National Geographic: Cameramen Who Dared Page #3

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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.

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