Post by whoopi on Dec 11, 2006 13:14:13 GMT 8
The Bridges of Madison County (1992) is a fictional account of an episode in the life of a National Geographic photographer. Believing that the book's character, Robert Kincaid, did not accurately represent the magazine's photographers, the editors of National Geographic published an article in 1995 to set the record straight. The article gives readers a look into the life of an exciting, if often challenging, career.
Reel to Real
By Cathy Newman
So there's this guy Robert Kincaid. Photographer. Drives a pickup truck. Plays guitar. Doesn't eat meat but smokes Camels. Goes out to Iowa to shoot the covered bridges of Madison County for National Geographic magazine. Romances a farmer's wife. Loves her. Leaves her.
An off-the-charts best-seller. Nine million sold and still counting. Now it's a movie with Clint Eastwood as Kincaid.
Is that how it is with our photographers on assignment? Hardly.
When hundreds of our readers wrote to ask when we published that story on the covered bridges, we had to say we didn't. (We have done the Brooklyn Bridge.)
But The Bridges of Madison County? Pure fiction. All make-believe, especially the part about getting the assignment.
Robert Kincaid, Imaginary Hero, caught the attention of National Geographic editors because of a photograph he took for a calendar. When he called the magazine, he was told: "We're ready for you anytime."
Our troops hoot at that one.
"Nothing against calendar shots, but ours is a different game," says Kent Kobersteen, associate director of photography. He means that a single photograph-no matter how beautiful-isn't a foot in the door.
"We need to see an entire body of work. We're looking for real moments of real people doing real things."
Competition for space in the magazine is unbelievably fierce. Each year we receive hundreds of story ideas. Each year we publish about 70. Even with the most promising portfolio, the path to the GEOGRAPHIC is paved with heartbreak.
To test a young photographer named David Alan Harvey, now retired director of photography Bob Gilka sent him to Cooperstown, New York, on a trial assignment. After three weeks, Harvey csent in his film.
"Dave, I'm glad you're young and strong, because what I have to tell you is going to make you feel sick and old," Gilka's letter began.
He was right: The coverage had been superficial "postcard photography," and both of them knew it. Years later on his first assignment-Tangier Island-Harvey got it right.
For David Doubilet, an underwater photographer, Gilka was the lord of nightmares.
"There is nothing new here," Gilka rumbled after reviewing the best of Doubilet's early work. Doubilet slunk out.
A year and many new pictures later Doubilet got his first assignment. Then another. And another. After 24 years he has 38 stories to his credit.
The job never gets easier. "An assignment is a mighty mountain that you climb, mostly alone," says Sam Abell, a staff photographer. "The older I get, the more the mountain seems to incline backward over my head. It doesn't become smaller. It becomes taller."
Getting Ready & Gearing Up
He went through his mental checklist: two hundred rolls of assorted film; tripods; cooler; three cameras and five lenses.
Once the assignment is approved, there's a gantlet of budgets, story conferences, research, research, research, making contacts, planning itineraries, procuring traveler's checks, travel approvals, film, equipment, passports, visas, immunizations, tickets, making lists, lists, lists, packing.
For the 1994 story on cotton, Cary Wolinsky read 65 books and dealt with 160 contacts. His itinerary landed him in 11 countries; the schedule factored in such variables as the dates of the cotton harvest in Mexico and the ginning of cotton in India. (Even so, who could have predicted that Wolinsky's Mexican driver would back his vehicle into the river or that his plane would be grounded by fog three mornings in a row while he was trying for aerials in California?)
Does luck-good or bad-have anything to do with it? Just in case, Wolinsky carries a "lucky bean." It's a tree seed that fell into his camera bag on his first assignment. He's kept it there ever since.
Before heading out, a photographer packs film-lots of it. In 1993 our photographers shot 46,769 rolls, about 1,683,600 frames. That year 1,408 pictures were published. A .001 batting average.
Next, cameras and other gear. For a 1993 story on dinosaurs Louie Psihoyos and his assistant, John Knoebber (who helps with lighting, travel arrangements, and hauling
equipment around), logged 250,000 miles with 42 cases of checked luggage and six carry-ons, including nine cameras, 15 lenses, 25,000 watts of strobe lights, and a football-field-long roll of black velvet as a backdrop for photographing museum pieces. The excess baggage fees ran close to six figures.
