Brilliant news photographer who worked for the Times and then became chief photographer of the Observer
In 1957, Sir Edmund Hillary and Dr Vivian Fuchs embarked on the first trans-Antarctic crossing since the doomed attempt by Ernest Shackleton 40 years earlier. The explorers were to meet and shake hands at the South Pole and the Times wanted a photo to scoop the world. They chose their best photographer for the hazardous mission, Stuart Heydinger.
Heydinger, who has died aged 92, was a resourceful, brave, 6ft 1in-tall former paratrooper, as well as a brilliant news photographer. When he, his portable dark room and a priceless prototype photograph-transmitting machine arrived in
New Zealand, word reached him that the thin summer polar ice at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica could not support the usual wheeled aircraft.