A Swan With Clipped Wings

An aerial photographer comes to terms with being on the ground after a lifetime above 1,000 feet

The frigid snow of Sherman Peak and Mount Shuksan is basked in the warm orange glow of the sunset during a long moon night, which Tore Ofteness captured in December of the late aughts. The photo was featured on the Professional Aerial Photographers Association website.

Story by Eli Voorheis

Eye pressed to the viewfinder of his obsidian-black Asahi Pentax camera, Tore Ofteness framed the twin acid balls, a sheet of light baking their rusty husks. He pressed the shutter. “Chkk.” It was 2012. The Georgia-Pacific Paper Mill, a cornerstone of 20th-century Bellingham commerce, was being dismantled.

Ofteness, an established aerial and commercial construction photographer, was hired to document the mill’s last moments. For a big job like this, Ofteness anticipated a handsome payday. Everything was going smoothly.

He reached for his camera, intending to twist the aperture ring on the lens — a delicate movement, though one that he had performed thousands of times before.

But he couldn’t. Not readily, at least. His hand trembled. The practiced movement felt unfamiliar. With immense effort, he finished out the rest of the day. All the while, dread squirmed in his belly like a slug.

“I hope this isn’t…” he thought to himself, already suspicious.

It wouldn’t be the last time. His hands began to shake regularly. His gait stiffened. His balance became unsteady. It reached a breaking point when Ofteness fell off a ladder while painting a wall in his house, dislocating a shoulder.

In August 2013, nearly a year after the first incident, Ofteness walked into the neurologist’s office with his wife, Joan Ofteness. “Parkinson’s Disease,” his neurologist said, letting it sink in. Characterized by a loss of motor control, Parkinson’s is a degenerative condition caused by damaged nerve cells in the brain, according to the National Institute of Aging.

“I was disappointed,” Ofteness said, pausing to take a sip of water, his bright blue eyes drifting to a faraway place. “I was hoping it would be something else.”

Parkinson’s threatened to ground Ofteness’ aerial photography career to a halt after more than 100 plane trips and a lifetime in the air.

An immigrant from Norway who spent his childhood climbing trees, Ofteness — which translates to swan point — always felt at home ascending to new heights.

One of the first times Ofteness took a photo, he was a passenger in an OH-23 Raven helicopter during a military training flight in Kansas, watching the setting sun swallow three or four other helicopters in formation.

“I got the color negatives back, and they turned out nothing like I saw in my mind. That’s what started me down the slippery slope,” he said with a hint of irony in his voice.

Completing training as an airplane mechanic for the U.S. Army, he was stationed in Stuttgart, West Germany, and tasked with maintenance for a plane that monitored Soviet movements along the border of Czechoslovakia.

Throughout his term, he enjoyed taking photos from airplanes and on Stuttgart’s cobbled streets. When he was discharged on his 21st birthday, Ofteness had no idea what to do next. He knew one thing though: he liked taking photos, especially when it was out of the steel-plated frame of an airplane.

It would be 20 long years before he returned to an airplane cockpit. In the meantime, he earned a history degree from Western Washington State College — later renamed Western Washington University — and became one of the first photo editors of Klipsun magazine.

*25-year-old Tore Ofteness leans against his BSA Victor Special motorcycle in Seattle in 1970. He’s had three of the same bike, wearing out two from use and having the third stolen.*

Photo courtesy of Tore Ofteness

“He’s got a hell of an eye for photography,” said Korte Brueckmann, Klipsun’s editor-in-chief at the time and Ofteness’ lifelong friend.

Bruekmann said his son Tor, named after Ofteness, shares a few traits with his godfather: kindness, smarts, and “a tremendous gift for explaining things to people and making them feel good.”

Still shooting away during the swinging ’60s, Ofteness captured wild rock festivals, a hippie commune and later developed his career in commercial construction photography. All the while, dreams of seeing the world below floated above.

He finally got his bird’s eye view when he had the opportunity to take photos of Western’s campus from within the familiar confines of an airplane for the Public Information Office.

It was everything he missed.

Thousands of aerial shots and countless memories later, Ofteness has been recognized by the Professional Aerial Photographers’ Association (PAPA) with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

On one of his most successful days above 1,000 feet, Ofteness made a panorama of the Cascades out of 10 photos, took another of an intimidating Mount Baker looming over Bellingham and grabbed a shot of the ARCO Texas tanker ship and its two-tug escort bathing in a warm patch of sunlight.

The ARCO Texas tanker ship photo got first place in a PAPA competition and was put on the cover of their next magazine issue. What’s more, he won third place with a different photo.

“It was a busy day,” Ofteness said coyly.

Ofteness embodied his namesake of the swan, soaring through the air with his camera. But now Parkinson’s leaves him feeling trapped with his feet glued to the ground.

Since his diagnosis 11 years ago, Ofteness has tried it all to keep a sense of normalcy in his life. For a bit, he was seeing progress in sessions on a stationary bike through a program called Pedaling for Parkinson’s offered by the YMCA. He even maxed out the machine at 145 RPM, setting the record for the group of patients. For a while, he saw improvement with a specialized physical therapy program that emphasizes exaggerated movements to counteract the tightening effects of Parkinson’s. Then, he hit a wall.

“One day I woke up and I had no energy left. It was gone,” Ofteness said.

With little mobility left at 79 years old, the last time Ofteness picked up a camera or climbed into a plane was over five years ago. Nevertheless, it’s not bitterness or self-pity that he feels about these “life changes.” He lives by an adage he heard from a friend: “If your heart’s not in it, get your arse out of it.”

Three things dampened his passion: age, Parkinson’s and a changing market with the arrival of drones.

“I got tired of dialing for dollars,” he said about the constant hustle to find photography gigs.

Now, Ofteness spends his time reading books (currently a novel about psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and Vienna), listening to Beethoven and spending time with his cat Mimi and his wife Joan, who is also his primary caregiver.

“She’s a godsend… I would be dead without her,” Ofteness said adamantly, glancing over at Joan making lunch for the two in the kitchen.

Joan couldn’t picture it any other way. “If you’re in a marriage and you love someone, you’re going to be there for them,” Joan said. “I can’t turn my back on him.”

Ofteness also owes his life to photography.

“It’s always my primary reason for existing. It’s still very important to me, even though I am not creating anything new,” he said.

The Ofteness home sits on a hill above Lake Whatcom, downwind of an elementary school. During recess, children’s laughter cascades through the rooms and into the photography studio downstairs, reverberating off the relics of a storied career. Ribbons and awards are pinned to the wall. A worn Nikon F-2 sleeps on a shelf, missing its lens. Towers of prints cover all surfaces. Ofteness riffles a stack like a deck of cards, playing with memories.

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