J. R. Eyerman, a veteran Life magazine photographer whose training as an engineer enabled him to advance several photographic techniques, died Wednesday of kidney and heart failure at his home in Santa Monica.
Eyerman, 79, was credited with perfecting an electric eye that triggered a series of cameras photographing an atomic bomb test at Yucca Flat, Nev. in 1952. He also devised a camera that enabled explorer Otis Barton to take pictures at 3,600 feet below the surface of the sea.
