my first time.

I was never interested in photography when I was young. It was in my senior year in high school that I had my first experience. I was the editor of the yearbook. We had a great staff of which 2 were photographers. We thought it would be great if we could have an aerial shot of the San Fernando Valley at dusk on the endpapers of our book. We contacted a local radio station and they agreed to let 2 of us fly with their pilot during his traffic reports. I wanted to go also so it would be me and one of the photographers. I was very excited. We met the pilot on a late Friday afternoon and proceeded to board the plane. As we boarded the aircraft the photographer decides he is not going to fly on a very small plane over a very large city. He hands me the camera and tells me what to do. I had no idea what he was talking about. Aperture, shutter speed? I had no choice and I thought, ‘How hard could it be’? As it turned out too hard for me. As we gained altitude I could see how beautiful the smog and sun mixed together could be. I took the camera up to frame a shot and realized I had not remembered anything the photographer told me. I just framed shots and pressed the shutter. I gave him the camera the next morning and later in the week he told me nothing came out. A month ago, I was in Elma, Washington, and I saw this old Cessna at the airport suffering from years of neglect. It brought back to my mind that flight in the afternoon in the city I grew up in. I shot the aircraft with my Pentax 645N and the 75mm Lens. I used Kodak Ektar 120 Color Film. The film was developed at Panda Labs in Seattle.