In a World…Chasing Rockets & Planes with Launch Photographer Jack Beyer
Written by Tony “Tonx” Konecny & Amy Marie Slocum | As appeared in Yes Plz Weekly Issue 028, June 3, 2019
Jack Beyer: I really don’t know how I ended up like this, except that I grew up in Florida, and Florida has rocket launches.
Tony “Tonx” Konecny: What was your first launch?
The first one I can remember was a shuttle launch. I think it was STS-88. I’m not positive. I keep meaning to go back and look at my old photo albums from a kid when I go back home, but I haven’t done it yet.
We took the time to get to get to see the launch from up close‚ which as a kid I was obsessed with. You had to write your senator or house representative, and you had to basically asked for base access as a civilian, and so we did that. And that’s how I saw the shuttle launch from like six miles away, which is the minimum distance that you could be as a member of the public. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen as a kid, and for a long time I wanted to be a pilot. I just fell into liking planes and space. I mean, living in Florida and seeing launches probably helped a lot. I was one of those kids that had an encyclopedic knowledge of space, and at a certain point I made friends with kids who were way more into it than me. But at a certain point in my teens I just checked out, and that coincided with the time that the space shuttle stopped launching, because of the second disaster. After that space seemed to go dormant for a little bit; not a lot of stuff was happening.
Amy Marie Slocum: How did you get into photography?
Well, I went to film school and I discovered that I enjoyed black and white film photography. I got a little bit of encouragement from one of my professors, so I saved up enough money to buy my first DSLR, which was a Canon 60D. After I graduated I moved to L.A., not knowing the insanely rich aerospace history that this place has, and when I got here I started working in reality TV.
You know, you spend a little time out in the desert. Weird things start to happen
Tonx: When did you start heading out to the desert?
Pretty much immediately. When I moved out here I had several friends that came out the month before me. One of them posted on Facebook: Who wants to go to the desert and look at the stars? So we went to a campsite in the Mojave called Afton Canyon Campground, which they call the Grand Canyon of the Mojave, and is a dark sky site next to a rail bridge. Over the years I’d say I’ve been out there now more than twenty, thirty times. Shortly after that first trip, I told all my friends, Hey, if you’ve never seen the Milky Way, you need to come out and see this. The canyon has all kinds of crazy colored rocks and geology; there’s a fault that runs through it. It’s so beautiful there.
You know, you spend a little time out in the desert, weird things start to happen. I don’t mean UFOs or anything, I just mean that you see interesting things. One time I was at Afton Canyon, and I was out on the middle of the rail bridge on one of the pylons, just enjoying the morning, and suddenly I heard a plane, and saw that it was a propeller plane from circa WWII, I didn’t know if it was a Corsair or a Mustang, but this propeller plane just comes roaring through the canyon, and bursts out a couple hundred feet off the ground, tops. Goes right over the rail bridge, and just scoots away. I’m just sitting there like, What.
Another time, same place: Afton Canyon. Same bridge. I’m sitting there. And a train, maybe five, six cars long hauls straight through‚ it doesn’t slow down for the bridge, it doesn’t slow down for the turn, nothing‚ and it has an engine, an empty flatbed, and… something. The something was these weird streamlined pods. It was escorted by two Blackhawk helicopters, so the only thing that I can guess is that it was toting something important‚ whether that was nuclear material, or what. That’s just the kind of stuff that happens out there…
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