My First Photography Job

In 1980 I worked as an intern in a NASA sponsored program.  I was assigned to the Geology Department of the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff.  I worked on a research project in conjunction with the United States Geological Survey.  My job was to analyze images of sand dunes on Mars and compare them to photographs of sand dunes in the northern Arizona desert.  Naturally, this involved aerial photography.  The pilot flew me around on two trips over the sand dunes, with detours over some of the volcano fields, Meteor Crater, the Painted Desert, and other points of interest.  We had to obtain permission from the various Indian Reservations to do this, because we were flying at very low altitude.  I was given all the slide film I could possibly use and I was allowed to make duplicate slides of every photo I took.  I just started looking through these old photographs with the intention of scanning them digitally to preserve them.  Here are two of my favorites that happened to be in the top of the bag...

Sunset Crater (a volcano)...

(Click to enlarge)

And, Meteor Crater...

I left these uncropped.  If you look in the upper left corner of the first photo, you can see a reflection in the plane window.  In the upper right corner of the second photo, you can see part of the plane's wing support.

I remember flying a tight circle over the top of a volcano and photographing while looking down directly into the crater and asking the pilot if he could slow down just a bit.  He said we were only going about 80 knots at about 500 ft altitude and he didn't think he could slow down anymore!