Button Up Canvas Print

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From time to time the Monterey airport hosts displays of historic aircraft. On this particular day in May 1998 this Stearman biplane operator was selling rides. This shot of the pilot buttoning up his passenger offered a great human-interest image. I took a low angle to dramatize the perspective. The words on the hanger put the image into historical context.

Photo Copyright James B. Toy.

In the fall of 1959, Mr. Toy entered this world at a place called Carmel on California's Monterey Peninsula. Nine years later his family pulled up stakes for the rain-soaked city of Salem, Oregon where he never quite fit in. When he was 12, he and his mother viewed an exhibit of photographs by a Salem newspaper photographer, which inspired him to take his first photography class. During his teenage years he gradually developed his eye for composition and his skills with light and exposure. Though he did not pursue photography as a career, he has continued to document his observations of the world on small frames of film. In 1984, Mr. Toy and his wife Heidi returned to the Monterey Peninsula where his heart belonged. In 1997, on a bit of...