Transcripts For CSPAN NASA Photography 20150104

Brian henson came all the way from texas. That is pretty cool. Becky nichols, the wife of alan nichols is back there. Alan is on a trip. He could not be here. Becky is always here. She is always here. Thank you very much. The Explorers Club is a cool place. Come see us. We do sea ocean, primates, all that stuff. Thank you very much. [applause] a big hand for charlie duke. More from the Explorers Club in new york city. Bill ingalls shows unique photographs relaunches such a launches, rocket launches, russia and japan. He also shows Neil Armstrongs funeral. This is about 50 minutes. [applause] good afternoon. Bill ingalls has been a professional photographer for over 27 years and has heard as the senior contract survivor photographer or nasa since 1989. He has traveled the world. Assignments have taken him from the Kennedy Space center to the inside of an active volcano in alaska, oval office, inside of a dca, dc8. His photographs have appeared in national geographic, newsweek time, the washington post, fortune, people, the los angeles times. Bill is recognized amongst his peers for capturing some of our countries historic moments including the first launch of a u. S. Citizen on a rush and rocket jfk juniors life is it to the white house, and the burial at sea of Neil Armstrong. He is only the second photographer ever to receive the Prestigious National space club press award. The award was first given to edward armour murrow. It is my pleasure to introduce him to you this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, mr. Bill ingalls. [applause] no break . Good lord. Thank you. I want to thank stacy and the Explorers Club. This is an honor for me to be here today. I just dont feel like i am worthy of it, but happy to show slides. I am not comfortable being on camera. I apologize to those on cspan. I am real sorry. The rest of you here i was not sure how to put this together. I was usher who the audience would be, and what to focus on pardon the pun. It is a portfolio of sorts. Way too many pictures. Feel free to get up and leave, tweet, and check your email. Thats me. Im in charge. I dont do this often, as you can tell. This is my predecessor. He was the first senior photographer for nasa. You will note the pall mall cigarettes in the right hand, the leica camera, the sunglasses on, whiskey drinking cussing hell of a photographer. I am doing every thing again to live up to his standards. He was with the crew from the beginning of the apollo project. He went through all their training together. He did all of their around the world victory marches. I was fortunate enough to get to know him, spend a few years with him before he passed on. This is some of his work. He set the bar pretty high. This is the apollo 11 crew. I came onto nasa as an intern in television. I was a writer and a producer and spent the summer and nasa headquarters and i also did freelance photography. I went on to teach television at the university of pittsburgh. I called nasa every day and begged for a job. I think they got so sick of me calling that they gave me an office pit we will hear less from him. My busted me the option. He said that this position that bill had had had gone away and there were other agency photographers who had started to pick up at the very centers. I could either revitalize that or work and be a Photo Researcher in their office. Both are great jobs. I definitely wanted to try to revitalize this position is best i could. I still have his original cameras in my office. They all have stories. We dont have all day. I will keep marching on. This is at the Kennedy Space center, which is also a wildlife refuge. There are quiet a bit of wildlife there. I also spent a lot of time in washington, where there is loud wildlife as well. This is Kennedy Space center and some of my shuttle related work that ive done there. This is on the transporter with the Space Shuttle on its last final role to the launchpad. These are workers and their families invited to the along the entire route to say goodbye to the shuttle program. Again, i take my job i am silly. I have a lot of fun. I work hard. I take it very seriously. I am no i know i have been given a privileged position to be on this, to be the eyes and ears for others that cannot be there. I take it very seriously. This is on that crawler transporter. This is Charlie Bolden shaking hands with workers as were writing the transporter out to the pad. Of course, the shuttle lift up at night. I had to get a lightning shot in their, too. You will see a common theme throughout my images. If there is a puddle, i would use it. Here is the first one. I will sit there. I have a lot of pictures. I am happy to answer questions about them at the end. This is writing out on the helicopter with a sniper. The security is very serious. Both here and in russia. This is in the lobby of the Launch Control center before going up to the firing