JH
There is something very appealing to me about a well-done “mounted” hang gliding photo. The first mounted shot that captivated me was your photo of Ed Ceasar flying an Eipper Antares at Point Fermin in San Pedro (Dec, 1979 HANG GLIDING). You had the camera mounted on the bow sprit. It was a great photo with Eipper’s Rick Lesh flying another Antares in close echelon. It was the picture that made me start thinking about doing mounted photos. Where did you get the idea of mounting cameras on hang gliders, and do you think you were the first to do it?

LG
I was not the first one to do it. Carl Boenish mounted a camera on Dave Cronk’s kite over at Torrance Beach, and I saw the results of that and thought that that was a good way to go, so I bought a 15mm wide angle lens and a remote cord.

JH
As far as you know, Carl Boenish, the Father of BASE jumping and the director of the early hang gliding film “Playground In the Sky” was the first to mount a still camera on a hang glider? LG
Yes.

JH
You must have given Eric Raymond the idea of mounting cameras. There was a centerspread in HANG GLIDING Magazine (April, 1980) of Eric looping with your camera on his Fledge. Do you remember when you first mounted a camera on a hang glider?

LG
Soon after I saw the results of Carl Boenish’s mount on Cronk’s kite I put my camera on the nose of Bob Keeler’s glider (of Seagull Aircraft) and counterweighted it with a can of paint. I ran the cord down the forward wires and he could just barely reach it. It was only ten feet long, but it worked. That was the first time I mounted a camera for an air shot.

I put a camera on Eric Raymond’s glider down at Torrey Pines one day, and I am sure he appreciated it and realized that he could do it too.

JH
One of my favorites of all the pictures that have been in the centerspread is your mounted shot of a red Super Riser at Torrey Pines (June 1980 HANG GLIDING). You mounted the camera near the tip and between the upper and lower wings looking back at the pilot (Herb Fenner?), which was a great idea. The combination of that position and the fisheye lens gave the photo great lines. Do you have an education in photography, or do you just have a natural “eye” for it?

LG
I started shooting surfing seriously in 1960. I had gotten a ulcer working for the phone company and the doctor said to pick up a hobby to get my mind off the telephone company. I had been around surfing all my life and knowing Doc Ball, the premier early surfing photographer, I decided to take it on. I learned much of it the hard way.

JH
So, you just have a natural eye for it. Do you remember the first time you photographed hang gliding?

LG
Yes I do. It was in February of 1974. It was a windy day, a clear day. My wife and I decided to take a trip around Palos Verdes just to see what it looked like on a clear day. We got as far as Torrance beach and I saw these big kites up in the air. I had only one roll of film with a 50 mm lens, so I asked my wife if she would go home and get the rest of my gear while I start shooting.

As the guys started landing I noticed that some of them were surfers that I knew. I got to talking with the guys from Eipper and decided that this is a fun sport to shoot. That was the beginning.

JH
How long after that did you do your first camera mount?

LG
Sometime within the next couple of months I put the camera on Bob Keeler’s glider at the “Domes”

JH
You mean the now-defunct radar installation on top of the hill at Palos Verdes?

LG
Yes.

JH
Was it common for people to soar at that site at that time? Did Bob get above launch with your camera that day?

LG
Yes, the Domes was soarable. It was not any great trick to get up in the air if you had enough wind. In fact that picture over there on the wall of Roy Haggard and Charlie Baughman was taken at the Domes that day.

JH
What is your favorite flying site for photography purely from a scenery standpoint?

LG
Telluride.

JH
I know you have been to Telluride, Grouse Mountain and the Masters at Grandfather many times. What has been your favorite hang gliding event overall?

LG
I think Grouse Mountain was my favorite and it went on for about ten years. A lot of people participated and I got some great shots. Probably the prettiest place was Yosemite.

JH
You have mounted your camera on some of the most colorful characters in hang gliding including Dan Raccanelli, “Dangerous Dave” Gibson, “Mad Mitch” McAleer, Larry Tudor, Rob Kells, Ron “Sky Ape” Young and many other great pilots. Who has been your favorite pilot on which to mount a camera?

LG
David Ledford has done a lot of shooting for me not just because he was an excellent pilot, but he was always handy and willing to fly with the camera.

