Photo journalist Danish Siddiqui shares his story of how he captured this image which features on page 15 of the article Follow Me in our recent Reuters Magazine: The Leadership Issue.

30 Jul 2012Thomson Reuters

It was the evening before the start of one of the most of important stories in India last year, when well-known social activist Anna Hazare took his fight against corruption to Mumbai, commencing on what was to be a 3-day hunger strike. I was at the venue to take some pictures of the preparations. Suddenly I heard a motor noise and saw a municipal health worker fumigating the venue to prevent malaria. Like me many photographers started chasing the worker to take pictures. For me, however, the story was not the worker fumigating the grounds, but the reaction of the people to the fumes.

As most people present covered their faces, I saw a supporter of Anna Hazare waving an Indian national flag in the middle of the fumes. I just had few seconds to take the picture before the fumes disappeared. I took one straight picture of the guy in between the fumes and for the next picture I went down and shot a few frames from low angle. I wanted the picture to be clean with the flag, the man and the fumes. What I wanted, I got in three frames and before I could change my position the fumes disappeared. The next day, the picture was on the front page of The New York Times and was used by many other online publications.

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