Dan Winters On Being Part of National Geographic’s Docuseries Photographer

National Geographic’s new series Photographer turns the focus on those who would typically be on the opposite side of the lens. The six-part endeavor devotes one episode each to a photographer (or in one case, a duo) at the top of their game, featuring Paul Nicklen and Christina Mittermeier, Anand Varma, Krystle Wright, Campell Addy, Muhammad Muheisen, and Dan Winters. Together, these photographers represent a huge range of work that encompasses everything from adventure photography to presidential portraits.

As with the best National Geographic specials, Photographer pairs breathtaking imagery with a unique story in each episode. In the case of Dan Winters, the series explores the photographer’s career path and family life even as it tracks two ambitious projects. Viewers can expect to see Winters photograph NASA launches and chase shipyard shots in service of a formative childhood experience.

Screen Rant interviewed Dan Winters about his experience as part of Photographer. Winters expounded on his early influences, his interest in filmmaking, his approach to photography, and more in a wide-ranging discussion.

Dan Winters Shares His Origins & How He Joined The Series

Screen Rant: I’ve watched your episode, and I am blown away by what I’ve seen of the series so far. How was this pitched to you initially and did you have any hesitation about being on the other side of the lens?

Dan Winters: The pitch was a little bit drawn out. It was an initial, “Would you be interested in talking to us about it?” and we had a conversation. It was more of an overview, and then it went away for a little while, and then it came back as like, “Are you guys going to be in New York anytime soon?” I think there were two conversations by phone, and then it was in person in New York. They invested a year of time into it, and I think they wanted to know that there was a story and not just a random, “Hey, I’m a guy that takes pictures.” I’m glad that they did, and I’m glad it worked out the way it did.

You started off as a kid making models, and I know that you were influenced by Star Wars. Then, another formative experience was seeing a rocket take off. Did any part of you want to work in movies as a model maker or work at NASA, or was it always that you wanted to photograph those things rather than necessarily participate in them?

Dan Winters: No, my first career path was as a model builder. I worked at Apogee, which is what Industrial Light & Magic became. John Dykstra stayed Van Nuys once everybody moved up north for Empire and I worked in the film industry as a model builder. Some of my best friends are still guys that I worked with back then that are all ILM guys now. Model building is still something I do very, very frequently. I have a permanent model shop set up.

And we did a film, worked on it for two years, and it’s full of miniatures and full of crazy exotic cool sets and wardrobe and stuff like that. I think I finished that two years ago and it did the festival run and it did incredibly well worldwide. The film is called Tone. Toneshortfilm.com.

Winters Explains The Detail Involved In Photographing Rocket Launches

I know a musician who told me he doesn’t always like to learn a song before he records it because he likes finding magic in the discovery. When you’re photographing for NASA and Artemis, how much do you want to learn about the projects? You capture such beautiful, almost human-esque portraits of these inanimate objects.

Dan Winters: I have covered aerospace for Nat Geo for years, I started in the nineties shooting launches, and I’ve been on the Artemis job for almost three years with Nat Geo, so I know an extensive amount about all this stuff. I do understand what your musician friend is saying—the idea of, “I want this thing to unfold before me without any expectation.” The shooting of launches is so technical. We put cameras all around the pad that have sound triggers on them, I’ll preset the compositions, and then we have to walk away and we go back to the press area, which is where that sequence was filmed from.

Allowing it to unfold—once I’ve set everything up and once everything’s been put in motion—I can just sit back and experience the wonder of the launch. It’s different every time, and Artemis was no exception. At the time it launched, it was the most powerful rocket ever conceived of. The SpaceX Starship has exceeded it in power, almost double the power. But I suppose it’s because there’s so much preparation that needs to take place to get it right [that] the joyful piece is just actually watching the launch take place.

Plans Can Change, But That’s Part Of The Job

In watching about your Bangladesh trip in this episode, it didn’t quite go as planned. Your initial idea for the shoot didn’t really work out. How often in your work do you find yourself compromising or improvising?

Dan Winters: I don’t remember how it’s framed in the film about things not going the way they were planned. I know there was an initial conversation about going to Chittagong because I wanted to shoot ship breaking, and then we realized every ship breaking operation in the world—there are four of them—was like a no go. They’re violating international law on environmental issues, et cetera. All of them are, and I know that they don’t want the word put out. I think they were much more lax maybe 20 years ago than they are now, obviously.

