Roger Tonry

His father, Duke, flew with legendary aviator Clay Lacy in Boeing C–97 medical transports; by age 6, Roger was steering Duke’s Ercoupe.

Multiple early passions—airplanes, photography, and design—foreshadowed a talent for pivoting that would eventually braid into his career path. He soloed at 17 (“I was the only kid at school with an AOPA sticker on his car”), decided against the U.S. Air Force Academy, and enrolled instead at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, to study advertising. He realized he didn’t want the job he was being trained for and switched to filmmaking—pivot number 1.

After graduating with honors, he cold-called every producer in the Los Angeles Yellow Pages. A single “yes” led to working on local commercials as a camera assistant, then to his first job as a director of photography—pivot number 2.

By age 27, he had filmed two movies and nearly 100 MTV music videos for artists as diverse as rocker Eddie Van Halen and rapper MC Hammer. He celebrated by buying his first airplane: a Grumman Tiger. “The Tiger has a high fun factor, with an affordable price point,” he said. “It flies like a little sports car. Cruise the beach, pull the canopy back, fly really slow. Everybody steps out of it happy.”

Directing commercials was his next career move, and he did hundreds—Southwest Airlines, Budweiser, Major League Baseball among them. He bought his second airplane, a SIAI-Marchetti SF.260: “It’s a poor man’s P–51. Small, but still a warbird. It has the fun factor of a Mustang, without the huge expense.”

Then one evening at Van Nuys Airport, Lacy spotted Tonry wrenching the Marchetti. Remembering that Tonry was both a pilot and cinematographer, Lacy rolled up with a question: Would he want to try filming from Lacy’s Learjet 25B camera jet? Yes—for pivot number 3.

Over the next decade they flew together on several hundred film sorties; Tonry also began shooting with Wolfe Air’s Vectorvision Learjet. He chased airliners, business jets, and military aircraft. Next he created 3 Delta Fox, a full-service aviation production company, and now films primarily from a Embraer Phenom 300 and an Aero Vodochody L–39 Albatros. Both jets sport chin-mounted, stabilized gimbals housing digital cinema cameras. Seated inside, he can rotate and tilt their zoom lenses to choreograph sophisticated ballets in the sky.

Today, with 20 years’ experience and nearly 400 sorties, Tonry is almost certainly the industry’s highest-time jet aerial cinematographer; he has filmed more types for more airlines, charter operators, and manufacturers than anyone else.

Chad Slattery is a Los Angeles-based aviation photographer and writer.

3deltafox.com