Ronald Mullins, Photographer - Writer - Imagineer
AWARD WINNING PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICES
Melding… The Art and Science of Photography and Aviation
Almost as far back as memory will allow, I have been fascinated by aircraft and most things that fly. I recall as a very young lad, on my family’s Ottawa Valley farm, stopping and looking skyward as the distinctive radial-engine roar signalled a formation of bright yellow RCAF Harvards passing overhead. I was hooked… I just didn’t know it yet!
When the USSR launched Sputnik 1 and later put Yuri Gagarin in earth orbit and certainly when the USA put Navy Commander Alan Shepard in suborbital flight aboard NASA’s Freedom 7, I was never far from a radio or a black and white television. I was glued to the family’s fuzzy colour television as Walter Cronkite provided the play-by-play of Neil Armstrong stepping out of Apollo 11 and onto the moon’s surface. Over the years, my fascination with flight has not subsided. Gazing into the night sky as the International Space Station passes overhead or traveling vast distances to airshows or just hanging out around local airport runways remains a common life occurrence. Even today, as an aircraft passes overhead, I can usually find pause and look to the sky.
As I began my career in television and video production, this preoccupation with aircraft continued. Some of my first jobs as a cinematographer, for a Nova Scotia-based production company, were on projects that involved aircraft in some form. This carried over as my career took me to Montreal where the production company owned a Hughes 500 helicopter and my specialty became directing air-to-air and air-to-ground film and video projects. This was also where my very good friend and helicopter pilot Joe Campbell encouraged me to take flying lessons. I started, but alas I let ‘life’ get in the way and I never did get my pilot’s license. Something I regret not doing… to this very day!
Now, as I reach the sundown of my very rewarding and diverse television and media production career, I am still most content with a camera in my hand and a viewfinder to my eye. As well, I can honestly admit that my lifelong passion for aviation and most things that fly continues… unabated. I have been honoured to have my photographs published in a number of national and international publications. In addition, fellow photographers have seen fit to honour me with a number of awards… for which I am very humbled.
This very small collection of my aviation photographic art exemplifies a passion that has burned brightly in me for over five decades and will continue for as long as God allows me to hold a camera and frame a shot. I hope you enjoy my art and through it… understand this country boy’s fascination with aircraft and most things that fly as well as my love of photography.