Capa: You see, this is a cagy question, because you never know if you have a press picture or not. Because when you shoot, nearly every picture is the same to you, and a press picture is born in the imagination of editors and the public who see them.

I had, once, one picture which was appreciated much more than the other ones, and I certainly did not know when I shot it that it was an especially good picture.

It happened in Spain. It was very much at the beginning of my career as a photographer, and very much at the beginning of the Spanish civil war, and war was kind of romantic, if you can see anything like that.

Interviewer: No, I can't!

Capa: It was there, because it was in Andalusia and those people were very green, they were not soldiers, and they were dying every minute with great gestures and they figured that was really for liberty and the right kind of fight and they were enthused, and I was there in the trench with about 20 milicianos, and those 20 milicianos had 20 old rifles, and on the other hill facing us was a Franco machine gun.

So my milicianos were shooting in the direction of that machine gun for five minutes and then stood up and said "Vámonos!" and got out of that trench and began to go after that machine gun. Sure enough, that machine gun opened up and mowed them down. So what was left of them came back and again took potshots in the direction of the machine gun, which certainly was clever enough not to answer, and after five minutes again they said "Vámonos!" and got mowed down again.

This thing repeated itself about three or four times, so the fourth time I just kind of put my camera above my head and even didn't look and clicked a picture when they moved over the trench. And that was all. I didn't ever look at my pictures there and I sent my pictures back with a lot of other pictures that I took.

I stayed in Spain for three months, and when I came back I was a very famous photographer because that camera which I hold above my head just caught a man at the moment when he was shot.

Interviewer 2: That was a great picture

Capa: That was probably the best picture I ever took. I never saw the picture in the frame because the camera was far above my head.

Interviewer 2: Of course, there's one condition that you've got to create yourself, Bob, in order to get a lucky picture like that, you've got to spend a lot of time in trenches.

Capa: Yeah, this habit I would like to lose.