Just visited my old haunts at ABC TV, where the gracious editors let me peruse some of my old pics, and offered me a few scans to have for my archive. I was a staff photographer there during a tumultuous time. Made the first promo pictures of Ted Koppel as they launched Nightline in response to the Iranian hostage crisis. Ted might have had an inkling, but I sure had no idea as I made these in the control room that Nightline was going to go on to become a long running journalistic institution.
Obviously, I had no idea about the lighting, either. Flash hits galore above. I shot this with old potato masher flashes, powered by wet cell packs, with no modeling lights. I didn’t even know how to work a Polaroid, and was too nervous to ask. I just gutted my way to a flawed solution on chrome film using an old hand held meter and guesswork about how it might look. Ted was great to work with, though. A patient pro. Again, I think he knew, maybe along with Roone Arledge, the maestro who ran ABC News at the time, that they were onto something.
It was a busy time to be a photog. A presidential campaign occurred in the middle of the crisis, and I hit the road with Reagan. Below, a couple scans from the ABC archive.
And of course the requisite vertical, up close head shot. You never knew who might run a cover.
Reagan handily beat Jimmy Carter, so it was off to the inaugural, on January 20th, 1981. And the hostages were returned almost immediately after Reagan took the oath, and a parade happened 10 days later, on Broadway in NYC.
Thankfully, things remain busy, though I no longer chase candidates. These are fun to look at though, back at a time when I was knocking about with F2 cameras and transparency film. We’ve come a long way!
More tk….
The lack of polish with the flash in the Koppel portrait for the show suggests an immediacy of the news in the new program. It was the style needed for the program launch.
I am not sure but something throws me of with the first Picture. The head seems to be too large compared to the rest of the body. Or is this just the perspective and the slightly rotated chest?
You are ahead of your time for sure. I know we tend to see the world through rose colored glasses boy I miss the slide film days.
Thanks for making me feel old, Joe! ;-)Somehow seeing chromes of things that I remember vividly (an that “ancient”-looking control booth) amplifies the apparent gap in the time-space continuum.
What a long strange trip it’s been.
Great story. Would love to hear more about working on a presidential campaign in the days of film. How was the film tranported and processed? Did ABC have their own lab? Did you ever actually see any of your own work before it was published?
Hey Joe, long time but glad to see you’re still at it and we started at ABC about the same time….Roone was amazing, Julie Barnathan was my boss. When you’re next in London must meet up and have a catch up…..
Best regards as always
Phil
Doubt it has to do with his position. Ted did have famous hair….:-)))
Hey Bill….it was very different. Bags of film that needed to left behind and handled by a courier, or shipped via the gate to gate package service some airlines had. Generally the stuff would be processed, picked and in the magazine before I ever saw it. Pretty much the run of the game shooting deadline chrome for just about anybody back then…Joe
those flash hits is nothing a little clone tool can’t fix. oh wait… lol
Yeah film. Shot film for 30 years. Made good money as a photojournalist. Was a top B&W darkroom printer. Now digital. Am competing with everyone now.
How do you feel about digital nowadays Joe?
Hey Tom…Couldn’t drag me back to film kicking and screaming. Love it. I still shoot a tiny bit of b&w film but it is not a big item in the overall run of our work flow….all best, Joe
Amazing as always Joe
I am very sure that, at a later time in your life, you will look back at the visual legacy you have created and be in complete awe of it just as we are now. I have listened to you, read you, learned from you, and met you. I know that you very humbly and modestly appreciate every moment you have experienced with your cameras but, man, we all live a much richer, colorful, and more informed life due to your talents.