But Dave Harvey-who tends to cover places like Oaxaca, Chile, Spain, and Vietnam rather than subjects like dinosaurs that demand complicated setups-travels light. His standard gear, two cameras and three lenses, fits in a black nylon backpack.
The heavyweight champion of gear is deepwater photographer Emory Kristof, who shipped 15 tons of equipment (one million dollars' worth) to Lake Baikal, in Siberia, for a 1992 story. The shipment, 171 crates, included a satellite dish ("we had our own country code," he recalls), a complete color lab, a rubber boat, two remotely operated vehicles for photographing deep-sea vents in the lake, and a diesel generator. Six photographs were published.
Then there's the business of what to wear. Yes, there's The Vest-tan with a million pockets. Robert Kincaid wore one.
Annie Griffiths Belt does not. Too obvious. "I want to blend in. The last thing you want people to think is: 'Oops! A photographer is here.'"
For the same reason, Steve McCurry wears sneakers, khaki pants, a blue-striped Oxford shirt. "It makes me look like a tourist," he says. In winter he ties black garbage bags around the sneakers to keep out rain and snow.
William Albert Allard (who scribbles notes to himself on the back of his hand with a ballpoint pen) wears cowboy boots. Sam Abell wears a battered fedora he bought secondhand in Texas and Birkenstock sandals (with socks in winter).
But there's one thing no photographer dares leave home without: "Duct tape. The kind with cloth in it," advises one.
In the course of field work, duct tape has patched a hole in a canoe, closed a gash in a hand, and served as a sling for a broken arm.
In Panama, for a story on the rain forest canopy, Mark Moffett, a natural history photographer, duct-taped his feet to the platform of an observation tower so he could lean over and photograph entomologist Edward O. Wilson at work below him.
"The tape helped hold my balance," Moffett explained. "Though I suppose if I had fallen, the tape might not have actually held my weight. At least my shoes would have stayed put."
Perils
Grab second camera with faster film.climb tree behind bridge. Scrape arm on bark-"Dammit!"-keep climbing.
Scraped arm? Tell that one to Steve McCurry, who was flying in a small plane that flipped into an alpine lake in Yugoslavia. The pilot swam away unscathed, leaving McCurry submerged upside down in freezing water. McCurry managed to squeeze under the buckled strap and escape. He suffered a detached retina.
There was the time Joe Scherschel fended off hippos with a paddle on the Nile. Loren McIntyre was jailed in Venezuela, Dean Conger was placed under house arrest in Damascus, a Bedouin chief nearly abducted Jodi Cobb in Jordan (colleague Tom Abercrombie ransomed her for a fistful of dinars), a gorilla tossed Michael "Nick" Nichols down a hill in Rwanda ("I felt this big hand on my shoulder..").
Or the time Chris Johns was singed by lava in Zaire, Sam Abell was mugged in Dublin. George Steinmetz nearly lost his vision to a loa loa worm that infected his eye in central Africa ("It's not the big animals that cause problems. It's the tiny ones," adds Frans Lanting, who almost died of cerebral malaria), David Doubilet was chased by a great white shark, Bill Curtsinger was mauled by a gray reef shark, George Mobley was bitten by a penguin.
In Oregon, Joel Sartore got pummeled by a lumberjack. He'd finished shooting part of his 1994 federal lands story when a man demanded to know if he was working for National Geographic. When Sartore said "yes," the guy started yelling that a 1990 old-growth forests story (photographed by someone else) was "nothing but lies" and started punching.
"I kept thinking that this hurt far less than the back pain I'd had the week before on a runaway horse during a cattle drive in Idaho," Sartore says. Loading his car not long afterward, the pain brought him to his knees. He was bedridden for three days.
Flood, fire, earthquake, war, parasites, snakes, lightning, hurricanes, mobs, strafing, terrorist bombs, elephants, rhinos, musk oxen, killer bees, customs agents ("worse than white sharks," a photographer swears)-we've survived them all (knock wood).
"Of course," points out Sisse Brimberg, "just waiting around for the light to improve can be dangerous."
She recalls sitting in the town square of a Mexican village when an argument erupted between a dignified older man and an inebriated younger one. The old man ran off and returned, angrily waving a pistol; his young antagonist ducked behind Sisse, using her as a shield. Sisse froze, until bystanders persuaded the old man to put down the gun.
But the worst peril, any photographer agrees, is self-doubt. That black shroud of depression. The Arctic chill in your stomach. The insidious whisper that convinces you 20 years of brilliant photographs were a lucky aberration-the next time the gods won't be so kind.
