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October 28, 1998 "Hey, watch out. A snake just came through here." Red Huber’s warning was taken in stride by the four or five photographers sloshing through the brackish shallows of the Cape Canaveral tidal marsh. Although we’d keep a eye out for slithery natives, a more pressing priority was aiming cameras at Pad 39B a half a mile away where space shuttle Discovery was being prepared for launch. In less than 24 hours, Discovery would carry seven astronauts into orbit, including a return trip for America’s first astronaut to ever orbit the Earth, John Glenn. When the countdown reached "liftoff," this area of the Kennedy Space Center would be uninhabited. The cameras being set up on tripods in the swamp would be on their own, triggered by microphones that hear the engines’ roar. Huber is one of a handful of photographers who has been setting remotes since the very first shuttle launch in 1981. Huber shoots for my paper, The Orlando Sentinel, and along with Mike Brown of Florida Today represents the strongest local press coverage of NASA. They cover every launch whether the mission includes an American hero or an experiment on crystals. Because of their experience with the space program and their long-time connections, these photographers were allowed to set remote cameras at a "special" location.The rest of the photographers were setting their cameras at a less scenic location about 1,000 feet from the pad - a place that both Huber and Brown set cameras at earlier.
The mechanics for remote cameras are simple in some ways. Huber uses Nikon N2000 camera bodies, a simple and relatively inexpensive camera that has a built-in motor drive. A more sophisticated F4 or F5 wouldn’t work any better in this situation and since remotes have been known to fall over, it’s not worth risking the more expensive camera. The cameras are mounted inside custom built wooden boxes that protect them from the elements and then also covered with plastic garbage bags. The cameras are connected to a triggering device that uses a microphone to trip the shutter. The sensitivity is set low enough that only the roar of the engines will trigger the cameras. To test the settings, photographers yell, bark, hoot and holler into their microphones during set-up. With that noise very few critters, snakes included, stick around.
The remote locations are so close that photographers use 85mm or 50mm lenses on their 35mm cameras. Some photographer also set medium format Hasselblad cameras on remotes and I’ve heard tales of one photographer in the past who set out a Polaroid SX-70.
Covering this launch called for long days. At 8 a.m. the day before the launch, Huber was presetting his tripods at the specials and I was waiting in line for credentials. We were done with remotes by 2 p.m. and I met a reporter in Titusville to shoot photos of people in RVs who had arrived earlier for good viewing positions. I drove back to Orlando and was out of the office about 7 p.m. Huber shot the front page photo about 8 p.m., a night time photo of the shuttle after the service structure had been rolled back. Red would spend the night sleeping on a lawn chair in the double-wide trailer the Sentinel has permanently set at the space center press site. And we did John Glenn and the rest of the crew that day. The astronauts were meeting their friends and family along a roadway leading to the pad. We saw them out the windows of our van on the way to the launch pad. The meet-and-greet was closed to the press and we weren’t allowed to stop. And getting a camera out to shoot through the windows was impossible since we had nine photographers crammed into a five passenger van and we were sitting on top of our gear. We’d have to wait for the walkout the next day. October 28, 1998 Tom Burton
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Tom
Burton
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Contributor
since 1998
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Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
