Paul Bowen has spent his life behind the camera taking pictures of aircraft … from other aircraft.
He said he first started taking pictures at the beach of surfers and sunbathers in his native California. He originally came to Wichita in the early 1970s to direct a halfway house for a church but eventually found a job assisting a commercial photographer.
“So for $1.75 an hour, I learned what a commercial photographer was by carrying his cameras around, loading the film and keeping my eyes and ears open,” Bowen recalled. “Because if you're a commercial photographer in Wichita, you eventually will take a picture of an airplane.”
Bowen was taking pictures of sleeping bags for Coleman in Wichita one week … the next week, he was shooting airplanes in California.
“And I came back [from California] and told my wife, ‘I'll be a much happier person, a better husband, and we'll have more fun if I simply concentrate on aviation.’ ”
He’d eventually photograph all of the major players in Wichita aviation and around the world. But that came after he established himself first with Beechcraft.
His initial airplane pictures were taken on the ground. His first time shooting photos out of an airplane, though, did not go as planned.
“They took me up in the air, and I promptly got air sick,” said Bowen, a member of the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame. “It's very odd looking through a lens as you're doing maneuvers. And so I got airsick on my first flight.
“Unfortunately, my camera bag was the target of my issues in the air. And afterwards, I was able to get what I needed shot.”
Bowen only has a handful of flight training hours in the cockpit, but he’s logged thousands of hours tethered into the rear gunner position of a World War II B-25 bomber. That’s where he takes the pictures he’s best known for: an airplane just above the clouds, highlighting an effect caused by air flowing over an aircraft’s wings that is only visible when there is a layer of clouds.
“The vortices was really a happy accident,” Bowen said.
“We usually shoot at sunrise and sunset because of the better lighting. And we were out in California, and we were slightly inland. But we knew that there was a marine layer of fog … off the coast that was coming up to the coastal range of mountains there in California. And part of the briefing was that we were wanting to get out over the marine layer.
“And as we did, and got just slightly above it, gravity revealed the vortices effect as we scooted along, just off the coast of California.”
Bowen published those pictures, and more, in a series of books called “Air To Air.”
Throughout his career, he’s seen technology go from physical film to digital photography. In 2001, the first digital camera came out, and he took it as a backup camera to a shoot in South Africa.
“The quality, quite frankly, wasn’t there at that time,” Bowen said. “It was at that point the light came on, and I realized how wonderful digital [photography] would be. And within a few years, when the technology got better, we switched entirely to digital.”
One of the many life lessons he’s learned while amassing thousands of magazine covers and accolades is to treat people the way he wants to be treated.
“Attention to detail, integrity, building relationships,” he said. “Someone I worked with… five years ago is now working for another company, and they remember working with me and that I was fairly easy to work with.
“And so all of those just very practical experiences like that have brought that home.”
Bowen is semi-retired and lives with his wife outside of Augusta. He keeps a surfboard in Hawaii so he can surf during their frequent visits there.
“I think it's safe to say that I have the best job in aviation,” Bowen said. “I've had the opportunity to work with amazing pilots, to travel the world, to see beautiful airplanes in flight, to become friends with astronauts, with World War II heroes.
“And, again, I'm just kind of a kid with a camera, and I've had the opportunity to live a life that I could never have imagined. You know, at one point, I wanted to be a dentist. And so, thankfully, that didn't happen.
“It's a little bit like Garth Brooks, saying, ‘I thank God for unanswered prayers.’ So I have the best job in aviation.”
