Photographers Blog

It was shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989 that the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in Prince Edward Sound and began leaking millions of gallons of North Slope crude oil. I was sound asleep in Toronto, Canada when that happened.

Reuters was still taking a feed of pictures from UPI (United Press International) from the United States. But I remember hearing the news that morning and packing my gear (which at that time was film, powder chemicals, portable darkroom, 16S color transmitter and of course.. some cold weather clothing). I sat in Toronto as the politics of the news business played out in Washington between Reuters and UPI. Finally, it was decided that we would both cover the story. So, David Ake, a UPI staffer from Denver, and I made our way there. I remember landing in Anchorage, Alaska, and hauling my gear into a rental car at midnight, then driving six hours to Valdez in the dead of night. About 4 hours into the drive I was held up by a few hundred caribou, who decided to cross the two lane highway, they were just mingling so I still have vivid memories of being in the middle of nowhere honking my horn to help speed up the process.

I rolled into Valdez at first light and it didn’t take long to realize that most of the town’s people did not want the media there. The few media that had found rooms at the only hotel in town were all having to checkout as rumor had it that Exxon had bought the hotel. With help from our desk in Washington and the chamber of commerce in Valdez I found a place to stay at the home of the local taxidermist.

The leaking tanker was some 50 miles away from Valdez and the only way to get a picture was to fly. Chris Wilkins, a fellow photographer from AFP, was now on the ground and we hooked up to try and help one another sort out the situation. All the planes and helicopters were now on 24 hr booking by Exxon. We were dead in the water to get pictures of the ship. Chris started tracking down a plane outside the area and I went looking for the coast guard. Little did we know that the coast guard was planning on closing down the air space around the now widening environmental disaster.

Chris found a plane from an Indian reservation and made plans to meet the pilot at first light the next morning at a gravel runway outside of town. I made some pictures around town, but there was very little to shoot. Chris and I went out to the air strip the next morning and sat waiting. Sure enough a small black spec in the sky circled down around the glacier-covered mountains and landed on the gravel air strip. The pilot jumped out, he looked no older than 15. Chris and I looked at each other, then we looked at the plane, then we climbed in and looked at each other again.

I am a firm believer in having goals and dreams and constantly working to improve your situation and once achieved taking full advantage because often that chance is fleeting. I recently have had one of my favorite photographic experiences when I used a slow period in New York to take a trip to Alaska in order to document something that few people know much about and that I did when first starting out as a photographer. As anyone who is even a casual fan of photography knows the list of equipment necessary to make someone’s vision become a reality can sometimes be as long as the zeros included in the price. In order to get around that little inconvenience I went fishing in Alaska for 3 consecutive summers. It’s not the more famous and dangerous crab fishing many now know of through television shows and movies but it is a three month sentence in a 50ft cell that floats and rolls and smells a lot like diesel and the ocean mixed in with some jellyfish and salmon. It was the financial catalyst into the career I now enjoy with Reuters and it has been a goal of mine for years to fully document the men (and very few women) who go to sea every summer for a three month commitment that I both miss and never want to experience again.

First I want to thank Chief Photographer of North America, Gary Hershorn, for allowing me to work on this story because I can now safely say that I have crossed a lifetime goal off the list.

It wasn’t easy, the planning started months before the trip with the research and planning necessary in handing Gary an itinerary that would both meet reasonable time constraints and take maximum advantage of my time in America’s northern frontier. Luckily I had kept in touch with my old skipper and after a call to his wife (he was out in the Bearing Sea fishing for herring) I had the permission I needed to begin locking down the logistics. I also realized that other than adding to the global food story a photo essay on some fishermen in the middle of nowhere probably wouldn’t be enough to sell the trip. I racked my brain and came up with a couple other additions that I felt would make a nice total package. I decided to add the Valdez Marine Terminal and Trans Alaskan Pipeline to the list and a quick collection of glacial melt and any wildlife I managed to come across in the process. Putting these together and coming up with a rough plan I was able to have a cohesive idea that I pitched to Gary. Luckily for me he said it sounded good and with a couple of tweaks regarding the time spent on assignment the plan was given the green light and I hit the internet to make the required reservations and plans as giddy as a schoolchild.