Lou Krasky, an Associated Press photographer who took photos of presidents and the pope as well as hurricanes, golf tournaments, car racing stars and space shuttle launches throughout his more than 35 years with the wire service, has died.
Krasky, 86, died Thursday, his family said. No cause of death was given.
Krasky was born in New York City and joined the U.S. Navy after finishing high school. The military taught him photography and Krasky started working for the AP in Columbia , South Carolina, in 1968.
Like many photographers of his era, Krasky was part chemist to develop photos and create color prints, part engineer to get the lighting and shutter speed right and transmit the photos, and part magician to make it all come together perfectly.
The uncanny ability to make newspaper photos look like art earned him the nicknames “Maestro” and “The Artiste” from his colleagues.
“Lou was, to me, the epitome of an AP shooter. He always seemed to know exactly where to be to get the shot,” said Jim Clarke, AP’s managing director of local markets and a former reporter in the Columbia bureau early in his career. “But more than that, Lou kept us out of trouble. He’d been doing the job as long as some of us had been alive. A brief word from Lou was enough to prompt a new line of questioning, a new way of seeing the story.”