"Cold sweat time," Cary Wolinsky calls it. That "this-is-the-day-they-find-out-what-a-phony-I-am" feeling. Which is why even an old hand like Bill Allard can be heard to mutter in mid shutter snap: "This could be great, Allard-if you don't screw it up."
Because you can screw it up. Wrong camera; wrong lens; wrong light; wrong film (sometimes, even, no film). The irretrievable moment, the picture that got away.
Then, suddenly, the world takes a quarter turn. The stars align. The improbable happens. Magic happens.
"The moon rises," says Sam Abell. "The blossoms fall. The peacocks display. The shadow lingers on the tent. The gondola slides into the light."
Photography redeems itself.
Love, Lost And Found
When he pulled into the yard, a woman was sitting on the front porch. He stepped from the truck and looked at her.
Romance? In the real world you can't count on it, but it happens.
"I'm standing on the steps of a church in Ayacucho, and I see this young woman go by with an attractive face," says Bill Allard, who was covering Peru for a story published in 1982.
"I was 43, just separated from my wife. The last thing I needed was a serious relationship. And it was the first thing that happened. I go to a country, fall in love with a woman who doesn't speak my language and lives a zillion miles away."
He pursued her. Ani and Bill married two years later and live in Virginia with their seven-year-old son, Anthony.
The story of romance on the road rolls on. Sam Abell met his wife, Denise, on the Pacific Crest story. Steve Raymer met wives number two and three on assignment. Chris Johns met his wife, Elizabeth, in Ethiopia while doing a story on the Great Rift.
But the poignant, and more typical, reality is that the long stretches away from home (photographers spend as long as four months at a time in the field) can strain a marriage and family bond to the breaking point.
"When I first came to the GEOGRAPHIC in 1964," Bruce Dale recalls, "eight out of twelve staff photographers had been divorced."
On the day he retired, B. Anthony Stewart pulled Dale aside. "Bruce, it's been an absolutely marvelous 42 years, but if I had to do it again, I wouldn't.. I have a son that I not only did not know-I never even met him."
Cautionary tales abound. Some are funny. Many are not.
"I'd been gone so much my dog growled at me when I got back," says Joel Sartore.
"If those pictures of yours are so important," snapped Dave Harvey's ex-girlfriend, "let's hear about it now, so I can bring them to you on your deathbed for you to hug."
"The men in my life have often been jealous," says Jodi Cobb. "The person left behind doesn't have the shared experience. You have a life in the field. You know everyone in town from the king to the hotel housekeeper. You come home. You feel extraneous. You don't have a mission. You have housework and unpaid bills."
On the road, again. And again. And again. Exciting, yes. Glamorous, no.
"In the field," explains Tom Kennedy, director of photography, "photographers live totally in the present. They push every other aspect of their lives into the background. It's liberating. And dangerous."
After his first marriage failed, Cary Wolinsky resolved that his second one wouldn't. He travels with his wife. Barbara, and son, Yari-an arrangement that has worked well, except for the time in Peru when a mugger knocked Cary down while Yari rode on his shoulders. When he heard the sickening crack of his son's skull against stone, he thought: "I've got to quit this job."
Yari escaped unhurt. Wolinsky continues to work for the magazine and travel with his family.
For others the juggling act is too complex.
Most of the time Karen Kasmauski leaves her two children home. "The places I'm in are too dangerous. Medical care may be poor. The water may not be drinkable," says Kasmauski, recently exposed to all manner of threats on a story about viruses.
Even when all is done, tensions persist. Coming home solves some problems and creates others.
"He'd be on assignment for three months, and I had three small children," recalls Joyce Dale, speaking of her husband, Bruce. "I'd spend the day he was coming home cleaning house and grooming the kids. We'd go to the airport to meet him. I was ready to eat out. He only wanted to go home, have dinner there. The last
thing I wanted to do was go home and start cooking. We never did resolve that one."
How I Got Those Pictures
Level camera on tripod head. Set lens to f/8. Estimate depth of field, maximize it via hyperfocal technique.
Shutter speed. Shmutter speed. If it's just a matter of setting dials, how come you and I aren't shooting for National Geographic magazine? The richness of a picture depends on everything but. It rides on an ability to see, really see. It hinges on knowing how to dance with subject and light, how to anticipate the ephemeral moment that will flicker before your eyes for a millisecond and vanish.
