McMinnville Air Museum with Tom and Nancy Lea

Our friends Tom and Nancy Lea came over from Boise for a quick trip. Carla and I went to the College of Idaho with Nancy and she married Tom a number of years ago. Tom is a retired professional photographer with a fantastic blog called Boise Style. I picked his brain for the whole visit; he gave me tips both on taking pictures and on editing them. He uses Adobe Elements; I've had a hard time with it until he gave me some pointers. I'm torn between that and Aperture.

On Saturday we headed over to the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville so we could get a look at some planes and I could practice some picture taking.

Nancy and Tom in front a small part of the Spruce Goose

When Tom was a professional photographer, he often went up in helicopters like the one below. They'd take off the side door and he'd dangle outside connected by a harness. He would go up with two cameras; he also had an assistant on board whose sole job was to load film into a camera and swap it for one that just got a fill of pictures. Not much need of that these days with digital photography. Nancy was a writer for the same company as Tom and would also go up for the flights.

Nancy and Tom in front of a helicopter they used to ride in for work 

I was tickled that the museum has an F104 Starfighter. My dad was an instrumentation engineer on this plan back in the 50's when we first moved to Palmdale, CA. They were fast, dangerous interceptors. They were made for supersonic flight and handled poorly at slower speeds (like taking off and landing).  I knew a couple of girls in first grade whose father was a test pilot who died flying one of these.

 After our time at the museum we headed into downtown McMinnville for a bit. There are lots of cool little shops.

It was a too short visit; Nancy's daughter Meghan was home from college for a long weekend and they wanted to get back to see her. We had a blast; we've GOT to get to Boise soon. Don't know if we'll be able to squeeze it into our busy summer. Maybe in the fall.

Nancy and Tom in front of the house as they were leaving