JH
How old were you when you first found yourself interested in taking pictures?

LG
It was in 1960. I was born in ’17, so I was forty-three.

JH
Did you have photographer heroes?

LG
Doc Ball was the fellow I tried to emulate. He started surfing photography in the mid ‘30s. He built some waterproof boxes so he could shoot from the water. He was a very close friend of mine. I saw him every year for probably fifty years. Also Doctor Don James, a dentist. Coincidentally they were both dentists. He started photographing surfing, and had a nice huge shot published of a guy at Sunset Beach with a big wave curled over his head. I thought I would not mind having something like that too.

JH
What was your first camera?

LG
I started using Pentax equipment in 1961 for surfing. The primary reason was that it had a light metering system in it. It was the first camera that had it. I progressively got more and more lenses with Pentax mounts. With lenses from 15mm to 1000mm it would cost a fortune to change, but I have had good luck with Pentax.

JH
What were your first subject interests?

LG
When I first started surfing photography in 1960, that was the same year the John Severson came up with SUFER Magazine, and it began to look like surfing was taking off. I started covering contests and going up and down the coast shooting the different surf spots in my spare time. Then a couple more magazines came along and I got involved. I worked for SURFER for one year which was only a quarterly. Then the Peterson HOT ROD Magazine got into the business with a publication called INTERNATIONAL SURFING, which was a bi-monthly. That meant more chances to get my pictures publishes. They contacted me and published my stuff as a prime interest. Surfing really took off in the sixties, and all that stuff that I shot in that time period is hot now. Frankly, I never made much money out of hang gliding.

JH
I know you are famous for your surfing and wind surfing photography. Tell me about your career.

LG
I started out contributing to a little magazine that two guys started in Laguna Beach called THE REEF. The paid me five bucks a shot for about twelve shots, and I thought I was rich. I was getting two bucks a shot from the kids on the beach at the time.

JH
What publications have you sold to?

LG
Walt Phillips and I started SURFING ILLUSTRATED, and financially we did not make a go of it. Then I went to work for INTERNATIONAL SURFING. They tried it for a two of years and decided there was not enough money in it.

A couple of my surfing buddies put up $30,000 and we took over a surfing magazine in 1965. But again it was a hit or miss proposition on getting enough money. They sold that in 1968 to a New York publisher who had a chain of magazines, and I worked with them for a couple of years.

Around 1971 I got really upset with the surf magazines because they were making the dope-heads and guys who were not really heroes out to be heroes. It just turned me off. I kept shooting surfing, but I quit working for the magazines as a staff photographer.

JH
If you could get paid the same for whatever you photographed, what subject would you prefer to shoot? What is the most interesting to you?

LG
Surfing is my first love and I have continued to surf up until about three years ago, so that has always been my favorite.

JH
If you knew when you started what you know now about how little money there is in hang gliding photography, would you still have shot as much of it as you have?

LG
(laughing) No!

JH
When I started hang gliding I thought that in a short time it would be the most popular sport in history. Are you surprised that it has remained such an esoteric activity?

LG
Frankly yes. Hang gliding appealed to me. It is a beautiful thing to shoot. I have not seen much growth. From an insider’s point-of-view I am surprised it is still going as much as it is. The thing that never entered my mind is that so many people were getting killed that it was a deterrent to learn to hang glide.

JH
You intended to learn to fly at one time. Tell me the story of why you did not.

LG
I took lessons briefly in ’74, and one of the lessons was at the Domes on the lower level. All I had was a seat with a belt across it. For some reason the seat slipped up to my knees and I went in butt-first and compressed a vertebra. I thought if I am going to fly I will let some one else fly and I will just shoot from the air tandem.

In 1981 I was flying tandem with Herb Fenner at Torrey Pines. We were flying suprone side-by-side (centerspread, June, 1981 HANG GLIDING) and I was taking air shots. It was a beautiful day, and we had a great flight. The landing did not seem unusual, but somehow I got my foot in front of the base tube and broke my ankle. After recovery I flew once with Bill Floyd and once with Dave Ledford to get it out of my system. My wife did not find out until years later.

JH
How has your choice of film evolved over the years?

