the best pictures happen close to home when photographers make image-making an integral part of their lives.

"Seeing the collection really reinforces that, and as a whole gives a unique and personal way for all of us to see our own worlds."

Founder of 24photography, Claire Spreadbury would agree: "The exhibition is going from strength to strength and now in our 10th year we've really developed an identity and feel that we're an established part of London's art calendar."

Here's a selection of those from new year 2013.

Far away from metropolitan life, time is marked with heightened awareness of the phases of the Sun and Moon. As midnight is celebrated in the UK, watching the full moon slowly rising out of the pitch-black void builds a surge of optimism. The pathway on the sea marks the promise of the new year, a road to the future.

I like to shoot images that are of observed events but which can also be suggestive of another meaning. Here I was drawn by the sight of ordinary people queuing in the rain for a bus in the early hours. The party spirit has faded, times are hard and yet the people are united in anticipation.

All my 24 pieces form a potent narrative to my life which has included loss of a parent, loss of a marriage, travel, love lost and found, success and struggle, and an ongoing attempt to control the uncontrollable - time. It is my hope that my complete 24 piece will be a universal yet personal notation of my existence, however insignificant.

I love the 24 project; it is exciting to be part of the long-term collaboration, working together with other artists to bring the concept to life. Shooting, in the early morning quietness of New Year's Day in the Praga district of Warsaw, provided an mysterious setting stuck in time. I chose to present one of the many monuments of the Holy Mary that were constructed during World War II. These figures bring hope to the poor residents of Praga today, just as they did to those oppressed by war 70 years ago.

The 2013 theme Sign of the Times was an apt theme for photographing commuters on the New York City subway. A decade ago heads would be buried in newspapers and books, today they are buried in smart phones and iPads.

I've been involved since the start of the project and think it's great that we're having our 10th show, though a bit scary that the first show feels like yesterday. I'm really looking forward to completing the remaining 14 hours of my 24. This year my photo represents my anger and unease about the causes of austerity and the effect it's having on this country.

The end of the year is a reflective time for me. I often, find myself wondering about whether situations could have worked out, differently, or sometimes dwell on what might have been. But there are signs around us, if we want to look. Little signals to remind us about the possibilities that are still to come.

With so many lives affected by the floods in the UK in recent years, I wanted to capture this significant Sign of our Times. The effects can be devastating, but the new watery landscapes can be at once stunning and otherworldly. Shot at night and surrounded by water, it was a slightly unnerving experience.

I joined 24 "en route" and this is my fourth participation to this exciting project. I am fascinated by the development and the evolution of 24 over the years, which are mine as well. In last year's photo I pictured our family breakfast with two mugs and two baby bottles. This year it would have been four mugs only.

Sign of the Times, this year's theme, pushed me to work around intimacy, using little dolls as silent witnesses of the passing of time.

The work is on show at Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London until 23 March 2013 and you can see more of the work on their website 24photography.

The result is two sets of work that Wicks' says sets about "exploring and unsettling key boundaries - between innocent and guilty, researcher and researched, us and them."

One set consists mainly of pictures from HMP Shotts prior to opening, as well as HMP Low Moss and Barlinnie, and shows clinical spaces which become the enforced home of those detained and the workplace of those on the other side.

"I have been returning to these places of cultural cliche and the images I've produced aim to demystify them and the work criminologists undertake," says Wicks. "Some of the images juxtapose the often-chaotic lives that occupy these spaces and contradict the harsh realities of prison life."

The other piece of work is entitled, They are Us and We are Them: Portraits of prisoner, prison officer and criminologist. Using a large format (5x4) Wista field camera Wickes is seeking to recall the Victorian portraits of criminals that many believed at that time revealed the criminal trait or personality.

Her aim was to mimic the daguerreotype process used back then, limiting herself to one frame per sitter.

The mug shot itself is still a term that denotes some kind of criminality, or unpleasantness. "The traditional mug shot is a process (or space) where a person is automatically marked as a criminal (although not yet convicted), it is combative, accusing, dehumanizing," says Wicks.

Yet the work is more than simply a record or document as Wicks explains. "What I find interesting is the way that the mug shot, prison, the criminal justice spaces all strip away the complexities of that person and they then become part of a subset, in the eyes of others and significantly in their own eyes.

"They are no longer unique personalities and the 'self' is redefined."

The work, an interactive multi-media installation incorporating audio, fine art photography and object sculpture, is on show at the The Briggait Gallery, Glasgow from 27 February to 22nd March 2013 having been shown in scaled down form at HMP Barlinnie last year.

You can see more of Jenny Wicks' work on her website.

Yet there are options out there. Newspapers, magazines and websites are still commissioning work of course, but that's not the only way to be able to shoot the story you want to cover.

I asked journalist and photographer Miranda Gavin to take a look at the market and explore some of the ways photojournalists are funding their work.

Citizen journalism, the "accidental" journalist and bloggers have changed the way that news, current affairs and documentary photographs are produced, circulated and consumed. In this rapidly-changing environment, photojournalists and documentary photographers are using new funding opportunities, alongside more traditional ones, to realise projects.

