# 11 - Bill Ingalls - May 20, 2017 - Arlington, Virginia
Monday, May 29, 2017
I first noticed Bill Ingalls photos back in 1998 when I was a freelance fill-in photo editor for Agence France-Presse working the photo wire at AFP's office in Washington, DC. Bill Ingalls is NASA's senior contract photographer. Bill would send his images of NASA's space shuttle launches and landings out to the news wires for publication. I might have even briefly talked to Bill on the phone to confirm with him that we had received the photos back then.
Bill has been a NASA contract photographer since 1989. There are a few online interviews of Bill. This one by Space Answers is pretty good. Here is one by NASA. C-SPAN Explorers club did a video of Bill talking about his work. Here is Bill's website.
I photographed Bill at his home in Arlington, VA - I came with no preconceived idea, I was nervous because I had no real plan and didn't exactly know how I would photograph him. I had visions of being somewhere at a NASA launch site making an interesting composition with Bill standing next to a huge and graphic rocket cone or next to some sort of space gear. However - we weren't going to be anywhere near those sort of environments. What was I going to do? I almost always carry my small painted background on these shoots and often photograph subjects on it for several reasons, I see the background as a thread of continuity for the project and the background can lend itself to creating an interesting photo.
I photographed Bill on the background for 1/2 of the photos. I noticed in his home office that he had created a bulletin board with dozens of press pass badges that he acquired while working over the years. So we did a few shots in front of that. He claimed that he had boxes filled with many more badges.
Later we went outside and photographed in front of a tree that Bill helped get planted in front of his home a few years ago. I asked him to go grab a Rolleiflex camera that I earlier saw sitting on a table and that I would photograph him with that camera. I've learned that I can't make every frame I photograph be a winner. The odds just aren't there, but if I can come away with one good frame from a shoot then I'm typically satisfied. The very last frame hit the mark for me.
Bill explained that the particular camera he was holding belonged to NASA and it had been used by NASA photographer Bill Taub who worked for NASA from 1958 to 1975. "..Taub took nearly every official picture of the astronauts who led the nation's early forays into space and played a central role in shaping public perception of NASA's work. He was often the only photographer with access to training sessions and closed engineering meetings during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions". - Washington Post - March 14, 2010.
Bill told me the camera had been used by Taub to make photographs for NASA during his tenure there. The camera was used to photograph many of the NASA astronauts when they trained. With that final and tenth frame of Bill Ingalls I knew I had captured a tiny bit of a connection with history, I felt that I got the shot.
Bill has been a NASA contract photographer since 1989. There are a few online interviews of Bill. This one by Space Answers is pretty good. Here is one by NASA. C-SPAN Explorers club did a video of Bill talking about his work. Here is Bill's website.
I photographed Bill at his home in Arlington, VA - I came with no preconceived idea, I was nervous because I had no real plan and didn't exactly know how I would photograph him. I had visions of being somewhere at a NASA launch site making an interesting composition with Bill standing next to a huge and graphic rocket cone or next to some sort of space gear. However - we weren't going to be anywhere near those sort of environments. What was I going to do? I almost always carry my small painted background on these shoots and often photograph subjects on it for several reasons, I see the background as a thread of continuity for the project and the background can lend itself to creating an interesting photo.
I photographed Bill on the background for 1/2 of the photos. I noticed in his home office that he had created a bulletin board with dozens of press pass badges that he acquired while working over the years. So we did a few shots in front of that. He claimed that he had boxes filled with many more badges.
Later we went outside and photographed in front of a tree that Bill helped get planted in front of his home a few years ago. I asked him to go grab a Rolleiflex camera that I earlier saw sitting on a table and that I would photograph him with that camera. I've learned that I can't make every frame I photograph be a winner. The odds just aren't there, but if I can come away with one good frame from a shoot then I'm typically satisfied. The very last frame hit the mark for me.
Bill explained that the particular camera he was holding belonged to NASA and it had been used by NASA photographer Bill Taub who worked for NASA from 1958 to 1975. "..Taub took nearly every official picture of the astronauts who led the nation's early forays into space and played a central role in shaping public perception of NASA's work. He was often the only photographer with access to training sessions and closed engineering meetings during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions". - Washington Post - March 14, 2010.
Bill told me the camera had been used by Taub to make photographs for NASA during his tenure there. The camera was used to photograph many of the NASA astronauts when they trained. With that final and tenth frame of Bill Ingalls I knew I had captured a tiny bit of a connection with history, I felt that I got the shot.
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