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Every morning before John MacDougall leaves for work, the Agence France-Presse photographer takes a picture of his wife and keeps it saved in his digital camera.
"I like to have something nice to look at during the day," the 40-year-old said while scrolling through pictures he had taken for an assignment at the newly opened Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
MacDougall would be lying if he said being an AFP photographer located in Berlin was his dream job. For a long time, working for the French news wire was a way to see and go places, MacDougall said. Today, MacDougall seems less thrilled about his job.
"I'm a press photographer by chance, not by choice," he said.
The Paris-born German-American started working for AFP as an editor. He quit but a year later joined AFP in Hong Kong independently as a desk editor. MacDougall took his first photographer post in 1995 where he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for two and a half years.
In Jakarta, MacDougall basically helped to build the bureau from nothing. It is also where he met his wife, Edy.
After a five-year stay in New Delhi, MacDougall moved to Berlin in 2003. As the only AFP photographer in the area, MacDougall works mainly as a coordinator between AFP and the German newswire service DDP, which covers Berlin. MacDougall said he normally sits at a desk but gets outside to shoot assignments whenever he can.
Living in the east part of the city, public transportation is the only practical method of transportation for MacDougall. Between busses, trams, and railway systems that circulate in Berlin, MacDougall can move throughout the city fairly easily.
Most days MacDougall takes his 4-year-old son, Evan, to school using the tram. He then spends the rest of the morning at home with Edy, now pregnant with their second child, and works at his home computer. After MacDougall picks Evan up from school in the early afternoon, he heads to his office to finish any work that must be done there.
MacDougall had been shooting games for Berlin's professional soccer team, Hertha BSC, to prepare for shooting the Confederations Cup games which ended their season in May 2005. He said he enjoys shooting sports but it is not his specialty. He likes getting a variety of assignments to keep things from getting any more monotonous than working in an office can be most days.
MacDougall said though he liked the summer weather of Berlin, winters are too brutal and long. He thinks he would like to move back to Indonesia. Until that opportunity arrives, MacDougall will continue to ride his bike or the tram to his office at the base of the giant TV tower near Alexanderplatz, or walk under the Brandenburg Gate on his way to an assignment. |
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