An ill irregular immigrant lies on the ground as a blanket is placed over him at the Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) Maritime Squadron base at Haywharf in Valletta’s Marsamxett Harbour, early June 8, 2014. 129 Sub-Saharan African migrants were rescued by the AFM south of the Maltese islands when their boat ran into difficulties, according to army sources.

When the whole press corps descends onto the base to cover arrivals, we’re usually restricted to a fixed point position which doesn’t give much freedom to get different pictures from each other. However, in this case, only three members of the media, including myself, were present – it was a middle of the night start to the working day – so we were free to pretty much go wherever we wanted as long as we didn’t get in the way of the soldiers and police officers on the scene.

To get this photo, I placed the camera on the ground and used its Live View mode to quickly compose the shot. As I started shooting, a soldier placed a blanket over the migrant, and the best frame of the sequence showed just the right amount of blur of the soldier’s hand as it moved away.

Canon EOS 5D Mk III
Canon EF16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
Focal length 35mm
Manual exposure
Shutter 1/8 sec
Aperture f/2.8
ISO 4000