Fresh Boneyard Lead

A few years ago, I saw a series of photos like the one posted here and immediately knew that I wanted to someday get the opportunity to take photos at a similar location - an airplane boneyard. A boneyard is essentially a place where aircraft are decommissioned and left for future use or to salvage parts off of and ever since I saw this series of pictures, I've been searching for boneyards in and around California. So far, the only one that I've found that was of any real interest was the one in the Mojave Desert. Although the Mojave Desert isn't that far away, it's still about a 5 hour drive (one-way) from my place and will require a great deal of planning so I opted to continue to search for something closer to home.

This project ended up taking a backseat to some of my more immediate projects and I admit that I haven't been able to do any more research other than finding out about the Mojave Desert location. Several recent events, however, have brought this project back to the front of my mind and I'm beginning to get excited about it all over again.

When the idea first came to mind, I had mentioned it to a good friend who is also a fellow photographer. He was excited about it as well and expressed that he would probably end up going with me so he had also started doing research into nearby boneyards. A couple of weeks ago, he mentioned that he had found a boneyard within San Diego County. I of course got all excited until he told me that there was a big BUT involved with this boneyard... it was a restricted area because it was used by the military to decommission and destroy combat aircraft. So unless we wanted to get put on a terror watch list, we quickly checked this boneyard off of our list.

Today though, I met someone at work who owns an aviation company and I mentioned to him my idea. He told me that he knows someone that works at a boneyard up in Victorsville, California - about 3 hours away. This person mentioned that he would call his contact and let me know if he could set something up. He would also let me know what sort of aircraft may be available for photography. The only problem is that he wasn't sure that his contact would allow my friend and I to spend the night at the boneyard. That's the whole point of taking these photos - at night!

So until this new friend calls me back, my photographer friend and I will begin preparations. I mentioned this to one of the chefs that I work with and he wants to tag along with is production crew (he has a television show in development for a local station). I agreed to let him come with us once we found out more information and once we got confirmation that the Victorville boneyard shoot was a go because where there is a film production crew, there is power and there will be light! Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to my photographer friend and I having to lug a generator to provide power and several halogen work lamps with the various colored gels on top of our individual photo gear, so adding another person with a production crew was a no-brainer.

I'm excited but I really have to contain my excitement for now because we're still not sure about Victorville... If all fails, we could plan a 3 day trek out to the Mojave Desert... I'll keep you all informed.