A young woman keeps cool in her backyard pool in Blooming Grove, NY on Thursday, July 18, 2013. Temperatures continued to reach into the mid-90’s, as a mid-summer heatwave lingers throughout the East Coast. © CHET GORDON/Times Herald-Record (2)
During last week’s heatwave that broiled the East Coast of the U.S., photographers at my newspaper (and I’m sure at countless others) were tasked yet again with supplying daily images depicting how people were “beating the heat…” So I wondered again how many times can we make the everyday images of beach goers, boaters, construction workers wiping their sweaty brow, and the standard go-to imagery 
of a digital message board’s thermometer? I knew I wanted to utilize the GoPro Hero3 camera again and try a full underwater take in a friend’s pool. Especially since I’d had a few successes with the camera at the Newburgh City Pool for their opening day a few weeks ago. Timing was sort of difficult between assignments, but I did manage to pull off a few useable images from our quick take last Thursday. Besides, what could be better than having the opportunity take a mid-afternoon swim when temperatures were pushing into the mid-high 90’s…? It also was important to have a pair swimming trunks and my dive mask (with corrective lenses) packed in the car… ~ cg.
Chet Gordon resides in the lower Hudson Valley region of New York. A photojournalist for more than 25 years, he recently worked as Westchester Magazine's first photo editor, and previously was a staff photographer at four NYC metro area newspapers. He was also a photo editor at the NY Daily News for 5 years. His work has appeared in The New York Times, International Herald-Tribune, USA Today, MailOnline (UK), Army Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Popular Photography magazines, among others. He is a career member of the National Press Photographer’s Association (NPPA), and a former board member of the NY Press Photographer’s Association (NYPPA). He served honorably as a U.S. Marine in the mid-1980's, including 2+ years stationed on Okinawa, Japan, and throughout Southeast Asia. A longtime volunteer and travel enthusiast, he accompanies several humanitarian aid clients on their international disaster relief and medical missions. Since 1997, he's worked in several African countries, the Middle East, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, as well as Afghanistan, Haiti, the Russian Federation, and Thailand. He routinely mentors young photographers looking to break into the industry and vacations in Bermuda and Kenya.
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