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

make them look different.”

    Turn the page and I’m at spring training, bombing around with a movie grip truck, an 18-wheeler, lighting up the Citrus League, doing simulated action pictures of the defensive stars of baseball. We shot them at dusk, after the games, and had to draw so much electric that we needed a truck with a 600-amp generator so we could fire the 10 to 15 2,400-watt-second Speedotrons we were routinely using.
     
    Shot Eric Davis of the Reds, star outfielder, stellar defender, specialist at the leap-at-the-wall-rob-your-ass-of-a-home-run move. Which is exactly what we set up.

    We lit up the outfield, got Eric out there, tossed a ball up to the wall, and he’d leap spectacularly and grab it. You’re out!

    “Listen to your assistant. They can save your butt.”

    I was shooting a Mamiya RZ with a 50mm lens, on a sandbag lying on the grass. Things were going great. I had about 10 frames of Superman-type leaps. Small problem—they were all on one piece of film.
     
    The Mamiya has this clutch button that if it’s depressed, you can fire the camera but not advance the film. Ideal for multiple exposures, if that’s what you’re in the mood to shoot.

    My assistant on the job, Howard Simmons, who has gone on to a terrific career as a staffer at the Daily News , was roaming, as all good assistants do. He bent over to check the camera I was shooting. I heard a gasp. He whispered in my ear, “We have shot no film.” He left out the “dumb$#!%” part, which I appreciated.

    Whaddaya do? Eric was ready to leave. He was huffing and puffing. “Uh, hey, Eric, those looked sooooooo fantastic that I need to get just a few more on another roll of film. You know, just in case we lose the one we just shot.”

    Or in case some idiot behind the camera made art when he should’ve been making pictures.

     

    Eric Davis
Get a Camera Where You Ain’t
    Sometimes the camera has to do all the work. You may have to do a lot of work to get that camera into the right spot, but then you just have to sit back and hope it all goes okay.
     
    I worked for about three weeks to get this camera attached to the frame of a T-38 during a flight with Senator John Glenn in the back seat. Anything that gets attached to a tactical aircraft has to go up, down, and sideways through an approval process.

    Then, when you get the approval, ya gotta figure out a way to make it stay put while the flyboys are up there rockin’ and rollin’.
     
    It would not have been a good day in the field if this camera had gotten loose in the cockpit.

    The NASA engineers were great about it, devising plates and bolts to get it tucked away safely. This particular shot was with a Nikon N90 and a 16mm fisheye.
     
    Senator Glenn and I shared a credit in the magazine on this, which was a cool thing. I told him, “John, just squeeze the button (on a remote cord run to his fingers) and look toward the light.” He did it perfectly.

    Working with the Senator was one of the honors of my career. He was great about being photographed. I always teased him that he had gone to the Ralph Morse School of Being a Photo Subject.

    “Sometimes the camera has to do all the work. You may have to do a lot of work to get that camera into the right spot, but then you just have to sit back and hope it all goes right.”

     

    John Glenn
Take a Chance
    When I got offered three weeks of day rates to shoot the first launch of the space shuttle, I walked into my job at ABC television and quit. I promptly converted those day rates to a plane ticket to Northern Ireland. It was 1981 and the hunger strikers in the H blocks were about to die. The place was gonna blow.

    I went over with my bud Johnny Roca, a Daily News shooter. He was great companionship. We’d be in the middle of a riot, rocks and bottles everywhere, rubber bullets flying, and he’d nudge me, “Joe, you can’t believe the blond in the upstairs window across the street.”

    It was back in the day when ABC had a trio of anchors: Frank Reynolds in Washington, Max Robinson in Chicago, and Peter Jennings in London. They only moved these guys out from behind the desk for a really big story. Sure enough, they moved Jennings to Belfast. My old boss at ABC got word to me to try to get a photo of Jennings. A day rate is a powerful motivational tool when you’re broke, so I promptly looked him up.
     
    He was cool with it. I ended up photographing him numerous times during his career. He was a good