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

of commentary to your imagination.)

    Some folks are gonna love your stuff and some are gonna hate it. Some editors will adore you as a shooter, and others wouldn’t assign you to an “Editor’s Note” job.
     
    I’ve always taken solace in the philosophy of good ol’ Miss Lillian, Jimmy Carter’s mom. Campaigning for her son, she was brought up short by an earnest young gentleman who shared that he liked her a lot, but he wasn’t going to vote for her son.

    She just laughed and patted him on the cheek. “That’s okay son, we didn’t expect it to be unanimous.”

     

    Miss Lillian Carter
A Little Terror Can Be Quite Helpful

    Never underestimate terror as a motivational tool.
     
    National Geographic sent me to Hawaii to come up with an unusual picture of the Ironman Triathlon.

    I was psyched. An underwater view of the Ironman! I did the whole thing—Zodiac boat, underwater camera rigs, permissions, you name it. I was ready.
     
    Morning of the race. I’m in position (40 feet below the surface) waiting for the start. A few swimmers go overhead. Then a couple. Then nobody.

    Ever get that sick feeling in your gut, the one that lets you know you really screwed the pooch? I had drifted on my dive. The swimmers went wide of me.
     
    I surface and throw myself into the Zodiac boat and race to the first turn hoping the swimmers would gang up again. I’m trying to reload my cameras and regrease the O-rings as I’m being tossed around in the boat, slammin’ through the waves. No luck at the turn. So we haul a$$ to get to the finish before them. I throw myself into the water again.

    It gets worse. As soon as I hit the water, one of my strobes goes disco, a sure sign of a flooded rig. I drop it on the bottom. I see the swimmers starting to funnel down into the finish and I get a camera ready.
     
    And then my regulator starts getting pulled out of my mouth. I look up, and my air tank had slipped its cinch (my bad) and was wanting to scream to the surface, my air supply with it.

    I reach up, grab the tank, and tuck it under my left arm. With my right hand, I got a camera to my mask, and squeezed two frames of the bunched swimmers. They never grouped up again like this. I was done for the day.
     
    I mean, how was I gonna call my editor and explain that I just freakin’ missed 2,500 relatively slow-moving people?

    “Never underestimate terror as a motivational tool. I mean, how was I gonna call my editor and explain that I just freakin’ missed 2,500 relatively slow-moving people?”
It’s Hard to Strike a Balance
    “She reached over with her little hand and patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry, Daddy, just do the best you can.’”

    Occasionally I am asked about how to balance the life of a photog with, well, life. In response, I have described my three roles of husband, father, and photographer as three people drowning at once. There is a lot of grabbing, splashing, and flailing about, no one is on the surface for very long, and generally none of the three of us are doing particularly well.
     
    Sometimes you try to be a good dad and it means you’re a bad photographer—you go into the field with no sleep, no prep, and without an idea in your head. The converse is often true. Prepare, get obsessive, dwell on the job, go out there and knock it back and bask in the reverb of a good frame, dream about the phone ringing from JLo’s agent for the cover of her next CD, and…what were my kids’ names again?

    I used to even screw up bedtime stories, I was so exhausted most of the time. Caitlin (my 22-year-old daughter) regularly busts me about this now. She even remembers the night I returned from a job in Chicago and tried to tell her the story of the three little pigs. Somehow, what came out of my mouth was, “And all the ships were made of bricks, and it was a good night to Chicago.” No joke. That twist on the old fable stuck in her head, and she trots it out now and then to embarrass me.

    We were snuggled one night, and I looked at her and said, “You know, sweetie, daddy’s so tired tonight, I don’t think I can even get through one story.” She was about two. She reached over with her little hand and patted me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, daddy, just do the best you can.”

     

    Claire and Caity
Ask the Tough Question
    “Always ask the tough question. It’s a long plane flight home if you don’t. And the more sensitive the question, the more it needs