Introduction to the Geographic Years

It was a heady time for a boy who grew up in the woods

When I graduated from the University of Missouri, National Geographic invited me to become their first summer intern in the photographic department. For the next 33.5 years, they forgot that I was temporary summer help, so I spent the best years of my life working at a career of dreams...and nightmares

It was a heady time for a boy who grew up in the woods to arrive in the nation’s capital.  The Cold War was in full swing. The sign on every stairwell in National Geographic Headquarters, five blocks from the White House, read ”In case of nuclear attack proceed to the basement.”  On one of my early overseas assignments for the magazine, I saw a stark reminder of the cost of war as I stood on one of the beaches of Normandy in France, profoundly moved, watching seemingly endless rows of white crosses burnished red by the light of the setting sun.

Gradually, as staff photographers returned from various assignments, the names that I had revered so much growing up turned into real people. Jack Fletcher took me into the electronics department and showed me how to set up and use the 10,000-watt electronic flash, a flash bright enough to light up a whole football field at night.

Bob Sisson told me about the “good old days” when he was assigned to do a night photograph of a presidential inauguration coming along Pennsylvania Avenue. He told me how he set up his camera on the roof of a government building and filled the rain gutter with flash powder. He said when the parade arrived and he took the picture, “Never had Pennsylvania Avenue seen such a huge explosion, nor had I seen such an overexposed negative.“ 

I started by doing a number of U.S. assignments, including a book on the White House, (and three revisions), and one on the Capitol. One day my phone rang. It was the Director of Photography from National Geographic who asked me to be at National Airport in two hours. I was joining a team to photograph the funeral of Winston Churchill.

It was my first overseas assignment, but it was far from the last. 

Caveat: It is possible there could be three or four images not correctly credited here. The NGS was meticulous in its work, but many articles used images from multiple sources. When an issue went to press, the photo work box was given to someone to select images for the permanent collection. More recently permanent files were digitized. We’re all human. Errors happen. I have occasionally found my photos credited to others. In digital files of my images I found two photos I know were taken by other staff photographers. Sometimes photos taken for different assignments were done in similar circumstances and have similar subjects. If any of my former colleagues see a photo they have made that I inadvertently included here, please let me know so I can either delete it or give you proper credit for it. And, my apologies as well.