Although crowdfunding is still coming of age, it is already proving to be a successful formula for financing creative projects. A recent business report by the Deloitte Canada Technology Media and Telecommunications team (TMT) predicts crowdfunding platforms will "double their pledges this year, raising just under £2 billion".

Today digital technology allows audiences to part-fund photojournalism through donations pledged to specific projects via online fundraising platforms. Rather than asking for large amounts of money from a small number of people, smaller sums are collected from a larger pool of people. Some platforms filter projects (Kickstarter) while others have an open-submission policy (Indiegogo) and let the audience decide.

Taylor-Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize winner 2010 and Institute photographer David Chancellor, who won the competition with his portrait Huntress with Buck, recently released his first monograph, Hunters, thanks to the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform.

"It had a dual-purpose. Firstly, I could gauge audience interest in the book and secondly, Kickstarter (from my research asking other Institute photographers) seemed to have a very good relationship with the people who they accept to go on the platform. I was interested in testing the market with the potential audience to see how they would respond and who would buy the book."

Chancellor also tried to produce "as good a Kickstarter presentation" as possible and set a funding target of $20,000 (£13,000). He got more than $30,000 towards the book in which he explores the complex relationship that exists between man and animal/the hunter and the hunted.

"Documentary photographers can spend a huge amount of time working on projects that they care about passionately but that no one really sees or 'gets'," he adds. "I felt that using crowdfunding would give me a great opportunity to see whether people thought the book was interesting or not and whether they would fund it, without publishing the book," he says.

Another sign of the changing face of photojournalism was when the prestigious Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize for documentary photography took a breather in 2011 to re-evaluate the remit of its grant for supporting future projects and expanded the criteria for the prize to embrace the new ways photographers are working.

VII Photo Agency member Donald Weber is one recipient of the grant and he now runs workshops on how to write funding applications, adding that the market for 2013 is pretty much the same as ever.

"It's about being clever and making a market for yourself regardless of the ups and downs," he explains. "Opportunity exists, but you have to make it." He recently published a book, Interrogations, about human resistance to state power and extended his circle of contacts and possible sources of financial support by approaching organizations dealing with human rights, civil society, law and order, as well as institutions based in Eastern Europe where the book is set.

In the past, Weber funded 90% of his work through grants and foundations, adding that knowledge and a thorough understanding of a topic is vital if a project is to succeed and attract financial support.

"First, you need to build a body of work that is engaging and meaningful. From that, comes interest from outside parties. There are a lot of different funding and grant programs out there, but there are also a lot of places that may not necessarily seem right at first; you need to dig deep and see what you're really trying to say with your photography. How is it relevant to others that may have some money to keep shooting? Look in unexpected places, have a developed body of work, and develop your CV (very important), as it gives credibility and recognition."

Cultural and education manager Fiona Rogers has worked at Magnum Photos for eight years and set up an online platform Firecracker in 2011 to support European women photographers. Photographers are brought to her attention via a network of industry professionals and there are currently 24 women showcased. "I see the agency as a microcosm for a wider issue," she says. "There appear to be less women working as photographers and more choosing a professional path such as art buyers, dealers, picture editors etc. I felt that it was important to give promotion to this smaller percentage of photographers."

To this end, the Firecracker Photographic Grant was launched last year to help a female photographer complete a documentary project. The £1,000 prize, including support from Genesis Imaging, was juried by industry specialists from a cross-section of disciplines and sectors and was awarded to British photographer Jo Metson Scott for The Grey Line. The work is described as "a sensitive documentation of soldiers speaking out against the Iraq war" and will be published by Dewi Lewis in March 2013.

Another award that is helping younger photographers, who are aged between 16 and 30 and based in the UK, is the IdeasTap Photographic Award. Through a process of nomination and selection 12 photographers receive cash prizes and mentoring from industry professionals. Recent award winners include Pierfrancesco Celada, who produced a multimedia work, Japan I wish I knew her name at Magnum in Motion NY (2011), Maria Gruzdeva and Roman Sakovich (2012).

Approaching prospective clients independently can also pay dividends for those willing to put in the groundwork and prepare a pitch. Toby Smith graduated from the London College of Communication with a Masters in Contemporary Photography (2009) and is now one of a core group of Getty Images Reportage photographers, having previously been a "Featured" photographer.

Since he finished studying, Smith has pushed hard to get four major projects off the ground and sold. "The Scotland project was a real transition point," he says of his third project. "I did a lot of research and discovered that no one had done a project on hydroelectricity in Scotland. It was a subject that completely suited my portfolio photography, my interests and my aims, so I put a proposal together. I also thought that if I couldn't attract money for this type of project with my proposal, then I really needed to rethink things."

To this end, Smith employed a freelancer on a win-fee basis to help him and together they scoped the project and approached Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE). Smith got an appointment and spent £200 travelling to Scotland for the meeting. "It was a lucky shot. For the position I was in my career, they took a risk and gave me access and £12,000 (not much for a major project). I was honest in the meeting and sincere about it being my first major project since leaving uni. But rather than seeing it as a risk, they saw it as an opportunity." Two years later, Smith has been contacted by the energy company to do more work.

