I have been doing the majority of the research for my book on Oregon aviation history at the Oregon Aviation Historical Society. In the process, I’ve gotten to know many of the people there pretty well, leading to many things, including my first editorial assignment.

Recently, a Murphy Rebel, a small homebuilt plane was donated to them. They want to sell this aircraft to fund the restoration of some of their other aircraft and they asked me to take some photographs of the plane to help them in that endeavor. The Rebel is a pretty good bush plane, so they came up with the idea of photos that made it look like someone was camping out of the plane along a river. So we set up this whole scene with a tent a fold-up chair and a picnic basket. It created a scene that looked pretty darn cool.

I had an idea for a photo that didn’t work quite as planned, but is still cool. The idea was to put CTO on a flash and set the color balance on the camera to tungsten. Then I would underexpose the ambient light and properly expose the flash. My speedlight wasn’t powerful enough for the scene to look as I’d hoped, but it still looks pretty cool.

Serendipity came in when one of the board member’s dog thought that under the plane looked like a pretty good place to rest. Initially, we tried to convince him to move, but eventually decided that he adds to the photos.