LG
When I first started shooting in ‘60 Kodachrome was only 25 ASA which was fairly slow, so it was only on the really beautiful days that I could shoot color because of the speed. When they came out with the 64 it made a world of difference. A lot more shooting times were available because it did not take as much light. It also gave me more shutter speeds to play with, so I could shoot big surf and feel that it would not be blurred.

I shot 64 for a long time, both Kodachrome and Ecktachrome. Of course now Ecktachrome 100 and Fijichrome 100 have come out, and they are both excellent films. 100 ASA is plenty for shooting surfing and hang gliding. I do like the blues better in the E-6 films as opposed to Kodachrome.

JH
Do you use a different speed film for your long lens than your extreme wide angle?

LG
No. I used 64 for both, and now 100.

JH
What do you think of paragliding as subject matter for photography?

LG
It is difficult to shoot because there is such a distance between the pilot and the canopy. I have not taken to it primarily for that reason. It is the same problem with kite surfing. Also it is hard to mount a camera on them.

JH
You have come to know many pilots over the 30 years that you have been photographing them. I am sure you have known some pilots who were killed during those early years of hang gliding. Did you ever reach a point at which it was emotionally difficult to go out and shoot hang gliding after losing good people whom you knew personally?

LG
I do not think it ever occurred to me to stop shooting because of that. The hang gliding equipment kept getting better. Parachutes came along and there were more safety aids. Fewer people were getting into accidents, and most of the accidents were pilot error and not equipment related. So no, I never considered stopping shooting because of the accidents involved.

JH
I know a pilot who decided he was ready to do his first loop, so he mounted up his camera and went flying. He got to apex and got his inverted picture, but then he fell into the glider, tumbled and saved himself with his parachute. I have crashed trying to get a spectacular shot. Did you ever mount a camera on someone and watch them go out and tumble or crash in their attempt to get a great photo, and did you have a cautionary speech involving the phrase “kodak courage” that you recited just prior to launch?

LG
I guess I was lucky, because none of the pilots I put cameras on ever got killed. I have lost a couple of cameras. One was on a test flight of a Seagull near Malibu. I put the camera on the nose, and the pilot landed knee-deep in the ocean and nosed over. Of course the camera was dead upon contact with the water. I sent the film to Kodak for processing and they thought the salt water damage was due to a problem with their process. They sent me a new roll of film. Steve Pearson had a tandem passenger grab his arm on landing at Grouse Mountain. The resulting nose-in destroyed that camera.

JH
Have you supported yourself and your wife by your photography or have you done other work?

LG
I never tried to make a living out of it when I started out. It was strictly a “get rid of the ulcer” thing. There was not much money in surfing to begin with. Most of the businesses were backyard operations, and the thing got off to a slow start. The guys were willing to make boards for practically nothing. It was very much like the early days of hang gliding.

JH
Do you still shoot hang gliding or is that chapter closed?

LG
That is pretty much over. Even though I live close to Torrey Pines the traffic has gotten so bad that it is difficult for me to be there for the nice late-afternoon lighting.

JH
Have you made any arrangements concerning what will happen to your legacy of hang gliding photographs after you die?

LG
No. I have been thinking about trying to sell the hang gliding end of it, because somebody out there might want to take care of it.

JH
At times I have had people in the film industry ask me to fly with a knee-hanger harness. They did not like the innovation of the cocoon harness (let alone the pod) because it does not look to them like “human flight”. They still have this idea of hang gliding as just a kite and a person with arms and legs sticking out. They do not like the “spaceman look”. Also in the early days the sails were much more colorful. Your career spans from that early period of basic human flight through today. Do you have a favorite period of hang gliding, and do you feel that hang gliding has become less interesting photographically.

LG
Well it certainly is not as colorful as it was. But, to me that is like saying the airplanes in 1914 were more interesting to shoot than the jets of today. It is the same rationale. Hang gliding has progressed so much that I guess some of the color is gone. It is still to me a beautiful sight to see a dozen gliders in the air at Telluride or Torrey. For me personally it has not made that much difference. I just shoot it as I see it.

JH
I believe your great body of work stands as the definitive documentation of hang gliding from the early years until you stopped a few years ago. Thank you for sharing these insights into your great career in photography.

Published in March 2005 HANG GLIDING Magazine

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