MENTORS AND HEROES

DAVID’S HEROES ARE THOSE THAT GAVE HIM AN OBJECTIVE TO WORK TOWARDS IN HIS PHOTOGRAPHIC CAREER In those early days of taking pictures underwater, did you have a mentor? There were photographic mentors and heroes at the same moment. It’s wonderful that you know your heroes. Mine was Lewis Martin of National Geographic, head of the foreign desk. He spoke half a dozen languages fluently, and went underwater and accompanied Cousteau and Louis Malle when they made the film The Silent World, and produced the first underwater picture story. It was called Camera Below, in a 1956 issue, which, as a kid, I read and read and read. Later, there was Bates Littlehales, who was a wonderful National Geographic photographer. More than that, he invented the Ocean Eye camera with a man named Gomer Mcneill, and that let me make pictures that people could only dream about.