A group of 104 sub-Saharan Africans on board a rubber dinghy reach out for life jackets tossed to them by rescuers of the NGO Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) some 25 miles off the Libyan coast October 4, 2014. MOAS, a privately-funded humanitarian initiative, began operating at the end of August and has assisted in the rescue of some 2,500 migrants crossing from Libyan shores towards Europe.
As an official photographer for the NGO Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), I was able to get up close to migrants out at sea in a way I had never been able to before, as already discussed in an earlier blog post. Things were happening fast once we came alongside the migrants’ dinghy, and I had to shoot equally quickly. Not blindly mind you – just that there wasn’t much time to think about things apart from composition and timing. It was only later that evening, browsing through the images on my laptop, that I realised I’d captured something special. This was the first image that stopped me in my tracks as I did my initial selection and edit.
Canon EOS-1D X
Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
Focal length 70mm
Shutter priority
Aperture f/3.5
Shutter 1/2000 sec
ISO 500
Islelanders 