© Michael Heller

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, worked with the Polaroid Corporation on an idea I had for a 4x5 film holder to use under the enlarger, and spent time photographing diffraction patterns of laser light in the quantum electronics lab at Cal Tec. I also took some flying lessons.

By 1975 I had relocated to Florida, bought a Cessna, and began to fly a lot. I collected a book full of ratings and became a flight instructor myself. 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 New Mexico Indian Pueblo raised the interesting constitutional question of which was moer important: The first amendment rights of a news photographer, or freedom of religion as it applies to a sovereign Indian tribe? The question 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 we moved back to Florida, where today I am the special projects editor for the Sun Coast Media Group in Charlotte Harbor. I cover the boating and fishing beat. Many of the images on this web-site are from my time in New Mexico. In the coming months more of my Florida work will appear here.

The space shuttle pictured at the top of the page is Discovery on the night of the John Glenn mission. I love this stuff!

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