The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets From One of the World's Top Shooters

staggered out of his office. Mel Scott, the deputy picture editor, saw me with my eyeballs rolling around. He knew what’d happened.

    He motioned to come into his office and closed the door. “Okay Joe, what you gotta do now is put all that stuff out of your head and just go make a picture. Ya hear me?” He had this great Texas accent. “Just go make a picture.”

    John and Mel were the best good cop/bad cop act in all of photography. John would get you to think (and occasionally scare the bejeezus out of you), and Mel would calm you down and tell you everything was gonna be all right.

    As photographers, as an industry, we sorely miss both of them.

     

It Only Takes One…
    “Feeling pretty good, huh, kid? That’s an attaboy, a good job… just remember,” he said, “It only takes one ‘aw, shit’ to wipe out three ‘attaboys’.”

    It was a picture of a famously huge argument and I got it because I lied. A real New York story.
     
    The person I lied to was Larry DeSantis, the legendary UPI pictures editor, a giant, bespectacled bear of a man who was anything but cuddly. You loved him, you hated him, and at all times, you feared him.

    I came to Larry’s attention in 1978, while I was participating in what was at that time a rite of passage in the New York newspaper industry, a strike. While the pen may be mightier than the sword, in the New York press game, the truck is mightier than the sword, the pen, and the camera put together. The pressmen had gone on strike, the drivers sided with them, and that was that. Management could write the paper, shoot the paper, and even print the paper, but what was the point if you couldn’t deliver it?
     
    The Daily News shut down for 88 days and, though I was still just a copy boy, I started shooting pictures for UPI. I was right up their alley in terms of employment: a warm body with a camera who was willing to work cheap. One day in the office, Larry looked at me and croaked, “You ever shoot baseball?” Enter the lie. “Oh, yeah,” I gushed. “Syracuse (my college town) had a semi-pro team. I shot baseball all the time.” As was his way, Larry grabbed me by my belt and pulled me toward his desk. Still holding my belt, Larry took a Yankees credential and stuffed it into my crotch. “Third base,” was all he said.

    I floated down the hallways toward the elevators. I was just a copy boy at the News , and here I had the UPI third base credential for the Yankees-KC playoffs in my underwear! Then it hit me. I had never shot a baseball game before in my life.
     
    As a photographer, when asked such questions by an editor, you should always say yes, even if the assignment terrifies you. (Actually, especially if it terrifies you.) That is not to say such adventurism doesn’t produce qualms and difficulties. In those days of wet darkrooms, when some technician was working like a stevedore in a closet-sized room in the bowels of an athletic stadium, and the film was getting ripped out of the hypo, sloshed in some water, louped, and printed while still wet, you obviously didn’t overshoot and send roll upon roll back to the beleaguered processing operation. During a big playoff game, you’d shoot everything, but you didn’t ship everything.

    I was so terrified in my first games that I shot like mad, and shipped like mad. At the end of one dismal effort on my part, Larry motioned me over, in disgust. If you’d put a nun’s habit on him, I would’ve felt like I was in third grade again.

    “Tonight,” he said, “You set the world’s record for shipping me INSIGNIFICANT film. Ground balls. Pop ups. What’s this garbage? @!!%$#$!”

    He concluded with a brief analysis of my ancestry and a quick overview of his rather dim hopes for my future in the business.
     
    This was all done quite publicly. I felt like my pants had been taken down in front of the entire N.Y. press corps, many of whom were enjoying the rookie’s embarrassment.

    The next night, I got this picture, which became one of the most widely published of the playoffs. I watched it spin on the wire machine after the game, feeling redemption with every beep of the transmission. Larry walked up to me. “Feeling pretty good, huh, kid?” he asked. Nodding with affirmation, he continued, “That’s an attaboy, a good job.” An enormous forefinger waved slowly in front of my face. “Just remember,” he said, “It only takes one ‘aw, shit’ to wipe out three