Conscious Cup Coffee Roasters

At one point, I grew up with the awakening roar of F-4 Phantoms from over the hill from our house at Richards-Gebaur AFB, now long since closed. Oh, but for poor eyesight ...

Night Flight

So, it's with a bit of wistfulness that we invite you to enjoy the new exhibit at Conscious Cup, a wonderful sampling from "Uncontrolled Airspace," by Gurnee, IL photographer Steven Mark.

The photos were among 257 (57 prints and 200 projections) exhibited the last weekend in May at the airport maintenance hangers.

Mark took the photos using an old-school, black and white 4x5 film camera , achieving a feel somewhere between Norman Rockwell and Ansel Adams in his richly saturated images.

More from the Northwest Herald's advance coverage of the exhibit:

Mark, a 53-year-old computer programmer from Gurnee, set about chronicling life at the Greenwood airport in February 2008. This throwback photographer spent a year, broken up into 47 weekend shoots at Galt. Originally for a class project at the College of Lake County, he now intends to create a coffee table book.

… All of the pictures are shot in a large, 4-by-5-inch format - which Mark insists provides richer tones than their digital counterparts. The fact that many of the images were shot at night with the aid of portable studio strobe lights adds an aircraft carrier feel with the aid of prop planes like the military T-34 "Mentor" - a World War II-era trainer.

"I love all that stuff. I like the look of the '40s and '50s where everything was shot in large format," said Mark, a member of Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 932.

"I wanted something where I could get out there and spend a lot of time. ... It was a blast. Everybody I talked to there, the various pilots, jumped right on board. Others, as soon as they saw some of the shots, jumped in. Everybody has been behind the project."

The respect is mutual. "When he came out to Galt and we told him about everything we had, he kind of lit up," flight instructor Justin Cleland said. "We went from shooting a few pictures to a year-long venture."