January 19, 1990: The first two photos show Ed and I in typical base camp form. It is about 2:00 a.m. and the temperature is near freezing in the high mountains of Southern California. We are just below the snowline in the high desert at Edwards Air Force Base. We are among no more than a few hundred other die-hard shuttle fans who also braved the early morning cold to witness the return of the orbiter, Columbia. Unfortunately, the forecast for the dry lake bed that early morning called for the "possibility for fog conditions" (even though the fog never actually appeared). This caused the landing to be delayed for 24 hours. We would return [from San Diego] the next night, and try again. The last two photos show the "VIP viewing area" on the base itself. In the last photo, I used a flash and a timer and used a long exposure for the ghostly self portrait. I set the timer, got into the picture with Ed, the flash went off (catching us) and then we quickly left the frame and let the rest of the exposure catch the bleachers only. My thanks to Tony Hernandez for putting that seed in my head (12 years prior).

January 20, 1990: These photos were taken the following night....same time frame (2:00 a.m.) and same cold temperature. However, this time there were significantly fewer people. Since we knew what time the shuttle would be appearing, we sat in Ed's car, tuned the portable TV to the only station we could pick up and monitored the scanners for mission control transmissions as the deorbit burn was cordinated and then executed. When we knew they were about 20 minutes out, we emerged from the semi-warmth of the car and joined the less than 100 spectators at our distant perch. We were several miles out and the photos here show the distant runway (the concrete runway at Edwards - vice the desert runways) illuminated by huge spotlights. From our location, we could see the enormous "mate/demate" assembly lit up in the distance, to our left.

Unknown to us (or anybody that was around us), the shuttle is all but invisible when landing at night, as it has no landing or navigation lights. Before we knew it, it was shooting down the runway and out of sight behind some buildings. I didn't get a still photo of the actual touchdown, and only got this ONE [usable] image of the shuttle parked at the end of the runway (being "safed").

The next roll of film was (much to my EXTREME disappointment) actually previously exposed. I had grabbed a roll of film from the house that appeared to be fresh. In actuality, my wife had shot it at her office, and at a preschool Christmas program. Her camera, while automatically rewinding the film when it is finished, had a nasty habit of leaving a leader, rather than retracting the film all the way into the can. I ended up with a roll of double-exposed images of the gleaming shuttle on top of other images. The results (below) speak for themselves, and show what would have been some very nice photos. More lessons learned.

January 25, 1990:Returning to Edwards for the 3rd time in a week (this time to watch the shuttle depart for KSC), we found the shuttle in the mate/demate assembly when we arrived at around 3:00 a.m. At 6:00 a.m., the behemoth assembly of 747 and space shuttle backed out as one flying unit and was towed to a staging area on the tarmac. This first photo remains in my top five favorite photos (that I have ever taken). I had it blwon up to 20x30 and it is framed and adorns the wall of our living room. It never fails to solicit compliments and questions when I have guests over for the first time.

These next photos document the amazing view we had of this 10-minute transit (as the sun was rising behind it). At the staging area, I got the shot of a lifetime (the last photo of this series) and it is also one of my "favorite five", and accompanies the previously mentioned photo on the wall of our living room. I shot it just before base security approached us and sternly reminded us that flightline photography was not allowed.

We were dispatched back to the VIP viewing area, thousands of yards away. From there, I snapped one more photo and then we waited for the 747 to depart. When it began moving, so did we - trying to guess what runway it would take off from, and then getting into position to film the takeoff. We didn't get to a good spot in time and literally pulled off the road we were on (in traffic) and hopped out with cameras firing as we spied it rumbling into the sky in front of us. The icing on the cake.