Steve Silva, a Boston Globe sports producer, had been sitting at the Boston Marathon finish line for five hours, capturing lighthearted, jubilant scenes of runners completing the 26.2 miles, when he saw—and captured on camera—the first bomb’s detonation. Silva ran toward the center of the destruction, capturing shots nearly every American with a television has seen.
Silva, who says the gravity of the scene and the day are still sinking in, described those adrenaline-filled moments on Morning Joe Tuesday.
“I never turned the camera off. I probably ran about eight minutes of video out there from the area, the blast went off and I just went to it, I didn’t think about it, I wasn’t trying to say ‘oh, I shouldn’t go here.’ I just needed to know what it was and needed to get close to it,” explained Silva. “When I heard the second bomb go off, I knew we were in a serious situation—that was my feeling. As I got closer to the sidewalk, it was just a pile of bodies and blood on the scene. It was just a horrible scene; it was a Spielberg horror movie, but it was real.”
Silva explained how he shot, but tried not to sensationalize the scene.
“You wanna get close but you don’t want to get two close,” he said. “I wasn’t going to be panning the camera over bodies on the sidewalk, but I wanted to get the essence of what the scene was. I knew to stay close, I was just in the middle of all that mass confusion.” Watch the full video below.
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