For Sam Abell, images are a magic to be conjured. His work is contemplative, lyric. A Shaker village floats in heavenly mist. Chalk cliffs glimmer in moonlight.
For Dave Harvey, photography is choreography. He tries to sense the ballet of street life, positioning himself at the center of the whirl: a protest in Chile, a disco in Spain.
For Jim Stanfield, photography is obsessive. The quest for perfection. "You don't want failure," he says, darkening at the word. A colleague comments: "Stanfield worries a story to death." For his coverage of the Vatican he reshot pilgrims at the statue of St. Peter 44 times (the last attempt was the winner). In the search for an aerial of Ýstanbul, he trudged up the 200 steps of a minaret 15 times. "Finally, they just gave me the key."
Underwater photographer David Doubilet daydreams his pictures. They arise out of a series of poetic images that float through his mind. While diving in the Cayman Islands, the words "stingrays and clouds" popped into his head.
"I looked down at the white sand, flying stingrays, and clear water; I looked up at the white clouds in the blue sky," he remembers. The resulting photo has the quality of fantasy.
Flip Nicklin, who photographs marine mammals, envisions himself as a hunter. He once spent three days crossing sea ice in a snowmobile for a picture of narwhals.
"It's not just finding them," says Flip, "it's watching, understanding, then getting close enough to get the story."
Technical aspects-film speed, exposure, camera lenses-are the least of it.
"People always ask about the f-stop and shutter speed of my pictures,"says natural history photographer Frans Lanting.
"I tell them: 'The exposure for that photograph was 43 years.and one-thirtieth of a second.'"
Why I Got Those Pictures
Like I said, the traveling is good, and I like fooling with cameras and being out of doors.
Yes, the traveling is good, but the living isn't always easy. Along with "camera fooling" come dreary motel rooms and hopeless, rainy days without the chance of a single shot. Government bureaucrats who say "you can't go there" and 80-hour weeks.
"When people tell me they'd love to have my job," says Louie Psihoyos, "I think: 'If you only knew.'"
So, what's the motivation?
"To make people care about the disappearing rain forest or great apes. I have a sense of mission," says Nick Nichols.
"To pass along that sense of curiosity that I feel. Open your eyes; there is no end to the world," says Cary Wolinsky.
"For the experience," says Robert Madden. "To say you were on the aircraft carrier when they pulled the Apollo II capsule out of the drink."
There for the funeral of Churchill. The opening of a Maya tomb. The fall of Pinochet in Chile. The rise of Yeltsin in Russia. You were there. A witness.
For others, the drive to capture an image springs from some other place.
"To show that even with all the pain, life will go on," says Dave Harvey.
To peel back a curtain. "I like intimate stories that show a closed world, whether it's Japanese geisha or Saudi women," says Jodi Cobb.
"To show that people have the same needs; the commonality of joy, sorrow, hope, fear. The more I travel, the more I see we're all alike, whether Bombay or Boston," says Karen Kasmauski. "We show who these people are."
They're us, of course. The grand continuum of humanity. A world rich in diversity-animals, fish, birds, people.
And in searching for the light to illumine them, there is joy.
"I remember being in the middle of the Sahara on a 14-day trek with 500 camels," muses Jim Stanfield. "Five hundred camels, trailing to the horizon." Even four years after publication of his story on the explorer Ibn Battuta, Stanfield radiates wonder. "It was the happiest I've ever been."
When covering a story on poet Walt Whitman, Maria Stenzel immersed herself in the man's work, finding inspiration for her pictures-and herself-in the poetry. In the field, she carried Whitman's Leaves of Grass and would call a picture editor back at headquarters from a phone booth. "Listen," she would say, and launch into a poem. Her voice glowed.
"I find myself laughing out loud when I'm taking pictures," says Jodi Cobb.
"I find myself cheering sometimes," says Annie Griffiths Belt.
Crying too. "Some things you can't even photograph," says Robert Caputo. He recalls the dying child in famine cursed Somalia cradled in its mother's arms. Each breath more raspy and halting than the one before. He put his camera away for the rest of that day.
In sorrow and in joy, once the process of covering a story starts "it begins to overwhelm and rule your life," says Frans Lanting.
A calling. A lifestyle. A passion. Staff photographer Win Parks, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking man who died at 43, once messaged from Rome: "The water supply has been shut off, a strike has cancelled the post and long-distance telephones, civil employees are striking, and the mayor has resigned. We're making good headway in the coverage."
