Moments in Time
Time magazine photojournalist shares experiences with students
Kelcie Huffstickler
Issue date: 9/25/08 Section: News
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Washington Post.
Behind the crowd, one man climbed to the top of a ladder and positioned himself next to the flagpole. From there, he got the shots every other photographer craved.
Dirk Halstead, renowned photographer for Time magazine and the first speaker in this year's Lecture-Concert series, knows how to get photographs of presidents that stand out from the norm.
"I made it my job to study the presidents I covered," he told the audience Monday night in the Student Union Auditorium.
That devotion to studying his subjects is what made Halstead, a 29-year veteran in covering the White House, aware that
the best shots of Nixon would be captured up high, behind the crowd.
"I knew that he didn't like to look at people," Halstead
said. "In a crowd he would never make eye-contact… instead he would always look [far off] to the back, and if there was a
flag, he would look at the flag."
Halstead explained that every second Nixon was railing against The Washington Post and his other enemies, he was looking
right into Halstead's lens under the flagpole.
As a result, Halstead got a historic photo, which Time put on its front cover.
It's because of photos like this one Halstead became
a legend in the field of photojournalism.
Halstead's career began at just 17 years old when he covered the Guatemalan Civil War for Life magazine.
He also worked for United Press International for more than 15 years before going on to Time.
Throughout his career, he's photographed a plethora of movie stars as well as Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton.
Hastead went on to tell about his experiences photographing President Clinton.
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