room for one of the launches. The mural that they have there. This is inside the firing room. I used to joke that i never saw a single launch. I always watched people watching logically that is nasa administrator Charlie Bolden. This is one shot with myself in the frame. I used a remote. His office juts into the firing room. These are remote camera set up around the launchpad. You dont want to be this close during the launch. The closest that you can get is three miles during a shuttle launch. Three quarters of a mile for so use launch. Soy isuz launch. Landing of scs 135. Charlie bolden on the left and the Center Director on the right. That is the main landing gear on the tar mark of the shuttle landing facility for sts 135. Chris ferguson, feeling if there is he coming off the front of the shuttle after we landed. A unique view underneath the shuttle looking towards the front nose. This is the final role from the landing facility to the opf. Then i had a responsibility to work with others and help document all the shuttles going to their final homes. This is discovery at Dulles Airport in virginia. Pouddle number two. Puddle number three. This is where the enterprise was being pulled out and discovery it was being rolled and as they pass each other. Enterprise being loaded up to come to new york. This is that Dulles Airport as well. Look for it. This is coming into jfk. Some days or weeks later, out on a boat in the hudson. The enterprises being brought up to the intrepid. The enterprise is being brought up to the intrepid. That is something you see every day. Back down to florida. This is for endeavors departure off to los angeles. I enjoy doing all of these tremendously. It is bittersweet, obviously the into the shuttle program. As a photographer, this is one of the really rewarding experiences that i have had where we are able to see the public and the orbiters and what we do so close together in one place. Going to the streets of los angeles with endeavor was incredible. Its too bad we cannot do it every day. This is from the goodyear blimp. As endeavor went by the randys donuts. I just like saying that i was in the goodyear that is fun. Throughout the entire route just this outpouring of love and excitement. People holding their breath. They had to his exact to the streets and avoid buildings and take out a few trees along the way. They try their best not to do that. Time warner let people get up in their boxes and photograph it as it went by. I was told that in inglewood when we went through there, they had zero crime that day. Zero. That is los angeles. And, a lot of people ask me if when i first came to nasa i was a big fan of space, nasa, and so forth. I have be honest and say i was a fan of nasa. I was not obsessed with it. It was not my goal. Photography was my first love. I was extremely lucky to have such great subject matter. The two go together so well. Maybe ive had the koolaid now for 25 years, but if theres anything about what i have learned over the years from being at nasa and making pictures for nasa is summed up in this picture and many of the pictures like it. Regardless of what we discover in space, regardless of where we end up, the act of getting there, discovery, the whole process to see kids get excited about it and start seeing them light up and think about math and science is worth every single penny. Sometimes i get bored. This is the administrator checking out an atlas five rocket. This is juno spacecraft on its way to jupiter. Again, remotes. These are a bunch of Unmanned Missions good this is out of the annenberg air force base with the beautiful pacific behind it. Vandenberg air force base with the beautiful specific pacific behind it. The lawyer on the right followed me everywhere and watched everything i shot. [laughter] robert bigelow, another entrepreneur with inflatable habitats. I think of this is the jiffy pop that we are going to fly into space. These are his inflatable space stations. This is an orbital down at nasa. We had a rollout that happened yesterday. These are not those. These are various other rollouts taking place. This is the newest launchpad for me to be working on. It is a lot of fun when you go set up remotes, to be there to discover new images. It starts to get repetitive after a while. I have done how many soyuz launches. You want to try to tell the story in a unique and challenging way. That can be difficult when its repetitive. It is very exciting to have different opportunities. This is out on a boat in the ocean getting some shots around sunrise. A remote set up. I was so happy they put that sign there. I started dipping my 10 oh into infrared. This is false color infrared remote camera shot. Im still working on that a little bit and will make it better next time. I started dipping my toe into infrared. I went to retrieve this remote and was happy. I was fortunate enough to go over to japan for the launch of the gpm spacecraft. I had