Photography Student Bags A Big Trophy

Betty Ely charged excitedly into a Spokane Valley convenience store and asked the clerk for the April 19 edition of Newsweek.

She told the clerk she was anxious to buy the magazine because her son’s picture was on the cover.

“She said, ‘Oh, really? I don’t think so,”’ Ely said.

The clerk held up the magazine showing a scruffy Ted Kaczynski, the man federal authorities believe is the Unabomber.

“I said, ‘Oh no, not the big picture. Up in the corner,”’ Betty Ely said.

Bruce Ely, a blonde-haired journalism student, stands ready with a camera behind Kaczynski and half a dozen FBI agents.

Ely was one of four University of Montana student photographers who traveled an hour and a half from Missoula to Lincoln, Mont., to take pictures of the elusive Unabomber.

They mingled among the national and regional news media gathered outside the small, remote cabin and followed a white Ford Bronco carrying Kaczynski to the jail in Helena.

After hours of waiting and hundreds of miles of driving, Ely and his friends were the only ones to get the clean shot of Kaczynski that everyone sought.

As a result, the pictures taken by Ely, 21, have been published in newspapers and magazines across the country and in Europe.

“We’ve gone on wild goose chases before,” Ely said. “We do these things all the time - you know, just jump in the car and see what happens. Most of the time it doesn’t work out, but this time it happened.”

The Bronco emerged two hours after Ely, a 1992 University High School graduate, arrived at Kaczynski’s cabin on April 4.

But fading daylight and the glare of television lights off the truck’s windows made Kaczynski difficult to photograph.

“You could only see a silhouette of hair sticking out everywhere,” said Ely, who took photography classes all three years he attended U-Hi.

Determined to get a good picture, the four students piled into two cars and chased the Bronco. To their surprise, a car carrying two high school students was the only other to join the pursuit.

They followed the Bronco to Helena. At times during the hour-long drive, the car Ely was riding in fell two miles behind over the steep mountain passes.

When the Bronco finally stopped about 7 p.m., the college students were the only ones still following. Two men greeted the Bronco and FBI agents led Kaczynski to a building across the street.

“That’s were I got my shot,” Ely said.

Ely and his three classmates followed Kaczynski inside the building and took several more pictures while FBI agents led Kaczynski from the bathroom and into a locked office.

Word of their pictures spread fast through the national media grapevine and the phone began to ring.

“We were on the phone about five hours trying to figure out what to do with them,” Ely said.

The four sought advice from their college advisor and a few professional newspaper friends before selling their pictures as a package to Gamma Liaison, a photography agency based in New York.

Newsweek paid the agency $26,000 to use the students’ pictures.

“The lady at Gamma that we dealt with said it was the largest sale of a picture since the Gulf War,” Ely said.

One of the pictures Ely took appeared in the Missoulian the next morning. Later that week, two more ran in Newsweek. A friend took the picture of Kaczynski that ran on the cover of Newsweek and captured Ely in the frame.

Ely’s mother bought six copies of the magazine before it sold out.

“I think Newsweek did real good in Spokane that week,” Betty Ely said.

Pictures the students took also have been published in People, Time and other magazines and in newspapers across the country and in Europe.

“I still don’t understand why nobody else followed him,” Ely said.

He plans to buy photography equipment and pay off student loans with the money, about $4,000, he earned from the Newsweek sale.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo