One day in April, Matt Walsh was poised on a condo balcony on New Smyrna Beach preparing to take photos of the last planned shuttle launch at night. The lighting was dark. He didn’t have his tripod.
Walsh, a 23-year-old photojournalism student at UF, fashioned a tripod out of a light stand and a chair and carefully snapped photos at 30-second intervals as the shuttle streaked through the sky.
One of those photos appeared in The New York Times, hangs in Florida’s capitol building and is now one of 12 finalists out of thousands of entries in the National Geographic Energizer 2010 Ultimate Photo Competition.
There are six categories in the contest, each with two photos going head to head: Animals/Wildlife, Nature, People/Cultures, Weather, Travel and Action/Energy. Walsh’s photo is in the Action/Energy category.
The winners are determined by fan voting, which can be done at www.nationalgeographic.com/energizer/vote/ . Voting ends Sept. 15.
The six winners get publication in the magazine and a trip to Greece.
It’s the publication that Walsh really cares about most.
“It’s a dream come true to be published in National Geographic,” he said.
It’s a dream Walsh almost didn’t chase.
He first heard about the contest from his girlfriend’s grandmother, Lorraine Russo.
He gave Russo the photo following her son’s death in an April car accident on I-75. Before his death, she used to attend shuttle launches with him.
“This photo means way more to her than it will ever in my entire life mean to me in anything, even if this photo wins me a million dollars in some competition,” he said. “But it means way more to [Russo] because of the memories that she shared with her son, and those were memories that I was able to give back.”
Walsh said he reluctantly entered at the suggestion of Russo but forgot about it for a few months until he found out he was a finalist.
“This is bigger than I ever thought it was,” he said. “And it was just a photo. Just a quick snap of a button. ”
Editor's Note: This article has been corrected. The photo was not of the last shuttle launch ever.
