The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Centerville photographer captures beauty, lands job at NASA

‘A hidden gem in western Ohio’
10:46 a.m.
Tipp City offers quaint shops, cozy dining
5/25/12
How to make inexpensive, fresh flower arrangements
5/25/12
How to help the poor the 'right way'
5/25/12
Better treat soon to combat emerald ash borer
5/25/12
> More lifestyle headlines

By Pamela Dillon, Contributing Writer 4:17 PM Saturday, August 27, 2011

Centerville photographer Gary Morrison will always remember the Alamo. Not for the traditional reason, but for the fact that at the age of 12 it was the first color image he captured that he thought was good. The historical Alamo village was part of a John Wayne movie set in Brackettville, Texas.

“When I was 11, I awoke one morning to the huge sounds of a big work truck coming up the driveway. My dad opened my bedroom door and said, ‘You want a camera? You go out and spread the dirt,’ ” remembers Morrison. “They had dumped 8 yards of dirt on the driveway, so we could seed our own grass.”

The ambitious youngster spent several days spreading that dirt, and his dad bought him a Polaroid 104 camera at the end of the week. Saying yes to new opportunities would open the door to many other jobs later on as an adult.

“My camera was the kind where you pulled the film out, put that bad smelling stuff on it and waited 60 seconds. I got that instant feedback; that’s how I learned to compose,” Morrison said. “Photography has been my passion since then.”

He graduated to a Polaroid Instamatic and Kodachrome slides while honing his presentation skills during high school in Texas. After graduating college (as a poly-science major at Southwest Texas), one of his first jobs involved filming Outward Bound excursions for executives in the Virgin Islands.

“There I learned about lighting, and how to leverage your equipment,” Morrison said. “That job led to an invitation to sail on one of the Tall Ships.”

He documented that 1976 trip from St. Thomas, to Bermuda, to New England, and finally ending in New York for a Fourth of July parade. He used that material to present his adventure to Rotary and Lions clubs back in Houston. He worked a short stint for Marine Magazine, and then in ’77 his photography took off — into outer space. He was hired at NASA.

“I started out as a cameraman assigned to document the new crop of astronauts flying this thing called the space shuttle,” Morrison said. “For the next 15 years, I worked my way up to actually running all the documentation at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.”

It was a heady time for him. He met Sally Ride (the first woman to enter space) and TV legend Walter Cronkite, and worked with astronaut Robert Crippen. Morrison worked for the inside press corps shooting or directing all the footage for the media. At one point, he started training the astronauts on how to take still and video footage in space.

“You have to understand we were dealing with hard-boiled engineers who have so much going on inside that billion dollar spacecraft,” Morrison said. “We taught them to use lighting, and gave them instruction books for set up and shooting.”

The shuttle astronauts needed to document all of their activities. The tripods were bolted onto the mid-deck or flight deck of the shuttle. The shot would capture all of them floating into the focal area. Morrison’s team would make photo albums from what the crew brought back, so they could learn why some images were better than others.

“Then we got to thinking, wouldn’t it be great to attach a camera to the payload and film the orbiter in orbit?” Morrison said. “Then we went through an entire year on the engineering process and getting the necessary approvals.”

The result was amazing film footage of the SPAS 1 orbiting the earth in 1983. The STS-007 was the first mission where an actual payload was deployed and retrieved in space. Morrison would take his place in mission control after the 1981 through ’92 shuttle launches.

After NASA, he moved to Nantucket, Mass., for five years where he transitioned from film to digital photography. Morrison then held an Internet banking position at NCR from ’97 to 2009.

The best pictures that he takes nowadays will join the vast library in his Alpine Rose Studio: six white Adirondack chairs form a circle near the water in Nantucket; a schooner lists to the right in the Atlantic Ocean waves; one open window pane is the focal point of ornate German architecture.

“Charlotte, my significant other, is all in when it comes to my art,” said Morrison, who is also working on high-resolution, 360-degree panoramic images. “She’s been a great friend in helping me navigate my way between my passion and bringing home a few shekels.”

Contact contributing arts writer Pamela Dillon at pamdillon@woh.rr.com.

Share this article