never been to japan before. I always wanted to go. I had an incredible expense there. I really enjoyed it. Not unlike our visitor center. Its interesting to see what similar and different. Just driving around you see space related themes everywhere. H2 a rocket. It is a beautiful rocket. It was gorgeous. There were servers out there earlier. I was upset that i missed that shot. Its the shop gets away. You circle in one eye and set a goal, and once the goal is reached, you circle in the other eye. This was used for the building of the rocket and the goal was the successful launch and putting it into orbit. I guess these are getting cropped a little bit. It is what it is, i guess. I was surprised. I did not realize certainly in russia, there are a lot of traditions. I did not realize that in japan they have traditions as well leading up to launch. They visited three different shines before reince before lunch. They leave two bottles of sake. They do some prayers. We moved on to the next one. My interpreter who was with me was my friend olga from moscow is here. Shes going to kill me for calling her out. My interpreter, who is very dry and straight about everything as me if i knew much about the religion. She said, theres over 8 million deities. We are visiting three shines in leading prayers. She said, you know whats interesting is that they all like sake. [laughter] one of the challenges i have is that im not allowed to photograph a lot of things that will show our systems and design. That is a challenge i am always overcoming. You will show people in the workplace doing a lot of work. I shoot minimal depth of field cutting people together see you dont see monitors. I dont set them up, but im always looking for this when im shooting to make sure im not im respecting those bounds. The rocket launch in japan. We had to wear hardhats. We are three miles away. [laughter] i have a love affair with a moon. This was the full moon super moon at the lincoln memorial. Guys, the photo before that is one of the photographs we will auction off. Ok. This is the last super moon as well. I do a lot of hearings in washington. I actually enjoy doing those. I have a front row seat between whoever is testifying in congress and typically every emotion is covered in 30 minutes. I start with smiles and they go downhill from there. It is great. I notice i have let the smiles out of this one. This is our current administrator, Charlie Bolden. He is a wonderful man. Fourtime astronaut. This guy, john glenn, by far one of the best people i have ever met in my career, just amazing. [indiscernible] what i always still people is that he will walk in a room, could be me, custodial staff president united states. As for as he is concerned, we are all the same. If just a sweetheart, really nice guy. And of course, Neil Armstrong. An amazing human being. Sorry, i am dragging on here. I will try to speed up. This is that jpl. This is the day we are about to land on mars. This is the moment in the control room where we got the signal back that we have landed successfully. I did one of these pictures during the mars pathfinder landing. There was a gentleman that had been at nasa for a decade and he was part of the mars viking program. He was rejoicing. I saw him with a very stern look on his face. I said, whats the matter . Arent you happy . Is there a problem . Did we not get a good signal question mark good signal . He said, back in my day men were not having like this. Hugging like this. [laughter] she made a visitor nasa a few years ago. This is the president s science advisor being interviewed by a student reporter. We do quiet a bit. This is the president making a call to the International Space station. This is elon musk, puddle number four. Kennedy space center. And trying to keep secret service out of your frame is not always easy. And in the oval office as well. This is the last time i photographed these gentlemen with the president in the oval office before neil passed away. I had the incredible honor the family permitted me to be the only photographer at the funeral for neil. That was a personal family funeral. I went on to cover the washington, d. C. Funeral as well. I went on a navy ship out into the atlantic for his aerial at sea. This is his granddaughter preparing her remarks. His wife and granddaughter. I had no idea this was happening. These things are planned, but these things just dont happen. This was the second full moon the night of his funeral in cincinnati. Back in washington at the national cathedral. And this is in jacksonville, florida, waiting for the remains to come off the plane. And, out of seat. The navy put down their cameras and let me be the only photographer to shoot this. Im not sure why, but my first trip to moscow was in 1991, when we first started discussions together to partner up. I think i have made about 70 trips to moscow, and 56 earned so to kazakhstan. My first launch is a 1995 at of kazakhs