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

have to do some flying. Thankfully, Bill Douthitt, my editor, was smart enough to know I had to train up. He allotted some budget money for me to get some time in civilian aerobatic stunt planes.

    I started flying in an Extra 300, which is basically an engine with wings. It was a tough stretch. Every morning, I would wake up knowing I was gonna retch my guts out at least two or three times. But I had to do it. I couldn’t have my head between my legs while I was supposed to be shooting.

    The pilot who flew me was great. He gave me the stick and pushed me to fly high-G maneuvers, all the while looking out of the aircraft and identifying what I was seeing on the horizon. It developed what pilots refer to as “situational awareness.”

    It helped me survive my flights and come back with pictures. I ticked over 9.2 Gs once or twice, and thus became familiar with the anti-G straining maneuver, which means to tense the entire lower part of your body, from your toes right up through your gut, all the while grunting and breathing in explosive gasps.

    Pilots, when they drop their reserved use of language, will refer to it as, “cracking a walnut with your butt cheeks.”

    “I started flying in an Extra 300, which is basically an engine with wings. It was a tough stretch. Every morning, I would wake up knowing I was gonna retch my guts out at least two or three times. But I had to do it.”

     

     

    Jenny Gutierrez
    Try Not to Kill Yourself
     

    I never ask someone to do something for the camera I wouldn’t do. This has gotten me into trouble. Trying to combine the water and bike elements of the triathlon, I thought Jenny Gutierrez, America’s representative in the women’s triathlon for the Sydney Olympic Games, could pedal a bike off a diving board into a pool, and I would be at the bottom photographing her descent, backlit with strobes, in an explosion of bubbles.

    “I never ask someone to do something for the camera I wouldn’t do. This has gotten me into trouble.”

    Crazy as it sounds, I got on the bike and started to demonstrate how I wanted this to go, oblivious to the idiocy of me showing an Olympic athlete how to do something physical. I was about halfway down the board when I realized I didn’t have nearly enough speed to clear it. The front wheel went off, the gear chain hung up on the end, and I pitched headfirst toward the water.

    Thing was, the back end of the bike whipped around at frightening speed, and smacked into me. Right between the legs. While I was at the bottom of the pool, I was in so much pain I actually considered drowning. I mean, if I just died, the pain would stop, right? (My wife, Annie, was horrified at this story when I told her, mostly at my stupidity and the possibility I might have been seriously injured. “You’re lucky the bike didn’t crack you right in the head!” she exclaimed. I told her that would have been preferable.)
    Don’t Just Take No For An Answer
     

    In retrospect, they should’ve just said “yes” right away. I’d been inserted in the loop by National Geographic as the official NASA photographer of record for STS-95, better known as John Glenn’s return to space. So I figured I’d (de facto) be able to dive in the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory), which is where astronauts train for weightless EVA assignments. An EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) means the astronaut is outside the shuttle or International Space Station (ISS), fixing or attaching something. So, you train in the NBL to do an EVA to fix the ISS. Welcome to NASA….

    They said no. I wasn’t trained, it wouldn’t be safe, and they could shoot the picture for me. Maybe when I’m in the field for the Geographic I feel the weight of 15 million pairs of eyes counting on me, and I’m not going to take no from a mid-level government functionary who wants to have an easier day. Maybe it’s because I was raised Irish Catholic and grew up with a terrible resentment of authority. Maybe it’s because I devoured lots of comic books as a kid and just wanted to go diving with the spacemen. Whatever. (I have teenage daughters, so I say that a lot.)

    I took the written commercial diving test. I took the swimming test. I took the diving test in the pool, which, by the way, is 100′ × 200′ × 40′ deep. After about five weeks of mulling this over, NASA finally broke down and said “yes,” and gave me a date to dive.

    First call I made was to Pete Romano, one of the great guys in the