Come fly with me

Aluminum Overcast on the ground in Mankato.I remember as a high schooler how busy the airport I worked at got during the Experimental Aircraft Association airshow in Oshkosh. I refueled small airplanes at a small general aviation airport in Juneau, Wisc. (UNU, for you pilots), 26 miles from the airfield at Oshkosh. It was a great stopping point for pilots of every type of plane imaginable needing information before making their way up to the airshow. It was fun meeting people from across the country making their way to aviation's Mecca.

Each year, some of us from the airport would either rent a plane and go up for the day, or get in a car and drive up, both of which were a traffic nightmare. Our favorite part of the show wasn't necessarily the aerial displays, but the plethora of restored World War II fighters and bombers on display on the ground. P-51s, T-6s and the big, lumbering B-17 bomber. All of these classics were painstakingly restored to better than their original glory (fewer bullet holes and grease stains, I'd imagine). I even got to sit in the cockpit of a P-51 Mustang (but that's another story).

I remember seeing Aluminum Overcast sitting on the tarmac at OSH when I took my wife there in 2001, thinking it would be great to take a ride, but $400 wasn't in the wallet at the time, especially to spend on a half-hour plane ride. Fortunately, eight years later, I got the chance to ride in Aluminum Overcast on a half-hour flying over Mankato during the EAA's tour stop here. The plane has been beautifully restored and is used as a promotional tool for the EAA's restoration activities, and for the Oshkosh air show itself.


Me in the bombardier's seat on Aluminum Overcast. (John Cross)
I was a kid in a candy store. Too much to look at. Too much to photograph. Too much to ask of the former Flying Fortress pilots riding with us. I sat in the bombardier's seat, looked through the Norden bomb sight, imagined dropping 8,000 pounds of bombs on the Northstar Bridge. Then, after seeing a photograph of a B-17 crew on the table in the bombardier's compartment and the replicas of the .50-caliber machine guns sticking out the side of the plane, I imagined how scared these crews must have been, seeing German ME-109s shooting at them, with only some thin armor plating and a plastic bubble to protect them.


The Norden bomb sight.All I can say is thank you to those crews, and thank you to the EAA for the opportunity to fly in a beautiful aircraft.

I've been shooting photographs for the Free Press for more than three decades now _ ever since Nov. 17, 1975 _ so it's inevitable that I find myself revisiting versions of stories we have done in the past.
Like the story Brian Ojanpa and I did about the St. Henry Catholic Church near Le Center celebrating its 150th anniversary that appeared in the July 6 edition.
We were the reporter/photographer team that did a story about the church for their 126th anniversary 24 years ago.
Relatively speaking, Brian and I are the the newsroom old timers, both coming to the Free Press in the 1970s. We like to think we offer what charitably might be referred to as "historical perspective" for our office colleagues.
During our original visit, I took several photographs including the one shown here. It kind of had an American Gothic feel to it and even 24 years later remains one of my favorites.
Brian had pulled out a clipping of the article and we speculated that it was highly unlikely that after more than two decades, any of the subjects were still with us.
We showed the clipping to the three parishioners who were there to be interviewed and they confirmed that all four gentlemen indeed had passed on.
When the interview was completed, I had to make a photograph of the three men to accompany our story. I chose to pose them inside rather than going to the front of the church.
For one thing, I am not inclined to go to same visual well I have visited before. For another, over the years, the trees that were saplings in the original photograph had grown into towering maples and now obscured the clapboard-sided steeple.
One of the best things about this job is the people we get to meet. Our visit to St. Henry was no different.
As we shook hands with the church members, they all suggested suggested that perhaps we'd return in another 25 years for the 175th anniversary.
Maybe....

You can't just drive by

Zach Zellmer stays cool by taking his turn down a water slide in Mankato.


There are certain scenes that just beg to be photographed. When you see them, you're compelled to stop and photograph them. It doesn't matter if you're in a hurry or have somewhere else to be, you find the five minutes it takes to pull over and make some pictures. Kids having a water fight is one of them. It's almost like the scene has its own gravitational pull, drawing you in.
I even tried to drive by these boys playing on a water slide in their front yard. It didn't work. I had to go back. So what if I'm a couple of minutes late to my next assignment. This is worth it.
Fortunately for me I made it worth it. The kids, for the most part, let me hang around for a little while without showing off for my benefit (they did try to squirt me twice, though. Water and cameras don't mix well!). They just continued their fun in the water.
And I had a pretty good picture on a warm summer's day.

Always a photographer

Frederick listening to the radio.

My wife's father Frederick died last week. He was only 67. He had struggled with his health for many years. He died June 9, peacefully, surrounded by family. We should all be so lucky.
Frederick and I had a number of things in common, one of which was that we don't like to have our picture taken. Often when I'm at a portrait assignment and the subject is nervous about being photographed, I tell the story about how I hated having my picture taken as a geeky-looking high schooler, so I was always the one to volunteer to pick up the camera. Years later I've turned my dislike for being a subject of pictures into a career in photography. It always seems to put people at ease knowing I dislike having my picture taken as much as they do.
Frederick may not have been a willing subject, but he was a good one. His natural, thoughtful nature made him interesting to photograph, whether he knew I was taking the picture or not. I took the picture at the top one Christmas from the end of our hall as Frederick, a retired United Methodist clergy, was listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the radio. He rarely missed the annual broadcast from Kings College in Cambridge, England. I think the picture shows Frederick's thoughfulness, intelligence and spirituality.
I take pictures for a living, but I don't just turn off my visual curiosity when I'm sitting around with my family. Sometimes my family may get annoyed with my sometimes-excessive visual curiosity, I feel it's important to document those people and places that are important in our lives. Don't let the opportunity to take pictures of your loved ones pass by, even when they shy away from the camera.

It was hard not to feel a little bit like a bull in a china shop the other day while photographing all those restored Chevys on display at a gathering of the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America.
Typically, I wear two cameras when I'm shooting an event _ one equipped with a wide angle lens and one equipped with a telephoto lens.
The telephoto _ an 80mm-200mm _ has a very prominent lens shade just begging to get banged against something. And if you take a closer look at it, it bears all kinds of scars from door jambs, etc.
I wasn't concerned at all about putting a few more scars on the lens; while I don't abuse them, they are tools designed to be used so we expect some wear-and-tear on equipment.
I was more concerned about inadvertantly dinging the pristine paint that those vintage cars with one of my cameras as I looked for the best angles.
And judging by some of the side-long glances I got from a few car owners, they were just as concerned that a clumsy photographer might mar their pride-and-joys.
And I can't say that I blame them. I know how I feel when I discover a ding left by some careless parking lot miscreant in my wife's Chevy Impala.
And the Chevys we're talking about here raised the bar a whole lot higher than that.
So I took extra pains to be very, very careful _ to the point of taking a camera off my shoulder and putting on the ground while I used the other one.