stand. The rocket is in three cases when we arrive. The capsule area. They just start to slap that thing together. It is Pretty Amazing to watch, actually. It takes about 12 hours for this to go on. There was one time when it was almost all the way together, my escort was saying its time to go. I said i wanted to see it all together. I was making pictures. He was asking me to go. I said the light is not right. He said, have you seen this movie, kill bill. [laughter] were done. Move on. This is the business in. Rollout like clockwork 7 00 a. M. That is the same launchpad that eureka garamond launched off of. Yuri garg aaron the darren. When my friends. One of my friends. This is a rock at a door and of saatchi. Sochi. That is a 32nd exposure. It is not that fast. That is a 30 second exposure. If you were to ask me what is missing and what i need to do more of in the future, this is it right here. After you have done is forever the hardware is cool, but its the people. Thats definitely what im looking forward to doing more and more of, people that i love. The priest comes down to bless the rocket. He comes over and blesses the media as well. I think he has a special target on me specifically. There is the crew in the background in quarantine waiting for a no go or go for launch. They put on the flights is behind the glass. This is one of the things that i have been wanting to get for a long time was the crew getting their haircuts, just to show they are normal human beings that do things that we all need to do. Finally, after years of trying to get into do this, they got me into do it. I was asking my colleagues and they what should i expect. They said, it depends. I said, what does it depend upon . They said, it depends on how short the skirt is today. [laughter] the crew is in the back room saying goodbye. They are signing the door. Lots of traditions. The priest ready to bless the crew as they come out. Pressure suit check out up and saying goodbye to the family. Steve swanson. This is that the base of the pad. This is a 14 millimeter lens which exaggerates things. It is a small rocket. One of the things i have yet to capture his when the crew gets up to the stairs, they path them on the back and then theres a guy takes his knee and jams it into their butt, saying get out of here. This is the other launchpad. This is the other time that i this of the only time i photographed the other launchpad into zack and stand. This is from pad one. This is a two minute exposure in the middle of daylight. Staged in kazakhstan we had often he looked cracked helicopters. There is a media healer craft helicopter. We circled the area where the capsule is supposed to land. Once we see that we are a at a point, we open up the door of the helicopter. I am hanging out. Another guy lays down next to me. Two guys lay down on top of his who are shooting. Two guys sit on the four of us. Theres two guys leaning on the shoulders. There are eight guys doing this thing. There are only six of us these days. We open the door. The first time this happened, max, a good friend of mine was on top of me. You cant hear anything. The wind is blowing. It is cold. Your craning your neck to look around to see if you can find why youre shooting. Youre waiting to see if we could see it. Max says, bill. I love you. I said dude, not the time. Not the time. [laughter] this is staging. This is the flotilla, 12 helicopters. This is the runway, which is no longer in use, but we use it for our landings. Some of the locals come and pick us up and take us into town for a few hours of rest before the next morning. We at eat at the restaurant. You stay at the hotel. I found some breakfast, which is always good. When the doctor eats it, i know its ok. He is the flight surgeon. Here we are hanging out at the helicopter and seeing it come down with three people who have been in six months. It is pretty incredible. These pilots are good. This is shot with a 300 millimeter lens. We are right on it. You can see the ground crew chasing after it is well in atvs and jeeps. A lot of farmers fields out in that neck of woods. This is a shop that i had been trying to get for ages, to see the retro jets firing. This is shot at 11 frames per second. That is how quick it happens. I have had a lot of folks and come to me after they get out of the capsule and ask me if they really fired. This is during Early Morning landing, with all the support vehicles with their headlights on. Crew of three inside. This ran on the front page of the new york times. A different landing. This is nice to see the scenery out there. One thing that is a good question to ask katie and others is something i havent heard talked about yet. I remember ken talking about this. When they open the hatch, the was no one there. It took a while for the support crew to get there. He talks about the first thing was the smell of dirt and earth and inhaling that and loving that smell after being in space. There is