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Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk flies under the CN Tower at the exhibition in Skydome, Toronto, August 23, 2002. (Photo by Zoran Bozicevic)

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Nicole Kidman walks the red carpet at Toronto film festival in 2003. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

Taking pictures during the annual Toronto film festival often brought me face-to-face with some of the biggest movie stars of the day. Friends non-photographers often ask me who I thought was the best-looking among them. While, of course, this is a highly subjective question, my answer is always - Nicole Kidman. Personally, I am not a huge fan of her as an actress, but the day she walked on the red carpet for the screening of "The Human Stain" movie in 2003, she was resplendent in white, her skin, hair and makeup goddess-like and she glowed with otherworldly beauty. When she stepped on the carpet that evening, an awed hush fell over the always screaming and extremely noisy corner where we photographers were stacked 4 rows high. The photographs don't do her justice - she literally stole our collective breath away that night.

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Luka Modrić plays for Dinamo Zagreb vs. Glasgow Rangers during an exhibition match in Toronto in 2005. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

In 2005 I was sent to cover an exhibition soccer match Dinamo Zagreb vs. Glasgow Rangers in Toronto. I didn’t really follow soccer at the time and those guys playing were unknown to me. Imagine my surprise when, going through old pictures, I found young Luka Modric playing for the Zagreb’s side. He, of course, went on to become one of the best players in the world, and I was blissfully unaware that I photographed him when he was still young up-and-coming player.

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An old woman walks through the downtown Grozny searching for something to eat or items she can use. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

In August 1996, when the armed conflict in the Balkans settled into a restive cease fire, I was sent to cover the war in Chechnya, southern Russia. Even though I covered the war in the Balkans for over 5 years by then, the amount of firepower and devastation inflicted on Chechen capital Grozny was something I have never seen before. During a lull in fighting on a hot summer day I found myself in the downtown Grozny. An old granny with kind, wrinkled face and head wrapped in a blood-red kerchief emerged between the buildings and started rummaging in the heaps of rubble and garbage piled high on the sidewalk. She saw me standing there with cameras on my shoulders and smiled, saying something I didn’t understand. I smiled back and waved. Then she bent and from the heap that towered over her pulled an army boot. Her face lit up. She turned it in hands, then looked in it, frowned, and shook something out of the boot. Charred toes tumbled out. Unfazed, she held it next to her slippered foot, then shook her head realizing it was much too big. She tossed it back on the heap and continued walking down the street between destroyed buildings with market stalls and kiosks and I took this picture.

I took some pictures earlier of her going through the rubble too, but they were not really telling the story. And, I didn’t quite realize what was it that she had shaken out of the boot until she moved on and I went over to check. Then my stomach did a flip.

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Avril Lavigne performed at Much Music Video Awards in June 2003.

I was at the event mostly to send pictures of 3 other photographers who had access to the stage. Busy in the media room I got a call from one of the guys saying he missed Avril Lavigne and she’s about to go on the main stage while he’s stuck at another one. Avril was one of the biggest young stars of Canadian popular music. Although another photographer was waiting to shoot the interview with her behind the stage, we couldn’t miss her performance. I grabbed my camera and ran out of the media room. My spot was at the back of the Much Music TV parking lot where the main stage was based, and to the side. It wasn’t ideal; I was shooting through metal construction that held lights and over the crowd. Worse, I arrived as she was ending her set. This is the shot I got. At least we had her performance. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

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In the early days of the war in Croatia in 1991 a police station in the town of Pakrac, east of Zagreb, was attacked over night. The following morning the whole area was teeming with police and military units. I saw this unit combing the area for possible signs of attackers. The tension and weariness was written on their faces. We shot black and white those days, as the newspaper I worked for had no colour pages (yet). Lack of colour attributed to the tense mood of the picture and conveyed silent resolve of the soldiers. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

That’s probably why, without my knowledge, it somehow ended on a poster “Hrvatska vas zove” calling for volunteers to join the defence of Croatia. I was working for Vecernji List, the largest daily newspaper at the time. The paper often gave copies of our photographs to various governmental and media organizations for documentation and publication. Apparently, this was the first war poster of Croatian war and is entered in several museums dealing with the war topics. It even featured in a few movies - Harrison’s Flowers being one of them.

In the story of that poster I’m usually mentioned somewhere in the footnote, while the credit was given to the designer.

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Working for a Toronto daily newspaper creates constant demand for fresh photos of the city’s landmarks. They are used (much too often, in my opinion) to illustrate a story for which there was no relevant pictures.

One slow news night in October 2002 I cruised through downtown Toronto and did just that - took night pictures of the recognizable landmarks. And, nothing is more recognizable for Toronto than CN Tower and Skydome. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

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Moment of explosion in an army warehouse in Sesvete, near Zagreb, in April 1994. (Zoran Bozicevic photo)

In April 1994 the Associated Press office in Zagreb got a call about thick smoke coming from an army base in Sesvete near Zagreb, Croatia. The base, which was previously used for decades by Yugoslav Army (JNA), for the last two years was securely in Croatian Army’s hands. This far from the front line it couldn’t have been an enemy attack. Since we couldn’t get information about the origin of the smoke I grabbed my cameras and went to investigate. I was turned away at a military checkpoint and couldn’t get closer to the base, so I scouted the tallest apartments building in the area and went door-knocking on the top floor. A nice young couple let me take a look from their balcony. Sure enough, the smoke was still visible from the forest on the base. As I aimed my lens on it, a deep rumble emanated from the direction of the smoke. It grew in volume and soon I could feel it tremble through my whole body. It felt, I imagine, like a sleeping volcano waking with a thunder. And then the thunder came, a wave of hot air hit me and, on an instinct, I pressed the shutter just as a massive ball of fire burst up. A series of explosions followed. Strange objects fell from the sky - ammunition boxes full of smouldering rounds, loose bullets, some empty casings and even grenades!

Later we found out that an ammunition warehouse on the base caught fire and did exactly what it does in the movies - exploded! Five soldiers were killed on the base in the accident, but miraculously, there were no civilian casualties.