Bruce Fall, a well-known Lompoc photographer, was awarded the Professional Aerial Photographers Association (PAPA) Lifetime Achievement Award at the group/s annual banquet held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Redondo Beach. Fall joined the association in the early 1970s, soon after he began doing photography in Lompoc in the late /60s.

Fall has been a pilot for more than 62 years, and for most of those years he has been doing aerial photography. When he arrived in the Lompoc area in 1965, he began doing aerial photography in the local area as well as throughout California. Fall purchased his first plane, a 1937 Taylor Cub, in 1970 and has since owned seven other planes. He now flies a 1954 Piper Super Cub, which is an ideal camera platform for aerial photography.

Fall/s photographic assignments have run from washed out highways to farms, construction progress photos to private property and missile launches to air photos of other planes.

Fall came to the area from Puerto Rico were he was stationed with the Air Force. He opened a studio and he went to work for Martin Marietta as a company photographer where he remained for 23 years until he retired in 1991. Since his retirement from Martin Marietta, he continued doing aerial photography and has had time to head up the West Coast Cub Fly-in in Lompoc, which is now in its 24th year.

February 26, 2008