Long after the Kincaid story fades into memory, that passion will endure. "Here, the true romance," says Bill Allard, "is the job."
Reel to Real
By Cathy Newman
So there's this guy Robert Kincaid. Photographer. Drives a pickup truck. Plays guitar. Doesn't eat meat but smokes Camels. Goes out to Iowa to shoot the covered bridges of Madison County for National Geographic magazine. Romances a farmer's wife. Loves her. Leaves her.
An off-the-charts best-seller. Nine million sold and still counting. Now it's a movie with Clint Eastwood as Kincaid.
Is that how it is with our photographers on assignment? Hardly.
When hundreds of our readers wrote to ask when we published that story on the covered bridges, we had to say we didn't. (We have done the Brooklyn Bridge.)
But The Bridges of Madison County? Pure fiction. All make-believe, especially the part about getting the assignment.
Robert Kincaid, Imaginary Hero, caught the attention of National Geographic editors because of a photograph he took for a calendar. When he called the magazine, he was told: "We're ready for you anytime."
Our troops hoot at that one.
"Nothing against calendar shots, but ours is a different game," says Kent Kobersteen, associate director of photography. He means that a single photograph-no matter how beautiful-isn't a foot in the door.
"We need to see an entire body of work. We're looking for real moments of real people doing real things."
Competition for space in the magazine is unbelievably fierce. Each year we receive hundreds of story ideas. Each year we publish about 70. Even with the most promising portfolio, the path to the GEOGRAPHIC is paved with heartbreak.
To test a young photographer named David Alan Harvey, now retired director of photography Bob Gilka sent him to Cooperstown, New York, on a trial assignment. After three weeks, Harvey csent in his film.
"Dave, I'm glad you're young and strong, because what I have to tell you is going to make you feel sick and old," Gilka's letter began.
He was right: The coverage had been superficial "postcard photography," and both of them knew it. Years later on his first assignment-Tangier Island-Harvey got it right.
For David Doubilet, an underwater photographer, Gilka was the lord of nightmares.
"There is nothing new here," Gilka rumbled after reviewing the best of Doubilet's early work. Doubilet slunk out.
A year and many new pictures later Doubilet got his first assignment. Then another. And another. After 24 years he has 38 stories to his credit.
The job never gets easier. "An assignment is a mighty mountain that you climb, mostly alone," says Sam Abell, a staff photographer. "The older I get, the more the mountain seems to incline backward over my head. It doesn't become smaller. It becomes taller."
Getting Ready & Gearing Up
He went through his mental checklist: two hundred rolls of assorted film; tripods; cooler; three cameras and five lenses.
Once the assignment is approved, there's a gantlet of budgets, story conferences, research, research, research, making contacts, planning itineraries, procuring traveler's checks, travel approvals, film, equipment, passports, visas, immunizations, tickets, making lists, lists, lists, packing.
For the 1994 story on cotton, Cary Wolinsky read 65 books and dealt with 160 contacts. His itinerary landed him in 11 countries; the schedule factored in such variables as the dates of the cotton harvest in Mexico and the ginning of cotton in India. (Even so, who could have predicted that Wolinsky's Mexican driver would back his vehicle into the river or that his plane would be grounded by fog three mornings in a row while he was trying for aerials in California?)
Does luck-good or bad-have anything to do with it? Just in case, Wolinsky carries a "lucky bean." It's a tree seed that fell into his camera bag on his first assignment. He's kept it there ever since.
Before heading out, a photographer packs film-lots of it. In 1993 our photographers shot 46,769 rolls, about 1,683,600 frames. That year 1,408 pictures were published. A .001 batting average.
Next, cameras and other gear. For a 1993 story on dinosaurs Louie Psihoyos and his assistant, John Knoebber (who helps with lighting, travel arrangements, and hauling
equipment around), logged 250,000 miles with 42 cases of checked luggage and six carry-ons, including nine cameras, 15 lenses, 25,000 watts of strobe lights, and a football-field-long roll of black velvet as a backdrop for photographing museum pieces. The excess baggage fees ran close to six figures.
But Dave Harvey-who tends to cover places like Oaxaca, Chile, Spain, and Vietnam rather than subjects like dinosaurs that demand complicated setups-travels light. His standard gear, two cameras and three lenses, fits in a black nylon backpack.
