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Photo Exhibit Captures Whirlwind Career

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By CHERYL BENTLEY

Suncoast News

Published: September 11, 2008

Get him talking about his photography career and Burton McNeely doesn't slow down.

Maybe that's because there is so much to say about a 45-year span filled with chasing down hurricanes and photographing underwater scenes for top magazines, including Life, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated.

An exhibit of the 80-year-old's outdoor and underwater photography at Pasco-Hernando Community College's New Port Richey campus will run until Oct. 4.

Many of the shots, especially those of hurricanes, are timeless, McNeely said. He still sells stock photos of hurricanes taken 40 years ago.

"Hurricanes still look the same today as in the '60s," he said.

He remembers an eight-hour flight with a hurricane hunter in an attempt to photograph Washington through the eye of a hurricane for Life magazine. That was before weather satellites. In those days, wind speed was estimated by determining the pattern of the wind on the water.

He was one of three photographers the magazine sent up in three planes. They never did shoot the nation's capital through the hurricane's eye, but McNeely said he still got many good images.
McNeely was then part of Life's Miami bureau, which covered the southern United States, South America and the Caribbean.

In 2004, McNeely experienced hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne as they swept through Florida and destroyed his photography laboratory in Land O' Lakes, where he lives.

In the 1950s, McNeely became interested in underwater photography. He created his own "housing" to keep the camera dry. The Plexiglas structure, which is featured in his current exhibit, can still be used today, he said.
McNeely keeps active doing digital stock photography. He has little nostalgia for the old film cameras.

"You can do things with digital you can never do with film," he said.

McNeely's exhibit is on display in the Alric C.T. Pottberg Library gallery on the PHCC campus, 10230 Ridge Road. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

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