ASA1000

A PERSONAL AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

Living in Los Angeles in the early 1970s I had a chance to spread my wings. I was attending classes at UCLA with teachers like activist Angela Davis and the then up and coming street photographer Lee Friedlander. I was working part time at a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard, building race-car motors for the circle track at Ascot, and I was writing technical articles for the new Petersen magazine called Photographic. I spent two summers helping out at the Ansel Adams workshop in Yosemite. Ansel liked to shoot Polaroid 4x5 negatives for proofs and I met some of the Polaroid guys at Yosemite. I worked with the Polaroid Corporation on an idea I had for a 4x5 film holder to use under the enlarge. Back in Santa Monica I spent time photographing diffraction patterns of laser light in the quantum electronics lab at Cal Tec. We designed the Lasarium show at the Griffiths Park planetarium .... Our work was features in the Time Life Books photography series. I also took some flying lessons.

By 1975 I had relocated to Florida, bought a little Cessna, and began to fly a lot. I collected a book full of flying ratings and became a flight instructor myself and in the process I learned the basics of oblique-angle aerial photography.

In 1978 I bought my second airplane, a high-performance Mooney, and moved to Santa Fe New Mexico. There I worked as picture editor and chief photographer for the Santa Fe New Mexican, the daily newspaper.

In 1980 I followed balloonists Max and Kristen Anderson on the first successful transcontinental balloon flight. Then, in 1981, I followed the western mountain chain from New Mexico to Alaska. Picture stories and text completed on that month-long trip included Gold Mining in the Yukon, Halibut Fishing in Kodiak, Cosmopolitan Calgary, Denali Wildlife, and an Aerial Study of Mt McKinley (center photo above).

In 1982 the aerial photographs I made of a ceremony at a New Mexico Indian Pueblo raised the interesting constitutional question of which was more important: The first amendment rights of a news photographer, or freedom of religion as it applies to a sovereign Indian tribe? Gannett, my employer at the time, was unwilling to persue the matter fearing they would look like they were intimidating the indian minority. They sent me down to the tribal governor's office on the pueblo and the indians burned the photos. The issue was over. The question: if you are out in the open and I photograph you from Federal air space am I invading your privacy, remains unanswered.

By 1987 Gannett had lost its ownership of the New Mexican. My wife and I began a desktop publication using the then new Mac-SE computer. We ran a small stock photo business. I was photographing the social landscape of New Mexico from the ground, and the natural landscape from the air.

In 1997 my mother had some medical problems and we moved back to Florida. I became the special projects editor for the Sun Coast Media Group in Port Charlotte. I started a weekly boating and fishing section for them, but they turned out to be a small time, overly-liberal, cheap, and unscrupulous group who thought nothing of setting up photos for the news pages and disreguarded the concept of photographic ethics entirely. To make matters worse, we had a handshake deal about revenue sharing from the new section and they screwed us.

On the morning of Sep 11, 2001 I stood in the newsroom with the other reporters, glued to the TV after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Then the second plane hit and I said something like "My God! The world has just change, we are under attack!" and the chief editorial writer for the paper, the guy who wrote the editorials and the opinions for them looked at me and said "Don't get so excited. It could just be a coincidence." They were clueless and a couple of months later I quit.

In 2004 Hurricane Charley passed directly over our neighborhood. Our house was destroyed by its 178 mph winds, but I salvaged most of my pictures. It took almost three years to get our lives back on track. I was still shooting film before 2004, but after the storm I bought a digital camera because it was easier. I keep saying I'm going to set up another darkroom, but as of yet I have not done so. I miss the long tonal range of film, the deep blacks with shadow detail, the small of fixer and the hours in the amber safelight of the darkroom.

In 2007 my mother passed away. There was no reason for us to stay in Florida any longer. We talked about selling the new house and moving.

In 2008 the economy fell apart . When we left the Charlotte paper we went back to desktop publishing and started our own boating and fishing magazine. We went head to head with the daily... and we came out on top. But now we are all struggleing.

I miss the daily routine of photography. It was the balance in my life. It brought energy and focus together for me. We have been doing some great work in the community, working with kid's fishing, mangrove restoration and building artificial reefs out in the Gulf of Mexico. I still shoot some aerials every five or six months, and I shoot a lot of 'fish pictures' for our publication every month but my life has become more of computer time and less of shooting. So now I am ready for a change.

The space shuttle pictured at the top of the page is a film image of Discovery on the night of the John Glenn mission.

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