SEATTLE (AP) — Jack Smith, an Associated Press photographer who captured unforgettable shots of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, boxer Mike Tyson biting off a part of Evander Holyfield’s ear, and weeping figure skater Tonya Harding on the Olympics during a 35-year profession with the news organization, has died. He was 80.
Smith passed away on Jan. 4 at his home in La Mesa, California. He had cancer and had been in hospice care, said his wife, Judy Smith.
“People use the word legendary way too often, but in Jack’s case it may be an understatement,” said David Ake, the AP’s director of photography. “He could make pictures and friends faster than anyone I even have ever met. If there was a giant story within the West, there can be Jack — along with his huge smile, beating you to the scene and making pictures you simply wish you would have made.”
Smith joined the AP in Chicago as a photographer in 1966, after serving within the military in Vietnam, and spent a decade working there and in Washington, D.C. Then, in a bid to enhance coverage in Oregon and lure among the state’s newspapers away from rival United Press International, the AP made him its first staff photographer in Portland in 1977, said Steve Graham, who was the bureau’s news editor on the time.
Smith immediately improved the photo operation not only along with his keen eye and knack for getting a definitive shot, but through his exceptional organizational skills — maintaining a stable of freelancers and developing relationships with photographers at AP member newspapers across the state, Graham said.
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Smith arranged assignments for the various out-of-town photographers who arrived when Mount St. Helens, in southwestern Washington state, began rumbling in 1980. He was among the many first to capture images of the volcano when it blew on May 18 that yr, and he produced indelible pictures of oil-soaked wildlife following the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska‘s Prince William Sound.
Smith had a giant personality to match his 6-foot-4 frame, and was often called “Chainsaw” for his resemblance to a stereotypical lumberjack. He was amongst a breed of hard-charging, competitive and sharp-elbowed wire service photographers who sought to get an excellent image at whatever cost and in whatever conditions, several colleagues recalled.
In 1988, he traveled to Barrow, Alaska, where several California gray whales had turn into trapped in Arctic Ocean ice. Alaska Native whalers had chopped holes where the animals could surface and breathe in an effort to avoid wasting them.
Knowing he was going to be on that distant task for days or even weeks, he persuaded the AP to let him rent a snowmobile so he could reach the icebound scene every time he needed to, recalled Don Ryan, a former AP photographer in Portland who worked with Smith for about 25 years.
Moreover, Ryan said, Smith convinced the corporate to purchase him a shotgun, telling his bosses he needed it for defense against “rabid snow wolves.”
Smith was also a talented sports photographer, staffing several Olympics and Super Bowls for the AP. He captured a famous photo of figure skater Tonya Harding on the Winter Games in Norway in 1994, together with her leg up on the judges’ stand, pleading tearfully to be allowed to exchange a broken lace, soon after her ex-husband and bodyguard had been implicated in an attack on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan.
One other of his famous sports shots got here in 1997, when boxer Mike Tyson bit off a part of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a fight in Las Vegas.
Smith also loved to sail, continuously taking friends out on the Columbia River, traveling to the San Juan Islands in Washington state, and maintaining a 35-foot sailboat in retirement. Amongst his favorite assignments was the America’s Cup yacht race, Ryan said.
“If you went sailing with Jack you were not there for a pleasure cruise; you were working, pulling the ropes,” Ryan said. “He went through life that way: He was the captain, and also you were the crew.”
Smith was exacting when it got here to managing freelancers and cranky with any who failed to come back back from an task with what he believed would have been the important thing shot. But those that worked with him said his high standards made them higher.
“He was a taskmaster, but that is how I learned,” said Eric Risberg, who has been an AP staff photographer since 1982 and credits Smith with launching his profession by hiring him as a freelancer while Risberg was in college.
Greg Wahl-Stephens, a longtime freelancer for the AP who became close friends with Smith, recalled being assigned to a U.S. Olympic Committee awards ceremony in Portland in 1989.
Smith wanted him to get one photo featuring the 2 honorees, sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner and swimmer Matt Biondi. However the two didn’t appear onstage together, and Wahl-Stephens didn’t get the shot.
“He fired me — again — on that exact occasion,” Wahl-Stephens said. “But he all the time let me back in every time he fired me, and he took a man who desired to be (the famous French photographer Henri) Cartier-Bresson and turned me right into a photojournalist.”
Smith grew up in Salt Lake City and first became curious about journalism as a boy, when he had a paper route and would stop by the newsroom to perform other tasks, Judy Smith said.
The couple were together for 34 years, after friends set them up on a blind date in Alaska, where Smith was covering a school basketball tournament.
“He just loved the thrill of the job,” she said. “He loved the travel. He liked being good at something, and he was really good at what he did.”
Smith leaves behind his wife; two children, Melissa and Matthew; and a granddaughter, Alexis.
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