Close Up

On the Hunt

“I think your father’s favorite story about me was my ability to locate
animals for him to photograph. We went to the Morton Arboretum a few
times. One time there was a patch of milkweed flowers in bloom, so we
went to take pictures of insects. While we were there, a red-tailed hawk
flew in and landed on small tree about 15-feet away from us. I pointed
out the hawk to your father. He was in joy as he clicked away with his
camera. Alvin teased me that I had a mouse in my pocket to attract the
hawk. I told him he was the mouse and would feed the hawk for a week!

The hawk flew to another nearby tree and Alvin thought we were done. I
said, ‘Get after him.’

We followed and photographed that hawk until we ended
up quite far away from the car … and the hawk finally flew too far to
chase after. After we got back in the car and turned on the AC and
cooled off, we headed for another spot. This time we were after frogs
and dragonflies.”

— Arnold Koenig, Dad’s long-time photography buddy

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Al’s Famous Question

“Our photography group was driving back from Canyonlands National Park to Moab, UT during a furious blizzard at night. We could not even see as far as the front edge of the vehicle’s hood through the snow. Our treacherous terrain included driving over the “Knife’s Edge,” which is a place where the cliffs fall away from the road on both sides about one foot off the edge of the road. Alvin (who was deathly afraid of heights) then asked the now famous question for our group – “Where are we? I want to know where we are” – multiple times, only to receive the now famous answer, “Alvin, I know where we are, but you don’t want to know“.

The following morning, as we drove the same road back up to Canyonlands in the sunshine, it was then explained to Alvin where we had been, and he said “You were right Mark, I didn’t want to know where we were.”

— Mark Rasmussen

Stand-Up Friend

“My favorite story about your dad is when he was the score caller at our camera club’s competition. When we have our monthly photography competitions, we invite three photographers from other area clubs to act as judges. Each judge is given a scoring device and they score an image 1 thru 9. 9 being the best. The machine shows the individual scores and a total score from all three judges combined.

The score caller calls out the combined score. Now sometimes a judge will make an obvious mistake and the judge or another will call “rescore.” One of my images was being judged and the judges gave it 15. Alvin yelled out “rescore” and the judges promptly rescored it at 15 again. Even though I received a low score I was still pleased your dad stuck up for me.”

— Arnold Koenig, Dad’s long-time photography buddy