On February 23, 1945, Joe Rosenthal shot what became one of the most famous of all WWII photos. Yesterday, Joe died of natural causes. He was 94.
He had discussed how the photo of the second flag raising of the day came to be:
"Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know."
"Millions of Americans saw this picture five or six days before I did, and when I first heard about it, I had no idea what picture was meant."
He recalled that days later, when a colleague congratulated him on the picture, he thought he meant another, posed shot he had taken later that day, of Marines waving and cheering at the base of the flag.
He added that if he had posed the flag-raising picture, as some skeptics have suggested over the years, "I would, of course, have ruined it" by choosing fewer men and making sure their faces could be seen."
Like some of today's photos, Rosenthal had to deal with accusations that the flag-raising picture was staged. A film shot of the same event proved otherwise. But today's "photoshop-journalists" have shown we can't always trust the modern photojournalist.
(HT: Powerline)
-Colonel Steve
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