Dozier Mobley

Dozier Mobley / Associated Press

From the 25 October 1961 issue of Life Magazine

Picture of the Week: "It was the predicament that gives a paratrooper the ice-cold heebie-jeebies—the soft mid-air collision as one man sinks with agonizing slowness into the vast puff of another's parachute. This is the wrong way to hit the silk, and an extraordinary occurrence to have been recorded on film. The impact can collapse a chute, hurtle the man beneath to earth. But in these Army maneuvers in South Carolina the endangered paratrooper was close to the ground and suffered not at all from his comedown. And the paratrooper in the picture enjoyed a silk-slick landing."

Dozier Mobley (1933–2009) was born in Atlanta, Georgia and developed his passion for photography during his service as a piccolo specialist in the Third Army Band. He mastered the photographic craft through a correspondence course.

In the 1960s, Mobley worked as a versatile news photojournalist for renowned media outlets including the Atlanta Journal, the Associated Press and United Press International. By the late 1960s, Mobley shifted focus toward motorsports, becoming the primary photographer for NASCAR’s Winston Cup series (now known as the NASCAR Cup Series) for 30 years. He died in 2009 in Jefferson, Georgia.