For the past three weeks, Marcus Yam has been capturing harrowing images of the war in Ukraine, as he pulls long hours in the face of unpredictable and deadly attacks.
Yam, a photojournalist and foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, is covering the conflict in the capital of Kyiv. The biggest challenge for photojournalists in the region, he said, are the military bombardments.
While out in the field, "We were just sitting ducks half the time, waiting for artillery to land around us," he told NPR's Scott Simon.
Heading into war zones "goes against every instinct we have," he said, but that "we as photographers, as photojournalists, try our very, very best to capture human emotion."
Yam, who knew Zakrzewski, described him as a "very kind soul."
"He looked out for all of a lot of people that he considered friends," he said. "Going into Ukraine, he gave me advice on security issues, on evacuation routes and ... resources that were available to him."
Ashley Lisenby and Matthew Schuerman produced and edited the audio version of this story for broadcast.
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Ashley Lisenby is the race, identity and culture reporter at St. Louis Public Radio. She came to KWMU from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where she was a general assignment reporter who mostly covered county municipal government issues. Before making the switch to radio, Ashley covered Illinois government for The Associated Press in Springfield, Illinois, and neighborhood goings-on at a weekly newspaper in a Chicago suburb. Ashley is a Chicago native (yes, the city not the suburbs). She has a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University.