Don Ultang interview about career as photographer, Des Moines, Iowa, June 5, 1999

Section 1: Q: I'll just start off, Don, asking you some questions; actually some things we've already talked about, how you became hired at the Register and how was it that you got hired at the Register coming, almost several months, just a few months after being at the University of Iowa, with this with this very renowned staff of photographers. A: Well, I considered it quite fortunate. I graduated from Iowa in 1939 with a degree in economics and I wasn't even sure how I was going to earn a living. The School of Journalism wasn't going to pay attention to me because I didn't graduate from the School of Journalism and they weren't going to help me get a job. And you don't end up earning a living with a degree in economics unless you had a Ph.D. But, I was interested in photography and committed myself to photography and really what we call photojournalism now, which I have to tell you was called news photography before we got that fancy. But in any event, I'd spent the winter in Cedar Rapids, [IA]. I'd gotten married and I worked at what I could do. I worked in a camera shop and learned how to print. I worked part-time for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, particularly for sports. And somewhere along the line, at the end of the winter, I heard just by, I think a traveling Kodak representative coming through, that the Register had been looking for an editorial photographer, apparently for some months and I had not heard. Q: That's a big job. A: I couldn't believe it. Q: At the Register. A: Well, as a matter of fact, a friend of mine, I'm reminded of this, who'd graduated with me, I learned later had tried to get the job and didn't get it. In any event, I got an appointment by telephone, drove down to Des Moines, which was a big new city - I'd been there a couple of times, but it was a big city to me. I interviewed with Ken MacDonald and showed him my string books which were gathered from really my last two years in college and six to eight months at Cedar Rapids working with the Gazette. Q: The string book is a kind of portfolio? A: Well, yes. It's really a scrapbook that you paste in the stories and you paste in the photographs. Fortunately, all through school, the last two years of school, I got two things. I got a dollar for every photograph that was printed and a photo credit, which kept me going. In any event, MacDonald talked to me and two weeks later I got a call saying, "Come down, you're hired." Q: So how was pay? A: Well, I remember it well. Considering what I'd been earning before I thought it was good. It was thirty dollars a week. And as a matter of fact, a lot of people were living on thirty dollars a week in those days, so I thought it was good. Q: You're joining a staff of photographers that are some of the best in the country. I mean, talk about the feelings of excitement. A: I don't suppose I ever thought I would end on the Register directly, but I always felt good about the photographs that I was producing and the sense that this was the career for me. So, I guess on a practical basis I really I had thought I would be hired by the Cedar Rapids Gazette. I think I presented them enough to do it. But I will tell you, the editor of the Gazette then was Vern Marshall and he was an "American Firster," and I interviewed him one time. I walked into his office, I had been working as a free-lancer for them. They had no photographers, I thought it was an ideal time to benefit me and start a staff position. I can remember walking into his office, knocking on the door, introducing myself and as soon as he got to the subject, I can still remember him saying "I haven't got time to talk to you." And that was the end of Cedar Rapids. So, even that might have been a little ambitious, but oddly enough I don't think I was surprised that I was taken up by the Register. I will tell you they had a staff of very seasoned photographers, starting with George Yates who was the chief-of-staff and was known all over the country and really known nationally. He was quite an imposing figure in his own right. He spoke with a British accent, particularly when he wanted to impress somebody and he had a long gray mustache that he twirled when he wanted to. It was like being dropped into a movie set, that group. There were two or three other senior photographers. John Robinson, one of them, and two others. They were the nucleus of the staff and then there was one other junior member who had preceded me on the Register, having come from Iowa, a man who had became a good friend of mine Jervas Baldwin, J.B. just died, I think about two weeks ago, in strange fire out here in Adel [IA]. But he and I were the new group, the two at the bottom of the scale. And J.B. had gotten..., of course he had been around for about a year, a year and a half, and he had gotten his feet wet. I was just stuck on the day side, I suppose so they could keep track of what I was doing, and did my thing at the bottom end of the ladder. Q: Could you talk about that seniority situation? How were the assignments made? Would a certain photographer get something or was it based on the availability of a photographer? A: There were a number of factors that went in to it. First of all, when you came on duty, if I came on at eight in the morning there would be on a clipboard, we just had assignments-slips of paper from the various departments. And the basic premise was that when you walked in, if you saw an assignment you read it and you went out and did it and took care of it on a time factor. However, on assignments that weren't that routine, ones that might take some preparing ahead of time, or something of more substance than just a catch-as-catch-can kind of assignment, you were often talked to the day before. "We got this coming up," or an editor would come, well, from the news side. We had a photo editor...both the Tribune and the Register staff was a common staff for both papers. So you might take a Register assignment even though you were basically on the Tribune time. And sometimes one of the editors, the news editor or a picture editor from one of papers, would walk over and talk to George Yates and say I've got this coming up tomorrow at two, do you want to give this to a specific photographer? So occasionally, he would elect a photographer to take the assignment. Now on what basis, I don't know. He might even, in my instance with a new photographer, give an assignment that was different to see how I would do. I had no idea. