T
erry Virts is the most prolific
photographer in the history of
space travel. He’s shot more than
300,000 images during his two
spaceflights, a two-week mis-
sion on board the Space Shuttle
Endeavour in 2010 and 200-plus
days on the International Space Sta-
tion in 2014-2015, which included
three spacewalks. He’s also shot
terabytes of video, some for the eye-
boggling IMAX film “A Beauti-
ful Planet.”
In addition to his dramatic images,
his book, View From Above, published
by National Geographic, has nail-biting
stories about his experiences circling the
globe, including an emergency exit into
the Russian side of the space station to
the sound of warning bells resonating
throughout the American sector.
Digital Photo Pro: Was photog-
raphy an official part of your
missions or did NASA allow
you to pursue your passion
in space?
Terry Virts: The thing about being
an astronaut [is] you’re not a special-
ist. On the shuttle, I was the pilot as
well as a robotics guy and a photo/
TV guy. When I first showed up
on the space station, I was a flight
engineer, then halfway through, the
old commander left, and I became
commander. But everybody has to
do everything.
The cargo ships would bring up
stuff, and I would track everything
on an Excel spreadsheet. Also,
we had 250 science experiments.
And every astronaut is a photogra-
pher to a certain extent, and we all
get training.
There are always technical pictures.
But 99 percent of the time, it was a
labor of love because of my passion
for photography. The subject mat-
ter is pretty spectacular in space, so I
wanted to take advantage of that.Does NASA have an official
photography program?
They do. There are around six people
in what they call the Photography/TV
group. A lot of the training has to do
with how to take pictures in the unique
environment of space because the light-
ing is so extreme.
We used to have Hasselblads when
I first got to NASA, which was won-
derful. They would let us check it
out to practice on Earth so we could
get good at it.
Then, there’s the video part, and the
system on the space shuttle was super
complicated, this kludge of 1970s wir-
ing and digital cameras.What cameras are being
brought up now and what
modifications are done to
make them space-worthy?
The mainstay of the NASA program
is now the Nikon D5 DSLR, although
when I was up there it was the D4.Terry Virts captures a spacewalk selfie.30 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com