Witch Doctor John Odima

My portrait of a Witch Doctor made it in to the final edit of this year’s Press Photographers Year competition.  146 photographs were selected from 7,877 so I am delighted.

I shot the picture of the 91-year-old Witch Doctor John Odima in Kogelo in Kenya for the Sun. The witch lives in President Obama’s ancestral home and claims that he helped Obama to become the next President of the United States.
Sun reporter Oliver Harvey and I went to visit him in his tiny mud hut. He had chicken feet hanging from his roof, a live toad in a bucket and other dead animals including a rat. I used the small amount of available light from a window and got him wearing his hat, I then asked him to place his hands on his cheeks and open his mouth. He was slightly mad and with his crooked teeth I couldn’t have asked for a better subject. I shot about twenty frames at 6400 ISO at 15th of a second and only two were sharp. There wasn’t much time to photograph the witch as many locals started to gather outside his home. A lot of them had various problems and were desperate for the Doctor to help them.
The picture can be seen at the Press photographers Year exhibition at the London’s National Theatre from July 4th until August 31st.

The Exhibition at the National Theatre

This is Rafael Josef at the Psychiatricka Lecebna prison/hospital in Havlickuv Brod in the Czech Republic. I was sent to the specialist unit to cover a feature about castration for the Sun. Reporter Oliver Harvey and I spent four hours with four of the Czech Republic’s most violent sex offenders.  At the hospital they castrate a lot of their patients and they believe that this stops  their sexual need. We interviewed each criminal individually and then I photographed each one in their cell.  All four men looked exactly how you would expect a paedophile or sex attacker to look and I got the feeling that most of them enjoyed telling us how they attacked and killed their victims.

For each portrait I used available light and tried to capture the evilness of each person. I noticed this man’s terrible cross-eyes and wanted to shoot lots of close ups of his face. With the padeophile (pictured above) I noticed how badly he was dressed and his deadly stare.  I noticed a teddy bear on his bed so I shot it quite wide. He continued staring  and I found this quite intimidating. I was pleased to leave the hospital but found it a very interesting experience.

See how the story was used in ‘The Sun’