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: And talk about the equipment you were using, this was old stuff. I mean nothing like what we're using now. A: The cameras were Speed Graphics. As a matter of fact, I was given, what I referred to as a "hand-me down" Graphic, a three-and-a-quarter, four-and-a-quarter. Four-by-five was the size Graphic that other photographers had used. That may be an interesting distinction to make, but the costs of running a photo department was a factor in all of this and apparently at one time Yates, or whoever made those decisions believed that a three-and-a-quarter, four-and-a-quarter camera would save film. Both large cameras. They had come to the conclusion that a four-by-five produced a better image and more flexibility, but I was the one that got what was left from the last photographer and it wasn't for eight or nine months that I was finally updated into a four-by-five Graphic. But a four-by-five Graphic was a heavy, big camera. It folded out in front. It had a flash gun on it and we used flash bulbs in those days. We weren't too far from the days, I would guess ten years before, when they were still using flash powder. We thought this Speed Graphic was a new camera. And the old Graflex, if you'll remember maybe in some movies, you'll see photographers with a great big box and it happened to be leather in those days and not plastic, but a shield coming up here and they would look down, their head would go clear down into the sighting area and they would raise a holder with flash powder in it and it would fire flash powder in it and it would fire flash powder. It would leave dust and dirt all over the place. Q: And explosives. A: Yes, it would go "whump" and get this material all over. I didn't see that. I saw it working for a commercial photographer in Cedar Rapids. He was still using it when I was there in 1939 and 1940. The newspaper no longer used it and was using flash bulbs. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: Back to the Register and before you were hired, had you realized how well renowned the paper was? A: I don't think so. I grew up in Cedar Rapids and didn't have much contact with Des Moines. My family, when they wen to buy a Sunday paper, bought Chicago Tribune. We were that close. Ireally didn't know much about the Register. Q: Did your perception change after you were hired? A: Oh, after I was around the staff awhile and began to understand the place of the Register in the whole hierarchy of newspapers, I began to not only realize, but as a fact, it was the best paper in the country. Repected everywhere. I learned pretty quickly that I had found the right job and the right place. Q: Questions I've asked others who have worked at the Register the years you were there: What do you think made the Register such a wonderful paper? Was it the ownership? The way it was managed? The people? A: There would be anumber of factors as I thought of it over the years. The Register was a high quality paper in all departments. They are at the international level in the news, national level, they really didn't pander to..., although we had lots of local coverage, they wanted to be certainly a regional paper, an Iowa paper and as you know, it is the newspaper that Iowa depends upon. I got the sense of that. One of the factors that came, that really I didn't recognize until I had worked on the paper for a while, was that the sports section was probably the best sports section in the country. Now, that came about because of the time and effort that was put into it, the space, we had a big sports section on Sunday called, "Peach Sports Section" and the photographs that were produced for the "Peach Sports Section" were far superior to anything that even Chicago papers did. We just devoted a lot of time and effort to the sports page. And I think there was a carryover, I don't know if it would be a direct connection, but somewhere along the line, probably a few years before I got there, somebody had made a decision that photographs were going to be a major part of the Register's offering to the public. So we were a photographic newspaper as well as being a type paper of quality. Q: This was something different than what was happening at the other newspapers? A: I think other newspapers would not devote the time and effort to it. We devoted a lot of space, spent a lot of money, to offer more photographs, larger photographs, sequence photgraphs eventually, which you didn't see in other newspapers. Q: Was there a demand for it from the readers or was it just a new philosophy of how a paper works? A: I always thought somebody, or it may go back to Gardner Cowles who owned the paper. Gardner Cowles Sr. was still alive, I think. Gardner Cowles Jr., called Mike, was very interested in photography and I suspect he was the motivating factor behind all this. And on reason I can believe all this: he was the founder of Look Magazine which became, with Life Magazine, the two great photographic magazines of the '50s and '60s. I think he must have