The heavyweight champion of gear is deepwater photographer Emory Kristof, who shipped 15 tons of equipment (one million dollars' worth) to Lake Baikal, in Siberia, for a 1992 story. The shipment, 171 crates, included a satellite dish ("we had our own country code," he recalls), a complete color lab, a rubber boat, two remotely operated vehicles for photographing deep-sea vents in the lake, and a diesel generator. Six photographs were published.
Then there's the business of what to wear. Yes, there's The Vest-tan with a million pockets. Robert Kincaid wore one.
Annie Griffiths Belt does not. Too obvious. "I want to blend in. The last thing you want people to think is: 'Oops! A photographer is here.'"
For the same reason, Steve McCurry wears sneakers, khaki pants, a blue-striped Oxford shirt. "It makes me look like a tourist," he says. In winter he ties black garbage bags around the sneakers to keep out rain and snow.
William Albert Allard (who scribbles notes to himself on the back of his hand with a ballpoint pen) wears cowboy boots. Sam Abell wears a battered fedora he bought secondhand in Texas and Birkenstock sandals (with socks in winter).
But there's one thing no photographer dares leave home without: "Duct tape. The kind with cloth in it," advises one.
In the course of field work, duct tape has patched a hole in a canoe, closed a gash in a hand, and served as a sling for a broken arm.
In Panama, for a story on the rain forest canopy, Mark Moffett, a natural history photographer, duct-taped his feet to the platform of an observation tower so he could lean over and photograph entomologist Edward O. Wilson at work below him.
"The tape helped hold my balance," Moffett explained. "Though I suppose if I had fallen, the tape might not have actually held my weight. At least my shoes would have stayed put."
Perils
Grab second camera with faster film.climb tree behind bridge. Scrape arm on bark-"Dammit!"-keep climbing.
Scraped arm? Tell that one to Steve McCurry, who was flying in a small plane that flipped into an alpine lake in Yugoslavia. The pilot swam away unscathed, leaving McCurry submerged upside down in freezing water. McCurry managed to squeeze under the buckled strap and escape. He suffered a detached retina.
There was the time Joe Scherschel fended off hippos with a paddle on the Nile. Loren McIntyre was jailed in Venezuela, Dean Conger was placed under house arrest in Damascus, a Bedouin chief nearly abducted Jodi Cobb in Jordan (colleague Tom Abercrombie ransomed her for a fistful of dinars), a gorilla tossed Michael "Nick" Nichols down a hill in Rwanda ("I felt this big hand on my shoulder..").
Or the time Chris Johns was singed by lava in Zaire, Sam Abell was mugged in Dublin. George Steinmetz nearly lost his vision to a loa loa worm that infected his eye in central Africa ("It's not the big animals that cause problems. It's the tiny ones," adds Frans Lanting, who almost died of cerebral malaria), David Doubilet was chased by a great white shark, Bill Curtsinger was mauled by a gray reef shark, George Mobley was bitten by a penguin.
In Oregon, Joel Sartore got pummeled by a lumberjack. He'd finished shooting part of his 1994 federal lands story when a man demanded to know if he was working for National Geographic. When Sartore said "yes," the guy started yelling that a 1990 old-growth forests story (photographed by someone else) was "nothing but lies" and started punching.
"I kept thinking that this hurt far less than the back pain I'd had the week before on a runaway horse during a cattle drive in Idaho," Sartore says. Loading his car not long afterward, the pain brought him to his knees. He was bedridden for three days.
Flood, fire, earthquake, war, parasites, snakes, lightning, hurricanes, mobs, strafing, terrorist bombs, elephants, rhinos, musk oxen, killer bees, customs agents ("worse than white sharks," a photographer swears)-we've survived them all (knock wood).
"Of course," points out Sisse Brimberg, "just waiting around for the light to improve can be dangerous."
She recalls sitting in the town square of a Mexican village when an argument erupted between a dignified older man and an inebriated younger one. The old man ran off and returned, angrily waving a pistol; his young antagonist ducked behind Sisse, using her as a shield. Sisse froze, until bystanders persuaded the old man to put down the gun.
But the worst peril, any photographer agrees, is self-doubt. That black shroud of depression. The Arctic chill in your stomach. The insidious whisper that convinces you 20 years of brilliant photographs were a lucky aberration-the next time the gods won't be so kind.
