As I'd hoped there was no barricade up at the gate
no line or anything, so we're in the park.
Got that much done.
We'll just see what's going on at the other end.
My name is Rick Wilking and I'm a photojournalist
based in the Denver area
I primarily shoot for Reuters news agency
This is my 40th year I'm celebrating in the business.
You know, working for a wire service like I have it's been a lot of
the front page news over that period of time
traveling around an Air Force One
with three different presidents
I'd fly to Africa if there was a hijack story
that kind of thing. I've gotten to the point where I could
pack a suitcase for a two-week long trip in about ten minutes
And it is very competitive
The wire services are all about beating the other guy
You thrive on that intensity
Hurricane Katrina was maybe one of the biggest stories I did
I was there for a number of weeks
The best pictures come from subjects
that are comfortable with you being around.
"I'm with the news media out of Denver
Rick Wilking's the name."
My approach has always been
you don't even put your camera to your eye until you've
talked to that person.
"Oh you're doing polar tracking, huh?"
And then you're gonna get way better pictures than if you just sort of go
marching in and start to shoot it.
"I love the sign."
Catching the moment, that's
always been sort of the mantra of photojournalism.
I came to Guernsey Wyoming to cover the eclipse
through a suggestion of a friend of mine.
I told Reuters, "I've got a place to stay, it's in the total path,
It's not far from where I live
A lot of people are expected there,"
and they said "Great." You know, "Go."
Totality is a word that most Americans have never heard of.
Most people have never seen it before,
many people will never see it again.
So I knew there would be a lot of attention paid to it.
"Can I get you to hold up one of the
black-out shirts?"
"I'm on assignment for Reuters in Denver."
"Wherever you see the news, those are our clients.
So CNN, Time magazine."
"Oh my God!"
I know they're not exactly flocking into Guernsey yet.
I expected to see the grocery stores wiped out
I thought that would be an interesting story
And they weren't.
Gas stations to be out of gas and they weren't.
So I arrived here with four Sony a9 cameras
Two remote cameras and then I wanted to around my neck
I got into the Sony world
probably three years ago
I think my first camera was an a7.
I was certainly attracted to it mostly for its form factor
and then they came out
with a7R II, and when they came out with that camera
I said, "Alright now this is
something I could rely on
as a primary camera."
And I bought a couple of those
and I covered the whole presidential campaign last year with them.
And quickly learned there were many many advantages to the camera
way beyond the form factor.
To go from the DSLR to mirrorless
was a big change.
I wanted the 1DX for its high-speed motor
but I wanted the 5D for its size
a9 is both in one box.
So the Sun is nowhere near where I thought it was gonna be.
It's like exactly opposite of what I predicted.
I wanted to know exactly where the Sun was
gonna be in the sky so that I would know what kind of equipment I needed and
where to put it.
You know I didn't want to have to try to figure that out on the day.
I used to have to travel with multiple cases of equipment.
First you had to develop film in a hotel bathroom
Sometimes you'd do it in the trunk of your car.
And then make a print and carry a typewriter to type a caption
Then try to go find a phone line
To the digital thing now where I can send the picture
out of my camera while I'm shooting it live over Wi-Fi.
If your competitor is doing that and you're not doing that
your picture's not gonna make it into the newspaper.
I transmitted eight pictures from what I saw today
Not really exciting stuff no prize winners there
but storytelling, which is what this is.
It's about telling a story from beginning, middle and end.
I thought, "Well everybody's gonna have pictures
of the actual Sun being blacked
out by the moon.
I didn't think that was really going to be what I was going for.
I was hoping to have a people story
where, you know I'd see more of how the people reacted to it.
I had this mental picture of thousands of people sitting
in their lawn chairs with their goofy glasses on
all looking the same direction.
That was my dream shot.
And then it didn't happen.
The people just sort of scattered around.
And in my research and looking at some videos
I was given the impression it didn't really get dark
it just sort of went to twilight.
"Looks like a storm is coming."
It got a lot darker than I expected.
Switch the camera to like the 3200 ISO
and probably only had 1/60th of a second
on the 24-70
Very soon my son yells
"Dad there's a plane!"
And I look at the crowd
and they're all pointing at the sky
and I aimed it at the Sun and I shot
a couple frames and I thought "Well I don't see a plane,"
and then BAM!
This jet comes flying.
"Oh you're kidding me"
Talking about all the planning that I did
the one thing I didn't plan for was
a jet plane to go flying right through the Eclipse
at the moment of totality.
What are the odds?
"It's gotta be there. Gotta be there!"
"Holy cats."
I don't think anybody else in the world
is gonna see a jet go by the Eclipse.
One nice thing about the EVF
is you can review the pictures through the viewfinder.
And I click, click and I got two frames
out-of-focus, out-of-focus
BAM there's one that's sharp.
I said okay, I got something I got to get on the wire right now.
Boogie back to the area where I have my laptop
and sat phone and everything else set up
That was a moment in time
that was there for, I don't know, half a second maybe.
I got as many frames out of that as I wanted
20 frames a second
When you do need it
it's just unbelievable to have that option.
Got that picture on the wire within 10 minutes.
That picture got used globally
all over the place
and for good reason, I don't think there's
another picture from this Eclipse like it.
That was the money shot for sure.
Post-processing has gotten to the point where
it's very very minimal.
And I think this is a good thing.
Any publication can do anything they want to a photo
but you know, an agency like Reuters has a reputation to uphold
of reality, of truth.
And I think photojournalism is the last bastion of
preserving reality.
For all the effort and research and the months of planning and
everything else I could not be happier with the way
it worked out for me here.
You know, there's a lot of moving pieces to this thing
Just from the technical standpoint and then there's all the unknowns
It's not just my hope but I'm convinced that
my work has served a useful purpose
in educating people, enlightening people, entertaining people, for sure.
That's a really satisfying thing
My pictures are archived and will be seen for generations.
Well after I've hung up the cameras and
I'm gone. That is very satisfying and important.