Colonel Terry Virts (ret.) is a U.S. Air Force pilot and NASA veteran of two spaceflights - a two-week mission onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2010 and a 200-day flight to the Space Station in 2014-2015. His seven months in space included piloting the Space Shuttle, commanding the International Space Station, three spacewalks, and performing scientific experiments.
While in space he took more than 319,000 photos - the most of any space mission. Virts´ book, View From Above, combines some of his best photography with stories about spaceflight and perspectives about life on Earth and our place in the cosmos. His images are also an integral component of the IMAX film A Beautiful Planet, which Virts helped film and in which he appears.
I understand you were a photographer before you became an astronaut. How did you get started, and why did it interest you?
As a kid I got a Konica SLR. I had to teach myself exposure, shutter speed, focus, and all that. Basically, I taught myself. Neither of my parents were really photographers, but I just loved it. For some reason I was just naturally inclined towards photography, and my parents supported me by getting the equipment.
Long story short, I kept up with it. I´m that dad whose kids are like, `Dad, quit taking pictures!` I´m always having to stop and take a picture.
How did you join the space program, and how did you end up in the role of `space photographer´?
I wanted to be an astronaut since I was a kid. It was just my dream. The first book I read was about Apollo, and I was captured. It´s what I wanted to do, and I had pictures of airplanes and space on my walls. I went through the process of becoming a fighter pilot, a test pilot, and eventually made it into NASA.
Every astronaut has to take pictures. We get formal training, not only for still images but also video. By the time I flew on the space shuttle we had gone entirely digital, and I got designated as the photo/TV guy. I´m a photogr ...
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