Dennis Henry is the PACE project photographer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
What is your background and what do you do for PACE?
I’ve been at NASA for about four years, but before that I was a freelance photographer, and a long time before that I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. I studied engineering for about a year and a half before I realized that it wasn’t what I actually wanted to do. So, I switched to photography! I came to NASA specifically to photograph PACE and Ocean Color Instrument. I feel like coming here brought me back to my previous space interests, and I was able to feed that interest while doing what I’m good at.
What was your favorite part of launch?
The whole photography team was there, but none of us had ever photographed a launch before. We set up a bunch of remote cameras, which we’ve never done before, and borrowed some really long lenses to photograph it. It was a learning experience, in a good way. We had a lot of fun learning how to capture this very specific event, and it was great to see all those years of hard work blasted off into the sky.
What is your favorite color and why?
My favorite color is green. I’m not sure why it’s my favorite color. I have some green shoes, and also I feel like it’s just not as common of a color for some things to be.
What is a fun fact about yourself?
I do a bit of woodworking. I usually make small things like cutting boards and small boxes. My big pandemic project – that is still ongoing – is to totally redo our kitchen. I have rebuilt all the cabinets from scratch. I think I maybe bit off a bit more than I can chew with that project, since it’s been a couple of years and I’m probably only 50% of the way at this point.
What advice would you give to aspiring students looking to get where you are today?
Photography is a tough career. There’s a lot of people who want to do it, and there are not that many jobs. How well they do and where they end up is not a reflection on the quality of a photographer. In saying that, you have to love doing it.
Header image caption: Denny Henry posing in front of the PACE spacecraft in the cleanroom at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Image credit: Katie Mellos
By Erica McNamee, Science Writer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
