Image of the Week: Farmer and Pilot Ed Peet, Cornwall, Vermont

Lately, I'm carrying my Hasselblad everywhere I go, even on jobs where I wouldn't realistically use it. I prefer it for people portraits, and you never know when or where you'll meet an interesting character.

Nearby Middlebury College had hired me to shoot some aerial scenics of the college campus and had scheduled some air time for me with local farmer and pilot Ed Peet. Ed flies a 1960's era Cessna 172 off an airstrip on his Cornwall farm, from (as the written directions I received detailed) a "large hangar/barn after a barn full of cows."

Actually, I couldn't tell which barn was which. There were cows everywhere and not much of an airstrip -- just a swath of flat pasture with close-trimmed grass. I walked up to the only man in sight, introduced myself and said that I was looking for Ed Peet.

"You found him."

After a five-minute preflight, we were airborne and cutting an elegant arc across the Vermont sky back towards Middlebury's campus. Ed was an extraordinarily nice guy, and was extremely accommodating during the flight, making just the right turns at the perfect altitude for my images.

Back on the ground, I asked Ed if I could take a portrait, and he quickly agreed, striking up this pose just as I swung the Hasselblad up to my eye and focused the lens.

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Technical Data

I photographed Farmer and Pilot Ed Peet, Cornwall, Vermont with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Carl Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak TMax 400 (TMY2), exposed at EI 320. The exposure was 1/125 second at ƒ/8. I developed the film in Kodak HC-110 dilution H (1:63) for 8:15 at 23°C.

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