Ketchikan photographer Chip Porter has released his fourth book, titled “Southeast Alaska Bush Pilots and their Flying Machines.” It offers a unique perspective on bush plane culture and Porter’s real-life adventure stories.
In an email to the Ketchikan Daily News, Porter wrote that his motivation for creating the book was “a passion for Southeast scenics, and fitting bush planes into and onto those scenics was just natural.”
During an interview, Porter talked about his experiences that led to publishing the books and his love for all things Southeast Alaska as rain pelted the roof, offering the perfect backdrop.
Porter’s first book was “Misty Fjords: National Monument Wilderness.” The second was “Southeast Alaska: As Far as the Eye Can See,” and the third was a compilation of short stories titled “Just Lucky I Guess: Seventy Years and Counting.”
Porter said of the third book that, “It’s about my life, because I’ve just had a wonderful life.”
He added that the “Just Lucky I Guess” book “is about looking out the window when I was in school and it’s sunshining and I’m stuck in school and so I decided that I would never be stuck again.”
Porter referred to a blurb on the back of his “Bush Pilots” book when asked about his motivation for publishing a book on that topic.
The quote reads: “Chip Porter grew up in Southeast Alaska and spent most of his life around airplanes and bush pilots. His dad worked for Ellis Air Lines in the early 1950s. And no, Chip isn’t a pilot, but his favorite sound is the synchronized hum of a Grumman Goose.”
His “Bush Pilots” book offers spectacular shots of Grumman Goose aircraft from 1992.
Porter recalled in that section of the book that “I flew in a Ketchikan-bound Goose with my mother two days before I was born.
“I loved flying in a Goose,” the text reads. “The deafening roar at take-off. The white propellor spray blasting past the windows. The sizzle of 80 mile-per-hour water on the aluminum hull. The flight to Annette Island. Watching the pilot hand-crank the landing gear down. What wasn’t to love?”
Porter noted that his mother was flying from Annette Island to Ketchikan as she anticipated his arrival.
Porter’s “Bush Pilots” book is filled with full-page color photos of a variety of small planes including those with floats, skis and wheels as well as helicopters and even an Everts Air Fuel C-46 Commando plane. The aircraft are beautifully captured flying among spectacular Southeast Alaska scenery, resting along scenic beaches, landing on snow-covered mountains, resting at dockside, and in mechanic bays receiving maintenance.
One section highlights what Porter called “the biggest, baddest bush pilots of them all” — the U.S. Coast Guard crewmen flying the Jayhawk helicopters from Air Station Sitka.
The book is full of fascinating — and some hair-raising — stories told from Porter’s lifelong experiences as a mountain climber, hunter and bush aircraft enthusiast.
The inspiration to create the book about bush pilots, he said, was sparked when he saw staff at the Tongass Historical Museum going through thousands of slides that someone had donated.
“I told them, ‘I’m not going to do that,’ they’re only going to get my best slides. So, I did boats first and then I decided to do airplanes, and when I got done, I had all these really good shots.”
Another inspiration that Porter mentioned simply was that he is getting older, and felt he was “running out of time.”
Porter said that he told his wife Deb Porter that he needed to do something useful with his best photos. In an email he noted that they sorted through 90 photos to select those for the book.
“I couldn’t just leave them sit, so we decided to do a book,” he said.
He also noted that Deb Porter was a “huge part” of creating the book, assisting as an editor, sounding board and photograph sorter.
Porter said that over the years, he would hold slideshow parties for the community, complete with a DJ and dancing.
He said that he was a photography enthusiast from the time he was about eight years old.
“I’ve always loved taking pictures,” Porter said.
He added that he didn’t realize how enjoyable writing was until he was about 55 years old.
He’s been a fairly serious photographer since his mid-20s, he said.
He added that his long-time friend and Ketchikan artist Mary Henrickson “gave me a push” to delve into photography more deeply.
Porter said that although he has been a photographer now for many years, it wasn’t his career focus — commercial fishing was his focus for years, as well as working as a fishing guide.
As an adult, he was careful to avoid subject matter that other local photographers already focused on. He mentioned that his friend and professional photographer Hall Anderson specialized in photos of the town and of the local Alaska Native people, so Porter said he didn’t want to edge in on those subjects.
“I took pictures from mountain tops, because that’s what I did — I climbed,” Porter said.
He said that he has spent years climbing the mountains in the Misty Fjords, which led to his first book, which was published in 2007. He noted that he and his wife Deb Porter were married in the Misty Fjords, and were flown there by Jeff Carlin, with Dave Doyon serving as their best man.
“I’ve climbed the three tallest mountains on this island too, and I don’t think anybody else has,” Porter said.
Years ago, he said that local “Save the Goose” nonprofit founder and fellow aircraft enthusiast Don Dawson was specializing in aircraft photos, so Porter at that time was also avoiding focusing on aircraft photography.
Porter said that he was friends with pilot Dave Doyon from a young age, and “we flew all over the country. We hunted, we fished, and I didn’t take pictures of airplanes” at that time.
Porter said that once he realized Dawson had slowed his aircraft photography focus, “I went out to Temsco, which is where he worked, he was the parts guy, and I said ‘What’s up? Are you not taking pictures of airplanes anymore?’ and he said, ‘People don’t have a clue what’s involved in taking an air-to-air.’”
Porter agreed, and explained that organizing and safely conducting a photo shoot of an in-flight aircraft while flying alongside in a second aircraft truly is challenging.
When Porter asked Dawson whether he would mind Porter focusing on aircraft photography in the area, Porter said that Dawson was fully supportive.
The first pilots who hired Porter to take photos were Jeff Carlin and Michelle Masden of Carlin Air and Island Wings, respectively, Porter said. Included in his book are in-flight photos of their floatplanes flying in close formation as well as one depicting the planes calmly drifting on water next to each other with the pilots standing on the planes’ floats.
The photo of the planes flying in formation is one of Porter’s favorites, he said. It was that photo shoot during which he was able to overcome a technical photography challenge.
A tricky part of photographing planes in flight that Porter described is finding the exact shutter speed to use to prevent either a blurred aircraft using a slower speed, or a propeller that appears frozen in midair, with a speed set too high.
Porter summarized the book as a celebration of the uplifting positivity and adventure of the “bush pilot life around Southeast.”
The majority of the book tells the story “of the old guys,” Porter said, adding that the book is “just fun.”Porter’s books can be found locally at Parnassus Books, Crazy Wolf Studio, SeaWind Aviation, Taquan Air and Gifts on the Fly. They also can be purchased on his website at chipporteralaska.com.