"Cold sweat time," Cary Wolinsky calls it. That "this-is-the-day-they-find-out-what-a-phony-I-am" feeling. Which is why even an old hand like Bill Allard can be heard to mutter in mid shutter snap: "This could be great, Allard-if you don't screw it up."
Because you can screw it up. Wrong camera; wrong lens; wrong light; wrong film (sometimes, even, no film). The irretrievable moment, the picture that got away.
Then, suddenly, the world takes a quarter turn. The stars align. The improbable happens. Magic happens.
"The moon rises," says Sam Abell. "The blossoms fall. The peacocks display. The shadow lingers on the tent. The gondola slides into the light."
Photography redeems itself.
Love, Lost And Found
When he pulled into the yard, a woman was sitting on the front porch. He stepped from the truck and looked at her.
Romance? In the real world you can't count on it, but it happens.
"I'm standing on the steps of a church in Ayacucho, and I see this young woman go by with an attractive face," says Bill Allard, who was covering Peru for a story published in 1982.
"I was 43, just separated from my wife. The last thing I needed was a serious relationship. And it was the first thing that happened. I go to a country, fall in love with a woman who doesn't speak my language and lives a zillion miles away."
He pursued her. Ani and Bill married two years later and live in Virginia with their seven-year-old son, Anthony.
The story of romance on the road rolls on. Sam Abell met his wife, Denise, on the Pacific Crest story. Steve Raymer met wives number two and three on assignment. Chris Johns met his wife, Elizabeth, in Ethiopia while doing a story on the Great Rift.
But the poignant, and more typical, reality is that the long stretches away from home (photographers spend as long as four months at a time in the field) can strain a marriage and family bond to the breaking point.
"When I first came to the GEOGRAPHIC in 1964," Bruce Dale recalls, "eight out of twelve staff photographers had been divorced."
On the day he retired, B. Anthony Stewart pulled Dale aside. "Bruce, it's been an absolutely marvelous 42 years, but if I had to do it again, I wouldn't.. I have a son that I not only did not know-I never even met him."
Cautionary tales abound. Some are funny. Many are not.
"I'd been gone so much my dog growled at me when I got back," says Joel Sartore.
"If those pictures of yours are so important," snapped Dave Harvey's ex-girlfriend, "let's hear about it now, so I can bring them to you on your deathbed for you to hug."
"The men in my life have often been jealous," says Jodi Cobb. "The person left behind doesn't have the shared experience. You have a life in the field. You know everyone in town from the king to the hotel housekeeper. You come home. You feel extraneous. You don't have a mission. You have housework and unpaid bills."
On the road, again. And again. And again. Exciting, yes. Glamorous, no.
"In the field," explains Tom Kennedy, director of photography, "photographers live totally in the present. They push every other aspect of their lives into the background. It's liberating. And dangerous."
After his first marriage failed, Cary Wolinsky resolved that his second one wouldn't. He travels with his wife. Barbara, and son, Yari-an arrangement that has worked well, except for the time in Peru when a mugger knocked Cary down while Yari rode on his shoulders. When he heard the sickening crack of his son's skull against stone, he thought: "I've got to quit this job."
Yari escaped unhurt. Wolinsky continues to work for the magazine and travel with his family.
For others the juggling act is too complex.
Most of the time Karen Kasmauski leaves her two children home. "The places I'm in are too dangerous. Medical care may be poor. The water may not be drinkable," says Kasmauski, recently exposed to all manner of threats on a story about viruses.
Even when all is done, tensions persist. Coming home solves some problems and creates others.
"He'd be on assignment for three months, and I had three small children," recalls Joyce Dale, speaking of her husband, Bruce. "I'd spend the day he was coming home cleaning house and grooming the kids. We'd go to the airport to meet him. I was ready to eat out. He only wanted to go home, have dinner there. The last
thing I wanted to do was go home and start cooking. We never did resolve that one."
How I Got Those Pictures
Level camera on tripod head. Set lens to f/8. Estimate depth of field, maximize it via hyperfocal technique.
Shutter speed. Shmutter speed. If it's just a matter of setting dials, how come you and I aren't shooting for National Geographic magazine? The richness of a picture depends on everything but. It rides on an ability to see, really see. It hinges on knowing how to dance with subject and light, how to anticipate the ephemeral moment that will flicker before your eyes for a millisecond and vanish.
For Sam Abell, images are a magic to be conjured. His work is contemplative, lyric. A Shaker village floats in heavenly mist. Chalk cliffs glimmer in moonlight.