The world of photojournalism has experienced seismic shifts in the way it is produced and experienced. With the digital age, there are a greater range of funding opportunities available due to changes in communications technologies. But in the end not much has changed. Initiative, creativity, drive and persistence are still key.

Canon Female Photojournalists Award 8,000 euros (£7,000) is granted by the Association of Female Journalists, funded by Canon France and supported by Figaro Magazine, for women photojournalists to finance their projects and have their work exhibited at the festival in Perpignan, and later in Paris at the Cosmos Gallery.

Dorethea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize A fund of $10,000 (£6,500), a solo exhibition at the Center for Documentary Studies and inclusion in the Archive of Documentary Arts at Rubenstein Library, Duke University. The prize is to support documentary artists - working alone or in teams - who are involved in extended, ongoing fieldwork projects that rely on and exploit, in intriguing and effective ways, the interplay of words and images in the creation and presentation of their work.

Firecracker Photo Grant £1,000, plus other in kind support, for a female photographer working on a documentary project.

Ian Parry Scholarship International photographic competition for young photographers, who are either attending a full-time photographic course or are under 24, towards their chosen assignment.

Ideas Tap Photographic Award Twelve photographers are shortlisted and receive funds and mentoring to shoot their project. Two winners receive £5,000 and a paid Magnum internship in either New York or in London.

Inge Morath Award An annual award for a woman photographer under thirty years of age to assist in the completion of a long-term documentary project.

Magnum Emergency Fund This supports experienced photographers with a commitment to documenting social issues, working long-term, and engaging with an issue over time.

Syngenta Photography Award Exploring global challenges with $65,000 (£42,000) in prizes, including a professional commission.

Miranda Gavin is a photographic educator, journalist and photographer and Deputy and Online Editor of the bimonthly contemporary photography magazine HotShoe . Twitter: @MirandaGavin

A bolt of lightning - surely not a message from above - was photographed striking the lightning rod on the top St Peter's Basilica, not by one, but two photographers. Or, indeed, maybe more?

One of those was photographer Alessandro Di Meo, who was in the area following the breaking news of the resignation. When the first bolt struck, he immediately moved to a position where he would be able to record another strike. It was, he says, a race against time but also against misfortune.

"While I was cleaning the lens from raindrops a first lightning bolt hit the dome and I could not help but watch," he says.

"Bad luck. However it was not enough to discourage me, so I went on to persevere in an attempt to try to make the picture as well as I had imagined. I tried again several times until a bolt of lightning struck the cupola just as I was taking the shot."

For those not aware, to take a photograph of lightning you must open the shutter and hope - or perhaps pray. You can't wait until you see a flash and press the shutter release, as you will, of course, have missed the event.

The trick is to frame the shot and set the camera for a long exposure, then any bolts that appear in the frame will be captured in all their glory.

Di Meo's camera was in fact balanced on a fence to ensure it did not move during the long exposure, though no doubt a tripod would have been used had one been available. He set his camera for an exposure time of eight seconds, at f/9 aperture and 50 ISO.

"Of course, the camera was set to manual and I mounted a wide angle lens that allowed me to include the whole church in the frame," he says.

Inevitably there were discussions around the authenticity of the picture, but as long as you know what you are doing, and have some luck, then lightning pictures are not too tricky. Saying that, I can gladly own up to having missed a few in my time.

The skill, as demonstrated here, is good framing and ensuring the result is dramatic.

"I understand that the picture may be incredible," says Di Meo. "Photos of lightning have always been done, but the only difference, in this case, is that it is the right place and at the right time."

AFP photographer Filippo Monteforte was also in the right place at the right time. He captured the same scene having also found a good vantage point sheltering in the columns around St Peter's Square. He shot on a 50mm lens and waited for two hours. He told AFP, "The first bolt was huge and lit up the sky, but unfortunately I missed it. I had better luck the second time, and was able to snap a couple of images of the dome illuminated by the bolt."

And of course who can forget the picture of lightning seeming to strike the Eiffel Tower or bolts striking the Bay Bridge in San Francisco by Phil McGrew.

If anyone reading this also recorded the moment do get in touch and send your picture to Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you.

Sigal's role was to help establish TV and radio stations, as well as to train journalists on his journey which took him to Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan.

His black and white pictures are hard to decipher as his constant moving from one place to another means we never quite come to rest on one thing, capturing moments of joy as well as the daily struggle of those working hard to survive.

Paul Roth writes in the afterword to Sigal's book, White Road: "Reality can't be simplified into news, or summed up in storylines. It began before the photographer arrived, and continues after he leaves."

That's true of all pictures, they are but a moment we have anchored in time by fixing it with the camera's gaze. Here the fact that Sigal is in the former Soviet states add to that impact, as his pictures echo the struggle of those countries to establish their own identities.

The book title, White Road, means safe journey in Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek, words that are printed on road signs at the edges of Central Asian towns, wishing travellers well as they enter the emptiness of the steppe. The work stands as both a record of Sigal's journey and of the communities he met.

Here are a few frames from Ivan Sigal's odyssey.

And here are a few of Sigal's panoramic shots

White Road by Ivan Sigal is published by Steidl.