Re: Steam Fix Part II

Thanks for the kind words. I was a photographer in the Air Force from 1959 to 1981, including 5 years as an instructor in the Air Force photography school in Denver. When I joined the Air Force in 1959, a lot of WWII and Korean War guys were nearing retirement. One of my instructors and supervisors graduated from the Air Force photo school in 1937. He was in the Philippines on December 7, 1941 and was on the Bataan Death March and a POW in Japan until end of the war. He was a great photographer and I learned a lot from him. He taught aerial photography at Lowry Air Base in Denver. He remembers shooting aerial photos of Salida, Marshall Pass, Gunnison, Black Canyon, Montrose, etc. As they were training flights, they did not keep the film. Air Force recycled the film. The Air Force photo school at that time (1959) had a 60 feet wide aerial mosaic of SW Colorado hanging in the front entrance. Almost all the D&RGW narrow gauge in one large image. The Air Force built a new photo school during the Vietnam War and I do not know what happened to that mosaic.

My second supervisor was a WWII B-17 bomber co-pilot, was shot down over Germany and spent the last year as a POW. Got out of the Air Force after the war, but was called back to active duty during Korea as an enlisted guy (he did not keep his reserve commission after WWII as he thought there would be no more wars). He had opened a photo studio after WWII so the Air Force made him a photographer. He was a great mentor, after I worked my way up in rank to TSgt, we were co-instructors in the photo school.

All these guys are gone, but I owe whatever skills I have as a photographer to that early training. I often wonder what these guys would think of my Nikon D850 today. I think they would like digital as the photography chemicals were not healthy to be around. Horace developed breathing problems near the end of his life and was on oxygen. He blamed it on all the chemicals.