For Dave Harvey, photography is choreography. He tries to sense the ballet of street life, positioning himself at the center of the whirl: a protest in Chile, a disco in Spain.
For Jim Stanfield, photography is obsessive. The quest for perfection. "You don't want failure," he says, darkening at the word. A colleague comments: "Stanfield worries a story to death." For his coverage of the Vatican he reshot pilgrims at the statue of St. Peter 44 times (the last attempt was the winner). In the search for an aerial of Ýstanbul, he trudged up the 200 steps of a minaret 15 times. "Finally, they just gave me the key."
Underwater photographer David Doubilet daydreams his pictures. They arise out of a series of poetic images that float through his mind. While diving in the Cayman Islands, the words "stingrays and clouds" popped into his head.
"I looked down at the white sand, flying stingrays, and clear water; I looked up at the white clouds in the blue sky," he remembers. The resulting photo has the quality of fantasy.
Flip Nicklin, who photographs marine mammals, envisions himself as a hunter. He once spent three days crossing sea ice in a snowmobile for a picture of narwhals.
"It's not just finding them," says Flip, "it's watching, understanding, then getting close enough to get the story."
Technical aspects-film speed, exposure, camera lenses-are the least of it.
"People always ask about the f-stop and shutter speed of my pictures,"says natural history photographer Frans Lanting.
"I tell them: 'The exposure for that photograph was 43 years.and one-thirtieth of a second.'"
Why I Got Those Pictures
Like I said, the traveling is good, and I like fooling with cameras and being out of doors.
Yes, the traveling is good, but the living isn't always easy. Along with "camera fooling" come dreary motel rooms and hopeless, rainy days without the chance of a single shot. Government bureaucrats who say "you can't go there" and 80-hour weeks.
"When people tell me they'd love to have my job," says Louie Psihoyos, "I think: 'If you only knew.'"
So, what's the motivation?
"To make people care about the disappearing rain forest or great apes. I have a sense of mission," says Nick Nichols.
"To pass along that sense of curiosity that I feel. Open your eyes; there is no end to the world," says Cary Wolinsky.
"For the experience," says Robert Madden. "To say you were on the aircraft carrier when they pulled the Apollo II capsule out of the drink."
There for the funeral of Churchill. The opening of a Maya tomb. The fall of Pinochet in Chile. The rise of Yeltsin in Russia. You were there. A witness.
For others, the drive to capture an image springs from some other place.
"To show that even with all the pain, life will go on," says Dave Harvey.
To peel back a curtain. "I like intimate stories that show a closed world, whether it's Japanese geisha or Saudi women," says Jodi Cobb.
"To show that people have the same needs; the commonality of joy, sorrow, hope, fear. The more I travel, the more I see we're all alike, whether Bombay or Boston," says Karen Kasmauski. "We show who these people are."
They're us, of course. The grand continuum of humanity. A world rich in diversity-animals, fish, birds, people.
And in searching for the light to illumine them, there is joy.
"I remember being in the middle of the Sahara on a 14-day trek with 500 camels," muses Jim Stanfield. "Five hundred camels, trailing to the horizon." Even four years after publication of his story on the explorer Ibn Battuta, Stanfield radiates wonder. "It was the happiest I've ever been."
When covering a story on poet Walt Whitman, Maria Stenzel immersed herself in the man's work, finding inspiration for her pictures-and herself-in the poetry. In the field, she carried Whitman's Leaves of Grass and would call a picture editor back at headquarters from a phone booth. "Listen," she would say, and launch into a poem. Her voice glowed.
"I find myself laughing out loud when I'm taking pictures," says Jodi Cobb.
"I find myself cheering sometimes," says Annie Griffiths Belt.
Crying too. "Some things you can't even photograph," says Robert Caputo. He recalls the dying child in famine cursed Somalia cradled in its mother's arms. Each breath more raspy and halting than the one before. He put his camera away for the rest of that day.
In sorrow and in joy, once the process of covering a story starts "it begins to overwhelm and rule your life," says Frans Lanting.
A calling. A lifestyle. A passion. Staff photographer Win Parks, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking man who died at 43, once messaged from Rome: "The water supply has been shut off, a strike has cancelled the post and long-distance telephones, civil employees are striking, and the mayor has resigned. We're making good headway in the coverage."
Long after the Kincaid story fades into memory, that passion will endure. "Here, the true romance," says Bill Allard, "is the job."