cakey. Katie. This is a print that is available as well today. All of these images are in the public domain. All of these images can be downloaded from the nasa website to be used. The crew is being brought out of the capsule. They are carried over to a chair. A little thumbs up. Smelling the smells. Some of our rush and friends. This ran on the cover of aviation week a couple of weeks ago. Then there is a lot of work it takes a place on the capsule to get it out of there. Ron gearan in the helicopter. Mike blown away by gravity. He gives the wrong his hat up in the air. How cool is this. A lot of the crew, some of them feel up to walking and want to do it. Others dont. There is almost always support personnel who insist upon helping them anyway. The whelping welcoming party at kazakhstan at the airport. They are given much of the dolls these dolls after landing. Thank you for your patience. [applause] how are we doing . We ran long, didnt we . We have a lot of time. Before you guys have questions. Bill, have you ever had a picture you took an nasa said you cannot use that one . No, i have to admit that im pretty fortunate. I also know what nasa is not going to like. I have had my share of mistakes over the years. One is a funny story. I had made a picture in the firing room of everyone on headsets and in their working. We ended up scrubbing for the day. We launched a day or two later. I came back in the firing room for the reattempt and one of the gentlemen there sent, we just got a strange the firing room. He said a Radio Station in all essentials called us live on the air and said we have the firing room . They said that they zoomed in on a photograph that had the phone on it. Luckily, everyone thought it was hilarious. I was concerned about it. Obviously being around all these guys and taking all of these pictures of these rockets taking off, and you want to go into space . Are you going to buy a ticket on verging galactic . You must make a lot of money is a photographer, right . That punchline was pretty good. No, i would love to go up. I think it would be great. I am always thinking about what i would do it there that might be different. A lot has been done. Tom has done a lot of the shots that i had on my list. I think the only thing left is a series of nudes. Not nudes of you . I once interviewed bill anders, who took the the very famous photo. I was like to ask people what they were thinking at the time they did a great thing. For bill, it was earthrise. He said you wanted know what im thinking. Im thinking i am off mission. Im supposed to be taking photos of the dark side of the moon as we go around because apollo was the first time anybody had gone around the moon and instead of taking photos of the potential Lunar Landing sites for apollo 11. Here i am taking pitchers of the earth. Im wasting film. What i really thought was that i was going to get a lot of trouble for taking these pictures. They were so beautiful. He cannot help himself. Bill got the right one. Its being in the right place at the right time . Absolutely. That is half the game, just rang to plan ahead and think about where you need to be and hope it happens. Give me an example of one where you were in the right place at the right time. All right, well, you caught me off guard. Absolutely. Its not so much nasa related when jfks last visited the white house. Tom hanks was having his premier. It was being premiered in the east room with president clinton , and jfk junior was there with his wife, he killed off for a moment and i saw him approach the famous portrait of his father with the arms folded. I never made a couple of frames of that. I cannot pass on it. I just happened to be hanging out at the right time in the right place. Anyway, the white house photographer came and joined the great i backed off. I felt it did not have a whole lot to do with what i was doing here. When he passed away, the white house put together a photo welcome to present to the family , and they use my photo of that. Its just one of those happenstance things. Im going to open it up now for questions. Lets start here in the front row. Can someone give him a microphone . Thank you. Its very clear that there is a strong connection between you and your work. There is a lot of love there. Its clear that there is a lot of love that you put into your work. The images speak for themselves. Being a young person, im really curious to know there is obviously a lot of tenacity that is tied with that love. Is that some you have always had . And if you could talk about one or two key moments when you are in your 20s and beginning to move towards nasa . Lakeshore. Sure. Photography has always been my passion, more than nasa, but now nasas in my blood, too. I feel very fortunate that that has not gone away. Anytime i go out on a photo assignment, especially to places where had i have been again and again. I love that challenged to find something new, try to find a