[3] He produced books, films and other work that "ranged from multi-screen installations, to fly-poster exhibitions, to handheld device downloads"[4] and was a regular contributor to Vanity Fair.

[4] That trip made him realise he "wanted to make images", so he "worked for three to four years, going to night school in photography before eventually going back to college.

[7] He spent much of the next decade in West Africa, documenting political upheaval and its effects on daily life in Liberia, Sierra Leone,[14] Nigeria, and other countries.

In 2006, Hetherington took a break from image-making to work as an investigator for the United Nations Security Council's Liberia Sanctions Committee.

[17] Hetherington made several trips to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 with writer Sebastian Junger, on assignment for Vanity Fair.

He also created a unique video installation called Sleeping Soldiers, first shown at the 2009 New York Photo Festival.

[26][27] Hetherington survived the initial incident and was loaded into a van alive, but died due to excessive blood loss.

[28] Hetherington was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London, survived by his partner, parents, sister, brother, and several nieces and nephews.

Anti-Gaddafi protesters also held a march to the newly renamed Tim Hetherington Square in his honour.

"We have named the square after this hero and I now consider Tim as one of our martyrs," Al Jazeera quoted a Libyan surgeon in the city as saying.

[30] Senator John McCain sent two American flags to a memorial service in New York: one was given to the Hetherington family; the other was presented to filmmaker Idil Ibrahim,[24] Hetherington's life partner and co-worker at Zeila Films, where he had served as head cinematographer / director of photography.

[33] The Tim Hetherington Grant is awarded annually by World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch to a photographer who has participated in a recent World Press Photo Contest in order to finalise a project on a human rights theme.

[60][61] Its website states its mission is "to preserve the legacy of Tim's professional life as a visual storyteller and human rights advocate" including "the support and nurture of new work that continues the ideals demonstrated by Tim with special emphasis on humanitarian and social concerns".