Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-132) Launch

After a 3 year and 17 flight hiatus, i made my return to the Kennedy Space Center and photographed the final (scheduled) flight of Atlantis.

How one person gets so many photos after the break....



Since actually standing anywhere near a rocket launch is inherently hazardous to one's health (the sound will kill you), the best photos come from remote cameras operated off a sound trigger. The basic principle is that once the sound level meets threshold X, the camera fires continuously until it drops below that threshold.

So what this entails is arriving at Kennedy Space Center before dawn to set them up the day before the launch. The major wire services and a few select others (AP, Reuters, Orlando Sentinel, Canon Professional Services) get their own van and escort to go put cameras EVERYWHERE. Scott Andrews of Canon was rumored to have placed somewhere near 30 Cameras around the pad. The rest of us mere mortals are forced to ride one of two buses out to the field and hitchhike from there, as the prevailing theory is that we have fewer cameras to set up.



That did not stop these photographers from setting up a 400/2.8 just outside the pad.



The legendary Scott Andrews sets up a camera on a small hill just across from pad 39-A.

What i had done was to have the sound trigger go into the one camera and then hardwired into a second camera (Both Nikon D2x), so when camera A fires, camera B should fire. I talked with Red Huber of the Orlando Sentinel as to where the best spot with water would be and he suggested this dyke that is about a 1/3rd of a mile from the pad. I got out there armed with a 70-300/4-5.6 & an old, beat up 85/1.8 lens (why risk something good?). Now this is where years of experience with remotes (in basketball) meets lack of sleep and results in smacking one's self upside the head. I'm usually one who will come prepared with anything and everything, but i damm nearly F'd this one up and then some. When i shot over by 39-B before, i used the 300 & the 85. Figured i'd do the same thing. Didnt dawn on me that i might need something shorter, like say anything in a 35-50 range. I get to my spot and i realise i'm way too close. Thankfully, i had my 24-85 on a body that was with me, so i used that instead.

Later there was an opportunity to photograph the shuttle as its protective structure was rolled back. Of interest were the group from Spaceflightnow.com (Their website is not blackberry friendly) as well as a classic car that rolled up.













Thanks to the good folks at Nikon Professional Services, i was able to borrow a D3, a 600/4 and a 1.4 teleconverter. Shot it from the press site (there was a miscommunication as i later found i could have gotten on the 500 foot tall VAB) with the 600, my d700 w/ 70-200/2.8 with a polarizer and a d70s with a 20 just to get the wide. I tried to hardwire all 3 together but i was one cable short and the cable for d70s wasnt working right, so i just went with pushing the button. All 3 were on a tripod together.

D3 600/4 +1.4 Teleconverter

D2x Wide remote (2000/5.6 ISO 100)

D2x 70-300 @70mm, cropped in

D2x 70-300 @70mm, cropped in

D2x Wide Remote. Note the bird.

D2x 70-300 @70mm, cropped in

D3 600mm + 1.4 teleconverter

d70s 20/2.8

d700 70-200/2.8 @200mm w/polarizer

15 seconds later, it was out of sight.

There were a lot of photographers out there that would fall into the "doesn't do this every day for a living" category that got credentialed. I could elaborate on that for awhile, but i wont. Suffice to say, i got a lot of the photos i wanted.