Flying is a way of life for Julie and Pat Belanger. When they’re
working, they’re flying. When they’re relaxing, they’re flying.
When they exchanged vows and rings in 1993, they were flying. The
couple wouldn’t have it any other way.
Flying is a way of life for Julie and Pat Belanger. When they’re working, they’re flying. When they’re relaxing, they’re flying.
When they exchanged vows and rings in 1993, they were flying.
The couple wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I love what I’m doing. This is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life, flying and taking photos,” Julie said from her home in Morgan Hill.
The Belangers started the 111th Aerial Photography Squadron in 1994 and became full-time professional aerial photographers, supplying photos and video to the city of San Jose, ABC News and the Style Network’s reality TV show “Jerseylicious.”
The Belangers were pilots before they met, but shooting photos was a first, whether it’s done 1,000 feet above the Golden Gate Bridge in their Cessna Cardinal or almost scraping the landscape at 100 feet when they take a friend’s Robinson Helicopter.
“We went up one day and took a camera. Back then it was film, so it was a lot of trial and error in the beginning. The first time we went up, I flew and he took photos. He asked me to turn around a building and kept criticizing my flying – too steep, too low – so I said, ‘Hey, you fly. I’ll take the photos,'” Julie said.
Pat does boast the credentials for a steady hand; he’s a retired fighter pilot in the 194th Fighter Squadron of the U.S. Air National Guard. Pat always wanted his own squadron and so the 111th became their family business’ namesake.
The Belanger’s first moments as a married couple – dressed in white flying suits – was in a four-seater plane. That day, Julie’s mother Jan Perlitch gave Pat the keys to her plane. She was the Flying Lady of local fame in the 1970, ’80s and ’90s. Jan died in 2010 and her husband Irv died in 2008.
In the early ’70s, Irv built the Flying Lady Restaurant in southeast Morgan Hill and grew it into the largest dining space – 70,000 square feet – in the world seating 2,000 people on three levels at its highest capacity. Perlitch made his fortune as the founder of Aristocrat Travel Trailers and sold it in 1958 to open his plane and automobile museum, restaurant and 18-hole golf course that was once known as a tourist destination for South Bay passersby as well as a local hotspot to listen to live country music and line dance. The Flying Lady dripped in airplanes and aviation motif. From the ceilings miniature model antique airplanes floated above diners on a jimmied dry cleaning rack.
Irv was the plane and classic car aficionado and Jan manned the expansive gift shop. He built a 40,000-square foot hangar to house his toys, which collectors and tourists were welcome to view. His 1929 Ford Tri-motor airplane was used in the 1984 blockbuster “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and the Perlitch’s met Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Dan Aykroyd, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg during the shoot at Hamilton Air Force Base.
“Isn’t he a fine looking man?” Julie said about Ford while watching home movies she’s compiled dedicated to the memory of the Flying Lady Restaurant. She has a good eye. Julie won a photo contest from the Professional Aerial Photography Association the first year she and Pat started the 111th.
It was a photo of a Gilroy farm and she said the judges were explaining why they chose her photo: “Look at how the photographer used the rule of thirds.’ It’s the way the mind likes to visualize images in equal thirds of a photo, but I had no idea what that was at the time. They said, ‘look the fence moves this way in this third and the stream is passing through this third, framing the farm in this third,” Julie laughed. “Oh yeah, that’s what I was thinking going 100 miles per hour. You just take a lot of photos and hope some turn out for the best,” she said.
The Flying Lady Restaurant shut down in 1994 after a series of expensive lawsuits were set off after a deck collapsed and injured three people. The property was purchased by John Fry and demolished. Julie wasn’t sure what to do. When she lost her job in public relations at age 40 the opportunity to start a new business arose.
Pat had the idea about flying in a plane, taking photos and selling them. “Do you think we could make money?” Julie remembers asking Pat. “Let’s try,” he said. Julie made cold calls to everyone who would give her a few minutes and for every six nos, there was one yes, Julie said.
The Belangers now dominate the aerial photography market in the Bay Area with thousands of stock photos available of scenes in San Francisco, Yosemite, Oakland, Pebble Beach and Monterey. Not too far away in Elk Grove is aerial photographer Todd Quam who naturally might be the Belanger’s competition, but in the professional aerial photography world competitors are colleagues.
“Because of the nature of aerial photography, we all pretty much work alone. Pat and Julie are married, so they’re probably a bit rare for aerial photography. You don’t have a lot of contact even with customers … So to have a network of like-minded individuals around the nation is just a fantastic way to be connected to a larger, almost support group,” Quam said.
Pat is currently PAPA’s president and Quam of DigitalSky Aerial Imaging is the Western Regional Director. Julie serves as the executive director and can’t praise the goodwill and support of her fellow aerial photographers enough, whom the Belangers now call friends.
“In some respects we would be competitors,” Quam said, though he’s done photo shoots for the Belangers when they were unable. “You don’t find a lot of competitors doing work for each other.”
While stock photos of a fleeting sunset reflecting over the San Francisco Bay makes gorgeous eye candy, much of what aerial photographers do is for commercial real estate clients. Progress of construction projects are frankly what keeps the Belangers viable in an economy that isn’t compatible with their small business.
“First we thought we would make the money from residents who wanted photos or sell them to Realtors, but only really, really high-end homes wanted photos. So that didn’t work. The commercial real estate clients like to make sure things are being done. They want to see progress in real time,” Julie said.
The Belangers utilize Google Earth, so finding their next construction site or home isn’t a guessing game.
“So many people would describe their homes just like one client we had: ‘It’s a tan house with a brown roof and grass in the yard,'” Julie said. Finding that house was going to be a time-consuming chore even with Google Earth. The client had omitted one rather large detail that Julie just loves: Their swimming pool was shaped like a dog bone.
“And there it was on Google Earth, a dog bone,” Julie said.
Over a 16-year span, the Belangers have built their repertoire to include aerial video and with 20 contributors around the world the catalog stretches to Australia, Hawaii and Paris. When the Belangers shoot video it’s often with a friend’s helicopter that has a gyro-stabalizing camera capturing the 360-degree views.
“Oh, it’s so much fun,” she said. “It’s just the two of us, but we’re getting to do what we love.”
View a video by Julie Belanger about the Flying Lady Restaurant, or watch a clip from an aerial video from the 111th Aerial Photography.
