National Geographic: Cameramen Who Dared Page #2

---

a conflict familiar

to action cameramen:

things were too safe.

The Yukon raftsmen navigated

smoothly post all perils,

and Lipscomb was filming

an uneventful trip.

But then they came to

Five Fingers Rapids,

and suddenly they were

losing control.

It was sort of a funny,

perverse pleasure as I realized as

the raft was swinging out,

swinging out...

I could line up the shore

behind it

and I could see they weren't,

they weren't gonna miss it.

Looking pretty bad, boy.

So I realized, oh boy,

these guys are into it at last.

They've really got themselves

in trouble and I'm so glad.

And then I thought,

but I'm with 'em!

And the 10-ton raft stopped

with the loudest noise

I think I've ever hard

in my life.

And we knew we had it

and we had it

with three cameras going.

So it made a marvelous

scene in the film.

Jim Lipscomb has made films

about people and about animals.

He says people are

more treacherous.

But it was the animals

he photographed

for "Polar Bear Alert"

that taught him a

personal lesson about fear.

It began with his own brave

insistence on getting

closer to the bears.

When he decided

against filming

as planned from the safety

of a vehicle called

a tundra buggy

his guide stared

getting anxious.

And so I said to the guide,

"We're gonna have

to get outside of

that tundra buggy

in order to film.

And he said,

Well, I can't let you

outside the tundra buggy

if the polar bear is closer

than 60 to 80 feet,

Because they're very

unpredictable animals.

You don't know what

they're gonna do,

and they can get to

you in three bounds

and then look you over.

And by the time they get

finished looking you over,

you're gonna be dead.

And I don't want any National

Geographic photographer

dead in my tundra buggy.

So we said, okay,

we'll build a cage.

Yes, please,

lots.

I didn't think when I got out

there in the cage

that I was going to feel

any particular feel

or that I was in any risk.

And I thought I was going

to be very calm.

But then when that

big bear walkup to the cage,

Something happened

in my mind that was an

entirely different kind

of experience,

and I think it's

the first time

I've ever identified it

in my life.

I felt fear.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

I was breathing hard and I

was trying not to tremble

because I wanted to hold

that camera still.

The polar came right up

and licked the lens.

He wanted to see

what this thing tasted like.

And I felt what it must be,

an atavistic fear I think,

that there was in,

Inborn, and through centuries,

through eons of evolution

into the human species:

This is not the place to be!

You gotta get out of here!

This thing, this thing

is gonna get you.

And I, I was just atremble

with the sense of fear of that,

That thing,

knowing all the time

that I was presumably safe.

There's tremendous charge

of adrenalin and excitement

coming through to you.

And you're, yeah,

you're thrilled to be there, uh,

and to be experiencing it.

I don't know

that it's addicting,

because in retrospect after

you think about it,

you think, well,

that was a high

I maybe just don't need

anymore.

I don't need that one again,

you know.

In 1914

motion picture photography

reached into a new realm.

underwater.

John Williamson,

a cartoonist and photographer

for a Virginia newspaper,

Had a showman's ingenuity and

a father who'd built a 30-foot

flexible steel tube designed

for underwater salvage work.

Williamson climbed down

into the tube.

Through the window

of an observation

chamber he called

a "photosphere",

he took still photos in 1913

and, in the next year,

the first moving pictures

ever taken underwater.

Only one year later,

Williamson made

the first theatrical

movie produced underwater.

These scenes

are from his version of

Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues

Under the Sea.

Audiences were fascinated

by these images.

Others were fascinated by the

Williamson

"photosphere" itself.

The eminent Alexander

Graham Bell,

inventor of the telephone,

visited in 1922

and spent a half-hour

peering through

the underwater window.

Williamson emphasized

the safety

and dryness

of the device by taking

his wife and baby daughter

below.

He filmed them gazing

at sea life

including divers hired to swim

before his cameras.

Shooting in the Bahamas,

he lured sharks

into the picture

the sharks attracted by the

scent of chunks of horsemeat

dangled in the water

over the photosphere.

What remained to be done,

of course,

was filming by a cameraman

who swam freely underwater.

An Austrian zoologist,

Dr. Hans Hass,

was among the first to try

to connect diving

and photography.

Dr. Hass experimented

with many different cameras

and housings,

some of which leaked

disastrously.

But this was true pioneering:

equipment was devised

from scratch,

Mostly hand made,

improvised with

little sophistication

in diving technology

and near-total ignorance

of undersea dangers.

How would sharks react to a

diver taking their picture?

The only way to find out

was to take the plunge.

In 1939 Dr. Hass filmed

underwater scenes

that enthralled audiences

and fired

the imagination

of future divers.

When Hass first went

in the water

with his little wind-up

sixteen

millimeter camera

and started to press,

you know, six, eight-foot,

ten-foot sharks

in the Mediterranean,

no one had ever done it before.

So he was not only using

new techniques

and worried about the bends

and an embolism,

and this and that,

but he was also the first

to ever engage those animals.

So today we know that most

of them are approachable,

but those guys,

those early people-Hass,

Cousteau hadn't clue that

that was gonna be the case.

Very bold first efforts.

Very exciting.

Al Giddings has shot countless

ocean documentaries

and the underwater

segments of features

including James Bond movies

and "The Deep".

Doing so, he's amassed a vast

library of underwater footage.

But he's best known for his

work with great white sharks,

Shooting them at first from

inside a protective cage...

later going outside the cage.

The first time in the

cages most of us dropped

to the bottom of the cage,

hands and knees and

sort of cowered for a time,

Because these 3,000-pound

eating machines were pounding

the bars and pushing

the cages around.

Today, um, I know that if

you maintain good eye contact,

you're fairly aggressive,

and on the bottom,

you can get out of the cage,

And I have, and,

and really fend a two-or three

thousand-pound

great white away.

The first time out of the cage

was certainly

a ticklish experience.

And I went out

six or eight feet

and kept the cage at my back,

and the first animal that came

near I lunged forward a bit,

not totally convinced that

he was gonna move off.

But it worked,

and I continued to move

further and further

away from the cages,

And eventually, the last time

we were in Australia,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes