Stars align, for passengers and photographers alike
Gary Hershorn is the Reuters News pictures editor for the Americas
It was another ordinary Thursday in the Thomson Reuters building in Times Square.
I was spending endless hours at my desk on the 19th floor, helping to work out the logistics for next week’s presidential inauguration and talking with photographer Eric Thayer.
The quiet was broken at about 3:30pm when a colleague yelled out to the newsroom: “There is an airplane in the water!”
Photographer Brendan McDermid and I jumped up and ran twenty feet to the window and saw a plane floating in the water, with some people on the wings. Eric grabbed his cameras and laptop and ran to the river. Someone ran into a training course and notified photographer Mike Segar about the crash; he also headed to the river. Chip East, who was at home, followed them to see what he could get.
Brendan had a camera on his desk and a 400mm lens on the floor. He grabbed them and started shooting. I had to dig into a drawer and find a camera, a battery and a compact flash card. I had a 500mm lens in a case under my desk.
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The Wall
It was fortunate that the plane managed to make a safe enough landing to allow passengers to escape. Great photography coverage.