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NOTE: The logo watermark will not appear on purchased products. Photo copyright James B Toy

The Goodyear blimp Columbia, registration number N4A, is moored on the darkened McNary Field in Salem, Oregon. It is night and the blimp is illuminated. I made this image in September 1978 after I got off work at a local movie theater, so it was around 11:00 pm. I set up my tripod on the roof of my car in order to shoot over the chain link fence.

During the 1970s the blimp made regular visits to Salem, flying over the city for a few days at a time. At night it would put on a computer generated light show formed by a grid of lights along the outside of the blimp.

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...