. Following the show I was sorting through the collected fistful of business cards, checking the backs for any needed action, when I got to the one with the Caddy info request. The front of the card bore the name Philip Makanna, an image of a WW II fighter, and the word "Ghosts" beside it. A light bulb flickered to life. For several years, during my annual fall hunt for the next year's calendars, I had seen and admired a large (14x20" closed, 20x28" opened) calendar of WW II aircraft, all photographed air-to-air and in full color, bearing the GHOSTS title. 

. Suspecting that this calendar was the work of the photographer whose card I was holding, and picking up the editorial scent of a possible story, I so enquired when forwarding details on the Cadillac-LaSalle Club. Sure enough, it was, and an interview was agreed to. Philip's heavy shooting schedule, combined with production of his latest book, would postpone our getting together until the following year. 

. Upon arriving at the Makanna's lovely home overlooking San Francisco Bay, and after a thorough inspection by Fatso, Stinky and Lulu, the resident cats, we settled into Philip's downstairs editing room, adjacent to the darkroom, to discuss this fascinating niche that he has carved for himself in the diverse realm of photography. 

Camera Arts: Air-to-air photography of vintage aircraft is a rather specialized photographic niche. How did you become involved with it?
Philip Makanna: By a turn of fate. When I was a little boy I loved airplanes, grew up in the shadow of airplanes, my heroes were pilots. But I dropped it when I was thirteen, as most little boys do, moving on to other big boy things. 

. I started out as a painter, then wandered off into sculpture, and then film and video. I made several feature films for the local PBS station, then the American Film Institute, and a bunch of N.E.A. grants. The next step was to do a proper feature film with a proper budget, but I just couldn't raise the budget. I started doing still photography with a camera my mother got me. I started doing slides, and I've never done anything other than transparencies. I've never gone through any kind of "proper" photographic training. The process, coming from painting to where I am now, has all, to me, been very logical; I feel that I'm doing the same thing that I started out doing when I was a painter. 

. I went out on a job for a women's sports magazine, to Reno, photographing some women sky divers. There were some World War II airplanes there, recreating the battle of Pearl Harbor. I thought that was funky and interesting, and I took some pictures of it. I had those pictures in my case when I went back to New York to try to sell a book on little traveling circuses, you know, two elephants, one toothless tiger, that I had

. So fate has guided the whole thing. As I started out life with airplanes, the airplanes came back to me. Now they're my life. Most of my friends are plane guys, I don't know many photographers.

CA: When you were first getting into this field, were there any other air-to-air photographers whose work inspired you?
PM: Bill Crump has been my very good friend from the beginning, now a Dallas-based photographer. We were young men together, worked together, supported each other throughout, but I don't think aviation photography has ever been an image before me. I think what's defined the look of my work is what I've been chasing after that began in fine arts. There aren't many aviation photographers that I know of. It's a very closed crowd; there just isn't that much room in the sky. One photo plane and a subject; after that it gets very complicated very fast. There aren't that many people who practice air-to-air photography consistently, full time, and have a body of work that is meaningful. But there is a strong gang of young English men that are beginning to make their mark in airplane photography and a couple of Americans. 

CA: What format do you use and why?
PM: Thirty-five millimeter, because the machinery works so well. I use a pair of Nikon F4s and Nikkor zoom lenses. In my kind of aviation photography, you have to have all the help you can get. Automatic exposure, automatic focus, automatic anything, is a plus. It raises the ratio of success. When I go out to photograph, I'm not in control of the situation. I have to survive, and surviving plus getting proper exposures, keeping the thing in focus, is a major project. I'm out there really as a composer; the camera is doing the work. Also, 35mm fits into the space that I'm allowed, a space out to about here (indicates a point approximately a foot in front of his face). If you get beyond that space, you're out into a 170 mph wind.

CA: I gather, then, that you mostly shoot from an open cockpit?
PM: Not always, but I shoot from the back seat of a T-6 with the canopy rolled back around 97% of the time. The cover of the book (GHOSTS of the Skies: Aviation in the Second World War) was taken out the tail of a B-25 that I know and love, through Plexiglas, and it's sharp enough, but shooting through Plexiglas hurts, it definitely does. 

CA: What film do you prefer, and what characteristics contribute to that preference?
PM: Velvia, underexposed a third of a stop. The grain is tight and the saturation is good. I used to shoot Kodachrome, which tended toward the red side. Velvia seems to have all the colors. The look that I like in a picture is high color saturation and sharpness, which Velvia delivers.