Sioux Lookout pilot turns passion for planes, photography into book

A Sioux Lookout, Ont. pilot has channelled a lifelong fascination with flying into a new volume of photographs.

Growing up in a small town in northwestern Ontario, Rich Hulina said his love for airplanes started from a very young age, thanks to his father.

"My dad was an aviation enthusiast ... [and] he had a private licence and there was a small air service in Ignace that flew strictly bush planes," Hulina said.

When he was a teenager he started hanging around the bush plane base in his hometown of Ignace, Ont. taking photos, most of which he said weren't very good, on his small Kodak disc camera.

"I was excited, I was young and I didn't have any other means of getting bigger cameras," said Hulina.

Hulina's second volume of photos contains 250 images taken between 2011 and August of this year. Unlike the first volume the photos span across Canada and the United States; from Alaska to Maine, and all over northwestern Ontario.

"For this one I've gone to specific companies with rare airplanes,"  said Hulina, often photographing them out of an airplane window or open door.

There is some coordination involved between the pilots to get the shot just right. Often the pilots who fly the planes he photographs say they've never done anything like it before.

His favourite photo in the book is of two Beech 18's, a rare plane, he said, with less than 20 on floats operating. It was taken by Nestor Falls at sunrise this August.

Currently Hulina is semi-retired after being the part-owner for Slate Falls Airways in Sioux Lookout for the last 14 years.

There have been about 600 copies sold of the new book since October, according to Hulina.

"It's been a phenomenal response," said Hulina.