Gerald Crawford

Gerald Crawford — In his nearly 50 years as a professional photographer, Gerald Crawford traveled to many of the world’s most scenic destinations, photographed two future presidents and several movie stars and provided scores of magazine cover photos. But his greatest satisfaction, he said, came while photographing professional bass anglers and “knowing that I was able to bring the fans closer to their heroes.”

He did that regularly during a 28-year span in which he covered more than 400 bass fishing tournaments along the Bassmaster Tournament Trail.

Known simply as “Crawford” by his legions of friends and fans, James G. Crawford was born in 1940 on a farm in Houston County, Alabama, where his parents were sharecroppers growing cotton and peanuts.

He attended high school in Birmingham and went to work after graduation in the mail room of The Progressive Farmer Magazine. Activated into the Alabama Air National Guard’s Tactical Reconnaissance Group, Crawford was assigned to photography at Lowery Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado. That experience landed him a promotion to photographer at Progressive Farmer. When the magazine launched a new publication, Southern Living, in 1965, he became its first chief photographer.

As a travel photographer in 1979, Crawford covered the Bassmaster Classic at Lake Texoma, on the Texas-Oklahoma border, and he began shooting B.A.S.S. tournaments full time beginning with the 1980 Classic at Thousand Islands, New York.

First as a freelancer and from 1989 through 2007 as a full-time employee of B.A.S.S., Crawford recorded images of many of the major milestones in bass fishing history, including record catches, innovations such as pro/am competitions and the debut of anglers who would become superstars — with no small amount of help from his photos. The 1984 Classic, when future presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton shared the weigh-in stage with champion Rick Clunn, was one of his most memorable assignments.

He earned the respect of anglers by spending all day, every tournament day in his photo boat — in the nastiest of weather — capturing on-the-water action with his trusty Nikons.

He was a one-man photo crew in qualifying tournaments, but he enlisted help from others, including his friend, Charles Beck of Birmingham, for the Classics. In those events, the two would shoot from before dawn through the weigh-ins each afternoon, and then stay up late at night processing black-and-white photos in a makeshift darkroom set up in their hotel bathrooms.

Crawford won the Southeastern Library Association Award and the 1980 Graphic Arts Award for his work with Southern Living, and his photos have illustrated more than 10 books in addition to numerous books published by B.A.S.S.

“At B.A.S.S. we had a special spirit of creativity and there were no limits on where you could go with it,” Crawford said in an interview for Bassmaster.com. “I worked with great people whose passion was serving the members and doing our best to document some pretty neat events in the sport of bass fishing.”

Without cell phones or the angler tracking technology in use today, Crawford had to use instinct and ingenuity to be in the right place on the water at the right time. “It was challenging, but we always found a way to capture the important catch, to photograph the winning moments,” he said.