Ed Jones, Pedro Ugarte

“There was always someone there to watch you… It was well near impossible to find out what people were thinking,” said Pedro, who is photo director for Asia. “And because there is so little access for journalists, we felt duty bound to take as many photos as possible… On a five to six hour train trip, we spent all the time snapping away through the window, feeling guilty if we eased up for five minutes.”

Ed Jones felt pressure competing against so many big-name photographers. The scenes he best remembers came on the final day, in Pyongyang, when hundreds of dancers took part in a mass spectacle in Kim Il-Jung Square. “Photographers were in the stands, but towards the end we were able to go down and mix with the dancers on the square. It was an incredible experience to be surrounded by a perfectly choreographed crowd of dancers, acrobats and circus performers, beneath huge portraits of the leader. You had no idea which way to point your camera.”