The original idea—because it’s all I knew about the ship industry—was the ship breaking. Burtynsky went there and I remember his photographs. and I don’t remember who else’s images I had been moved by, but I thought, “The subject’s been covered, but I haven’t covered it.” No subject, in my opinion, is proprietary, although I think oftentimes the industry dictates otherwise. It’s like, “Oh, that’s so-and-so he does this.” To me, this is just another way of photographing.

What happened was when I was researching ship breaking [was that] I was also researching ship repairing. A quarter of the Bangladeshi workforce works in that industry and it’s an age-old ancient industry, and the banks of the little Ganges River are just covered with these shipyards. I started looking at how it was visually represented, and it wasn’t very well visually represented. Reporters would go in there to do a story and take a few pictures.

I also didn’t know if we could get in there, so we hired a fixer from Brooklyn who is Bangladeshi. He started nosing around those shipyards and there were a few that were very receptive to the idea, so much so that we were ready to commit all our resources to go and achieve that.

My dad was a welder and I grew up helping him weld, and that was a big part of my life and the blue collar household that I grew up in. I felt very at home in that environment. I felt like it transcended race, borders, ethnicities, culture, and all of those things. I didn’t feel like I was going there to exploit anybody. I was going there to celebrate these people that are nameless on the world stage.

I didn’t feel at all like we were compromising. I feel like the idea just pivoted, and that happens a lot, and I think that happens in life. It’s like the photo industry and photography in general is just a microcosm of the issues that we deal with in life. You go in with a plan and oftentimes that plan has to change, because circumstances dictate that.

Winters Compares Photographing Celebrities And Everyday People

On the subject of you photographing the worker in the shipyard–you’ve shot musicians, actors, and presidents. When you’re shooting someone and you want them to look natural, is that harder to achieve with someone who’s in front of cameras every day for their job or someone who’s not?

Dan Winters: It’s definitely a little more challenging when you’re working with people that aren’t familiar with the process. I think if you think about presidents and actors, they’ve been photographed. Although [there is] the photographic baggage that you inherit with those people, based on the last 10 photo shoots they did. Their reference point is like, “Well, the other guy didn’t do that. Why are you doing this?” so you have to ease people into your way of working.

But people that aren’t in front of the camera struggle more, I find. Although I’m amazed at how natural some of these people were in Bangladesh that we’re shooting. They were just really malleable. It was very easy to direct them. I don’t know what it was about them. Specifically [with] the people in Bangladesh, I found this really comfortable, open-hearted, receptive take on the process of being photographed.

Dan Winters Details His Experience Photographing George Lucas

I have to ask one quick thing. How was [photographing] George Lucas for Wired?

Dan Winters: It was incredible. The great thing about George is, he’s retired for the most part, at least from the movie industry, so he’s got time to talk to you. That meant the world to me because I think George, the working director, probably wouldn’t have had as much time as he gave us, and he gave us a lot of time.

I’ve photographed a lot of people and a lot of people of note, and I have a rule that I never have my picture taken with anyone. I’m very professional all the way through. And I have a picture of Lucas and I together, because I was just like, “I’m not shooting George Lucas and not getting a picture of myself with him.” But he was incredible. He was just great–super friendly. One of the first things I did when I finished shooting him was [that I] told him, “Look, there was my life prior to Star Wars, and then there was my life after Star Wars.”

That divergence, for me, was huge. As far as I was concerned, it was shot on location in space. I was in the science club in high school and our science teacher took the school van—I went to a very small school—with seven people in the science club down to LA, to The Brew in Westwood, to see the film. It was just transformative. I can’t say enough about that film and his contribution to popular culture, and to culture in general and the retelling of the hero myth in that way.

He actually loved the portrait I did of him and requested a print directly, which I thought was pretty cool. ILM reached out and said, “George would like a print of that photograph that you did with him. How can we arrange that?” And I was like, “I’ll send you one.” It was pretty cool. That was a cool moment for me.

About Photographer

Photographer takes us on a journey with the world’s most extraordinary visual storytellers, pairing them with today’s leading documentary filmmakers for an exhilarating and dynamic international adventure. Each hour-long episode follows the story of an iconic photographer —Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen, Dan Winters, Campbell Addy, Krystle Wright, Muhammed Muheisen, and Anand Varma — while they work to make iconic images that stand the test of time. Through vérité footage of their current mission interwoven with interviews and archived footage, viewers will gain a deeper understanding of each photographer’s process, learn how they became an artist, and discover how they see and experience the world.

Also check out our interview with Photographer’s Krystle Wright.