new picture, and yet of the story in an understandable way, because you could just go crazy and take pictures that dont make sense. You have to tell the story as well. For me its that passion that has never gone away. Thats not entirely true good i have had my moments where i have gone home from work and not wanted to pick up a camera. The first time that happened to me, it scared me. Am i losing it. Then it comes back. Thats the one thing from my experience. I dont freak out when that happens. It still happens. I know just to stick with it and it will come back. It does. I love looking at the work of others. I should mention that my colleagues if you have not seen his pictures, very creative, very good. Its nice seeing some fresh eyes. It helps to inspire me as well. Being around others who love what i do as well as part of it. Did that answer your question . Yes. This fellow here. Equipment question. What kind of camera, lens, handhold, tripod . Yes to all of the above. I shoot nikon stuff day in and day out to all the remote cameras are cannons with nikon lenses. We have the whole shooting match. I shoot some films still, just for personal satisfaction, but not a lot. I was a hold out for a long time. I did not go to digital until i had to. Now, i am in full hawk hog. I had a scanner, hairdryer, fish tank heater clips the whole thing. I remember the hotel in moscow. Im standing there with a roll of film and a smock with a bathtub full of chemicals and so forth. You would have a problem with the ebola thing in new york if they saw you. Yes. I had to take a set dish with me as well. The only window in the hotel and kazakhs stand to face the satellite was down at the other end of the hallway, and these are back in the days where you had to assemble these satellite dishes. I set the alarm for 2 00 in the morning, wake up, simple satellite dish, put it in the window behind the curtain, rent a wired to my room, set the window, ran the wire into my room. I would scan a frame and using my modem from moscow, to washington to the office it would take me to in a half hours to send a picture. Occasionally it would disconnect. When you are at 90 . You know. The equivalent of sucking pizza through a straw. Madness. When it comes to digital, i am a huge fan. Being able to send things on a dish smaller than my laptop is amazing. I have another question. I was fascinated by the photos of the Neil Armstrong funeral. Can you give us any insight from a personal standpoint what it was like, the mood . That was a select group of people. Yes, an incredible honor. How to describe it. The family was very kind, very polite. Subdued. The navy bent over backwards for them. This is an american hero. It was interesting, when i photographed the ceremony in ohio, there was a family publicist of sorts. We had to get to know each other and make sure he was comfortable with me and what i was doing. The only picture that ever got questioned was someone said, they are going to do a flyover at the end of the ceremony. This was at a small country club. It was very modest. They were concerned how that might look, being on the lawn of the country club. Does it look elitist . My take was, i said if there is anyone in this country americans would like to have seen have a good life as a result of his hard work, it is Neil Armstrong. Show this picture. Luckily they did not argue. They said absolutely. One more question and then we are going to break. Back there. Yes. If the guy can get you the mic. In the first decade of the manned Space Program, families were front and center in the official story of the astronauts and the missions. There is a book out in recent year, there is a tv show being made about it now. In the last 20 or 30 years, it feels as though the families have in much less in the picture. I appreciate public attention has changed. There is a lot more astronauts. To what extent have you looked at conveying the story of the Space Program over the last 20 years have you paid attention to the families, to what extent does nasa think that should be part of the story . How did the astronauts feel about that . That is a very good question. I would encourage you to ask us some of the astronauts directly of course as well in what their take is on that. A lot of things, as katie was sharing when she shared her medical situation. Nasa takes privacy very seriously. But extends to the family members as well. As a photographer, i would love to incorporate that. I also respect that boundary. It is a balancing act. Absolutely. Im not sure i can give you a real good answer for that one. It would be good to talk to katie and other folks. Ok. Lets have a they can for bill big hand for bill ingalls. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] charlie duke talks about the apollo moon landings and then another chance to see bill ingalls show his work, including photos of space launches. On the next washington journal, roundtable with brian and