put the energy and direction into the whole operation. -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: And also, I don't know if my timing is right on this, but Picture Magazine was also a critical part of the newspaper? A: I'll surprise you on this. We had a rotogravure section prior to Picture Magazine. when I came there, the rotogravure section was on a high quality brown paper, was printed, believe it or not, in Chicago, sent out here and stuffed with our papers. Of course, with the Register's name on it, and we ran color - we had no run of the press color in those days - we ran color on Sunday. We ran the rotogravure section - probably went for five or six years - well it was still going when I came back from the Navy. Shortly thereafter, somebody made a decision at the higher level that we could locally produce the Picture Magazine. But, I guess I'm saying color and staff-procuced color were around before Picture Magazine. Picture Magazine came along, and you are exactly right, that gave more impetus into this picture process. Q: Sorry I don't know the term, but define rotogravure. What is that? A: Well, it's a different press process, one that I never saw work. The inks are different. The quality of the paper is different. When I was a young person growing up, whether it was the Chicago Tribune or the Des Moines Register or whatever paper, if they wanted to print color they had to print it in this special rotgravure section. It's an inking process and a press process that is different than what we used for press runs. Q: You also brought up Look Magazine. You were also a contributer to Look and Life and a variety of other publications. A: Oddly enough, I don't know that I ever had a photgraph in Look. Look was more of a feature magazine. Life ran some features, but it had a news bureau associated with it. And of course, if you were on a newspaper, whether there was a connection with Look and the Register or not, the magazine that wanted timely products, timely photographs, that would be Life, responded more to what we had to offer, at least certainly what I had to offer. So I had a big run with Life, but I had never - the people at Look knew me, in fact the chief photographer mad a comment about my book and all that - but I never did have anything published in Look. -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: you touched on George Yates and I'd like you to expand a little bit more on that because everybody I've talked to said this is a guy that had one heck of a colorful personality. You've talked about his mustache. What did you mean when you said sometimes he used his English accent and sometimes he didn't? A: He was an actor. He was a great photographer. I don't think I realized this as a young man coming on, how much he accopmlished. And it may be that years later I looked back... First of all, he had equipment - he didn't even have the Speed Graphic, he had these old Graflex cameras. He did a lot of aerial work from open cockpit airplanes in days when films were very slow. It was difficult to do it. He never got to the position I did of flying an airplane and being a photographer, but he was a photographer, an aerial photographer as such, in the days when it was very difficult. Charlie Gatschet was the pilot in those days. he was the pilot when I came on. In fact, I remember Charlie Gatschet coming up to me about the second or third day that I was on the staff, he hadn't been around, he had been flying the Register's current plane then, I think it was a Spartan Executive - magnificent 200 mile-an-hour airplane in the days when no one had that kind of airplane. Q: We're talking 1940s here. A: Sure, sure. 1940, when i came on the staff. Gatschet was the pilot and Yates was the photgrapher. But, back to your point about Yates specifically, he had come from England. I never did question him how old he was, but he was a tall, rangy, stately Englishman. In our normal conversation, you didn't get an English accent. But when somebody came by, and he wanted to stand up and meet him, the actor in him developed an English accent. And he would often even stand and stomp one foot as though he were coming to attention. he was just what I'm saying, not only a great photographer - and he truly was - but he was an actor. Q: He was also your supervisor. A: He was our supervisor. Q: How was working with him? A: Well, he was pretty liberal. When I look back on it, although for..., in the early stage he was probably testing me to see if I had what they wanted, and perhaps giving me some assignments and watching. Once I was beyond that stage, I think all of us fell into a category of taking assignments as they came. We were pretty interchangeable. George Yates didn't initiate the assignments. The all came from the desks. They were brought over. He might want to say, "I think Ultang ought to take this" or "Robinson might take this.". But failing that, we simply took the assignments as they came up. Q: From the news...? A: The assignments were all generated by the news side. Q: I was going to ask you that question. Regsiter people and other newspaper editors were more interested in telling a story with text and obviously the phots that supplemented text back in those days. What kind of give and take would go between you and the editors when photos were cropped or actually excluded? Were there any hard feelings? [remaining transcript not available] -- <br><br> Section 6: [transcript not available] <br><br> Section 7: [transcript not available] <br><br> Section 8: [transcript not available] <br><br> Section 9: [transcript not available] <br><br> Section 10: [transcript not available] <br><br> Section 11: [transcript not available] <br><br> Section 12: [transcript not available] <br><br> Section 13: [transcript not available]