Wind and Space - how a grab shot paid off

Editor's note: Upon occasion, we'll be featuring guest photographers who have taken images that have a dynamic and interesting story behind them.

Today's guest is Bill Deaver, a well-known writer and photographer in the Mojave area. Bill is a public and government relations consultant and the former editor and publisher of the Mojave Desert News; he writes a weekly column in the Antelope Valley Press. Bill served on the staffs of two Members of Congress and a California State Assemblyman; held positions in the administrations of  Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in Washington , D.C. , with a public relations firm operated by his brother, the late Michael K. Deaver, in Washington, D.C. and served some 20 years in law enforcement.

By Bill Deaver - President, Mojave Transportation Museum Foundation

As a long-time resident of Mojave, California, home of the Mojave Air and Space Port, I like to tell people that this is one of the few places on the planet where you can look up and see something in the sky few people have ever seen before.



Copyright 2003 Bill Deaver; used by kind permission

As a local journalist I have taken many pictures of airplanes, and the advent of my friend Burt Rutan’s space program in 2003 offered an opportunity to record a truly fascinating moment in aerospace history.  It also gave me the chance to snap a photo that has paid-off for me more than any other in my 75 years!

The shot was a happy accident. Flight tests at Mojave happen in the early morning and landings are usually on runway 30, the airport’s longest. Unfortunately the light is usually terrible — you are shooting into a rising sun!

Lucky for me the opportunity came about on one of the first “captive-carry” flights of SpaceShipOne attached to its mother ship, White Knight, on July 29, 2003. After a test flight, the pilot decided to do a west-to-east flyby, and I got my shot — with Mojave’s famous wind turbines in the background!

What I love about the picture is that it highlights two of our area’s major industries — aerospace and renewable energy. The photo has appeared all over the world, in annual reports, on Scaled’s website, etc. I have made more money from it than from any other picture I have ever taken in a career that began with a Kodak Brownie Box Camera, which I still own. It was also one of the first pictures I took with my then-new Olympus digital camera, at very low resolution, which means it can’t be enlarged very much.

On the wall of our living room in Mojave is a print of Wind and Space, framed with SpaceShipOne and X-Prize pins, and bearing a small metal plaque that notes that this copy of my prized photo was “cargo” on the final, X-Prize-winning flight of SpaceShipOne on October 2, 2004.

It is one of my most prized possessions!