EAA Sport Aviation - February 2012

autumn red and gold. But she knows that landscape like she knows her own family. And so she is able to portray those scenes in a way that only a local could: in all seasons, at all times of day, and in unusual moments that she’s able to capture because her odds of being there at the right time are so much higher than anyone else’s.

This is, I suppose, what comes from accumulating 7,000 hours in a single airplane, photographing a single geographic region of the country. But it’s also fitting and reflective of Marge, herself. For Marge is somewhat like the Michigan landscape she photographs—not flashy or dramatic, but imbued with the same practical strength and resourcefulness that characterized the pioneers who first settled the land there.

What makes her accomplishments all the
more impressive is that Marge was in her
mid-40s when she learned to fly. She’d mar-
ried her brother’s best friend when she was
18, and the first of her five children was born
the very next year. But when her youngest
finally went off to school, she began search-
ing for something to do with her suddenly
free time that could contribute to the house-
hold income. She raised tropical fish for a
while (there were aquariums all over the
house, she said), canned and preserved all
kinds of produce from her immense back-
yard garden, and worked as a negative
retoucher for a photography studio in down-
town Muskegon. But on the way home from
a spiritual retreat in New Mexico one night,
she found herself moved to the point of tears
by the beauty of the Chicago lights as she
flew over them.

A flip down window cut into the right-side Plexiglas window allows Marge to shoot images out the side with no distortion. A camera in the belly of the aircraft allows her to shoot vertical mapping images.

Cessna 150 Aerobat that was based at
a nearby airfield.

“I think we build restrictions into what
we believe is possible, for ourselves, and
everyone lives inside this little cubicle that
you think is you,” she said. “But all of a
sudden, I had a window, and I saw, ‘Hey
these limits are things that I’ve limited
myself to. And there’s a whole ’nother
world out there.’”
Flying may have been a mid-life addition
for Marge, but photography, at least, was in
her blood. She still remembers, as a little
girl, developing negatives with her parents
on their kitchen table, with blankets draped
over the windows to create a makeshift
darkroom. So perhaps it was only a matter of
time until the two interests met.

Not long after she took up flying (a hobby she paid for with her work as a negative retoucher), the nearby turkey processing plant where her son-in-law worked suffered a major fire. From the ground, the damage didn’t look too bad. But Marge flew over the plant the next morning in one of the flying club’s Cessna 150s and shot some pictures of the caved-in roof and decimated interior. She printed up some 8-inch by 10-inch copies of the photos, and her son-in-law took them in to his boss. To Marge’s surprise, the boss asked her if she’d sell him 120 copies of the photo, so he could send them out to the plant’s customers to explain why their orders were going to be delayed. He also asked Marge if she could shoot monthly aerials of the construction/repair process, to track its progress.

Just like that, a business was born.

There was a hitch, however. The flying club told Marge that she couldn’t use the club’s planes for commercial work. So she found herself in sudden, desperate need of an airplane. The club had a Cessna Cardinal, and she’d already decided that a Cardinal was the perfect airplane for aerial photography—slow speed capability, no struts to get in the way, and good visibility. She’d just have to add a small, hinged window opening on one side.