A Photographer With a Bird's-Eye View of the Economy

Corporate-jet photographer Charles Tack didn't set out to be an economic indicator. In fact, he didn't even know he was one.

But around the time the dot-com bubble burst and then again about a year ago, Tack noticed that used corporate jets were flooding the marketplace. This time around, banks, insurance companies, entertainers and Fortune 500 firms were putting their Gulfstreams, Lears and Challengers on the market.

Tack, 57, photographs the jets for brokers, who use his work in sales portfolios and for advertisements in trade journals. The uptick in business proved to be a harbinger of just how bad the economy was about to become.

"I wasn't really thinking about it much," said Tack, who pilots his own Beechcraft Bonanza to many jobs around the United States. "Some were banks who took bailout money. I told people that when I learned who the companies were, I wish I could have bought stock and sold it short six months later."

It all made sense when the crash hit.

Entrepreneurs come in big and small packages, and Tack is definitely on the smallish side. He's a one-man show.

I found his Reston business interesting for several reasons.

First off, he is an accidental entrepreneur. He sold aircraft in the early 1980s when the Reagan recession hit, bringing sales to a halt. Around the same time, a friend who used to be a marketer for British Aerospace had started his own firm and called to ask if he would photograph a used Gulfstream turboprop -- "the queen of the fleet," as Tack calls it -- that he was trying to sell.

"He got me a couple of pretty nice jobs and called some of his broker friends and called others and asked them to help me out, that I can fly my own plane. It just grew from there," Tack said. "It was good breaks."

Another reason I found Charles Tack Photography interesting is that it occupies such a micro-niche; about half a dozen people dominate the aircraft-photography business, and Tack gets a pretty good chunk of it.

With 25 years of connections, he doesn't even have to look for work.

"I don't do bids. No proposals. Somebody will call me and say we have an airplane in Long Beach, when can you be there?" he said. "I don't negotiate. I bill them what I think it costs and I've never been stiffed."