[Leica] RETROSPECT 13

[billclough042541 at gmail.com (Bill Clough)]

Hi there ?


   One year after the Atomic Energy Commission detonated a nuclear ?device?
a quarter of a mile beneath the salt flats southeast of Carlsbad, N.M., the
press was invited to enter the chamber created by the explosion.


   Knowing we would have to photograph the inside of a sphere, I borrowed a
Leitz 21mm from a local doctor.


   It was something like 90 degrees in the shaft that led to the chamber.
Adjacent to the chamber was a separate area where all the cameras had to be
placed for 30 minutes because the temperature inside the chamber was around
130 degrees. The antechamber allowed the cameras to adjust to the heat. A
camera brought from the shaft directly into the chamber immediately would
fog up.


   Each photographer was allowed only 15 minutes. The AEC folks feared
dehydration.


   The hero of the assignment was an AEC photographer who illuminated the
entire chamber with Sylvania Sun Guns. It was all indirect lighting; not
one Sun Gun was in sight.


   I set up the tripod, took a light meter reading and realized it was like
photographing the interior of a cave. There was no sense of scale. I asked
the technician assigned to monitor ? and to assist ? each photographer if
he would stand on a rock and look up. After studying the overhead for
possible falling rocks,

he agreed.


   The photographer who was in line behind me was no less that LIFE staffer
J. R. Eyerman.


   Later, when LIFE published his photograph, I was delighted to find he
used the same man doing the same thing on the same rock.


   I shot both color and black-and-white. After the slides were processed,
someone stole them.


   That?s not quite the whole story. A year after the assignment, I ran
into the doctor at the local Leica camera store.


   ?It?s the strangest thing,? he said. ?Every element in that 21mm
separated. The repairmen at E. Leitz say they have never seen anything like
it.?


   I never told him.


http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Bill1941/RETROSPECT/Project+Gnome+Crater++1962+-+00204.jpg.html


?Bill